{"id":27666,"date":"2026-09-28T06:37:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T10:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=27666"},"modified":"2026-09-28T07:11:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T11:11:16","slug":"27666","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=27666","title":{"rendered":"An Influential Teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Carnegie Hall - The Orchestra Sings - Simple Gifts Lyrics Video\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yv8ziNE22bE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Sunday, September 27, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>On the CAC\u2019s Turning to the Mystics podcast, Father Richard Rohr reflects on his first encounter with the writings of Saint Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux (1873\u20131897) as a young man: &nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I entered seminary in the years just before Vatican II, many of my professors were very legalistic. What else could they be when that\u2019s all our religion had given us? But I picked up a very small book about Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux, a young, French Carmelite nun, by a Carmelite priest named Pere Liagre. He summarized her teachings so simply and so well! Now remember, I\u2019m nineteen years old and I\u2019m looking for inspiration and guidance. When I closed the book, I thought, \u201cThis is not what my professors are saying. This changes everything!\u201d In Th\u00e9r\u00e8se\u2019s time, there was a heresy called Jansenism that led to perfectionism and severe legalism, which did untold damage to the spirituality of the French church. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se came along and broadsides it without even trying to. She was just being guided by love. This young French woman with calm inner authority said, \u201cYou know what? The legalism and negativity aren\u2019t true.\u201d Th\u00e9r\u00e8se taught that \u201c<strong>Jesus does not demand great actions from us but simply surrender and gratitude.\u201d<\/strong> [1]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was her underlying spirituality, complemented by Francis of Assisi and Franciscanism, that got me through the seminary. It wasn\u2019t the academic teaching I was being given by the professors, which was still tainted with legalism, and where the unspoken premise was basically, \u201cIf you\u2019re perfect, if you do it right, God will love you.\u201d That was the underlying assumption, and it was\u2014and still is\u2014utterly false. I guess I trusted Th\u00e9r\u00e8se because what she wrote felt like common sense to me. Most of my confessors were legalists, and I would just quietly think to myself, \u201cOkay, they\u2019re going to say that, but I know it\u2019s not true.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was an important antidote to my own inclination to perfectionism as a \u201cone\u201d on the Enneagram (although I didn\u2019t have the language for it at the time). We \u201cone\u2019s\u201d set a standard of perfection by our own self-centered definition, and so we\u2019re always defeated. We define the rules and then we can\u2019t live up to them. <strong>Th\u00e9r\u00e8se is the best counterweight to any theology or spirituality of perfectionism<\/strong>. She was my liberation. I just didn\u2019t believe in it anymore. It simply wasn\u2019t true. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In her autobiography&nbsp;<em>Story of a Soul<\/em>, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se tells a story of standing at the bottom of the staircase and lifting her little foot, trying to reach heaven. She pictures God as Father standing at the top of the staircase, beckoning \u201cCome on, come on, come on.\u201d Her leg is so tiny, and it can\u2019t even reach the first step\u2014but she keeps trying like a toddler would, and then at a certain point, God runs down the steps and carries her up like a divine elevator. At nineteen, that became my first intimation of a good, serious metaphor for how grace works. <strong>All God needs is our desire, then God does all the rest.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>=========<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Beauty of a Little Flower<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Monday, September 28, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus set before me the book of nature; I understood how all the flowers [God] has created are beautiful, how the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not take away the perfume of the little violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy\u2026. If all flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked out with wildflowers. And so it is in the world of souls. &nbsp;<br>\u2014Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux,&nbsp;<em>Story of a Soul&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>On the CAC\u2019s Turning to the Mystics podcast, James Finley describes how Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux embraced ordinariness, the beauty of the little flower, as a path to God:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Th\u00e9r\u00e8se was not an ecstatic mystic. It\u2019s almost as if she was so deep in the divinity of the intimacy of ordinariness itself\u2014with such clarity\u2014that it makes her extraordinary. That\u2019s what makes her accessible to us. Because&nbsp;<em>we\u2019re<\/em> ordinary. How can we find God\u2019s oneness with us in the midst of the ordinariness of ourselves? I think that\u2019s why she touches us so. [1]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Th\u00e9r\u00e8se sees herself in some way as a <strong>little flower growing in God\u2019s garden<\/strong>, which is why she\u2019s sometimes called the Little Flower. She says that there is glory in the rose and the orchid and all of that, but imagine a field filled with wildflowers in the springtime\u2014thousands and thousands of flowers, and that God knows the littleness of each one and is personally loving each one into existence. Furthermore, God knows what that little flower is and the intricacy of its design, like the subtle scent of the violet. God eternally knows the violet to be hidden with Christ in God forever, so God is eternally contemplating the little flower in God. God is completely presencing Godself in the little flower.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, let\u2019s say there is a mountain and you\u2019re holding a grain of sand in your hand and comparing it to the mountain. The mountain is so immense and the grain of sand is so tiny; but since God cannot be diminished in any way whatsoever, the infinite presence of God is presencing itself in your hand through that little grain of sand, as much as in the mountain. Like the mountain, it is nothing without God. <strong>We don\u2019t see this in ego consciousness, but in meditative prayer states we can sense the incomprehensible stature of the simplicity of things<\/strong>. <strong>We\u2019re the simple soul, but the stature of our simplicity is divine because we\u2019re God\u2019s beloved.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think Th\u00e9r\u00e8se lived in this kind of luminosity, this gentle glow. She was not an ecstatic mystic having visions, but it\u2019s like the divinity of the simplicity of herself that she so graciously shares with us invites us into the graciousness of our own simplicity. <strong>Th\u00e9r\u00e8se is stunning by the radicality of her simplicity, which brings us to the radicality and the divinity of our simplicity and how we are to live by it and to walk in it day by day. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday, September 27, 2026 On the CAC\u2019s Turning to the Mystics podcast, Father Richard Rohr reflects on his first encounter with the writings of Saint Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux (1873\u20131897) as a young man: &nbsp; When I entered seminary in the years just before Vatican II, many of my professors were very legalistic. What else could [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27666"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27666"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27672,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27666\/revisions\/27672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}