Our Lord rather starkly drives this point home in today’s Gospel reading when He insists that following Him means radical, even jarring, detachment from all that we may hold as necessary and precious: “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go, proclaim the kingdom of God…No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60, 62). For Jesus, there is simply no compromising when it comes to conversion in His way of life. And the same rings true in recovery as the Big Book wisely affirms, “Half measures availed us nothing” (Alcoholics Anonymous). Jesus makes many similar shocking statements throughout the Gospels that demand our radical detachment from all things, most especially from the self and self-will, in order to come into right relationship with God, experience true joy, and receive the gift of eternal life with Him in Heaven (cf. Matthew 12:46-50; Matthew 16:24-25; Matthew 18:5-10; Mark 9:42-48; Luke 8:19-21; Luke 14:26-27; John 15:12-13).
The saints profoundly understood and bore witness to Christ’s demands in their lives, and the saint we celebrate today, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, is no less an example. Her spirituality of the “Little Way” is a simple yet magnificent expression of radical detachment. In her autobiography, she writes, “For me to become great is impossible, I must bear with myself and my many imperfections; but I will seek out a means of getting to Heaven by a little way—very short and very straight, a little way that is wholly new. We live in an age of inventions; nowadays the rich need not trouble to climb the stairs, they have lifts instead. Well, I mean to try and find a lift by which I may be raised unto God, for I am too tiny to climb the steep stairway of perfection…Thine Arms, then, O Jesus, are the lift which must raise me up even unto Heaven. To get there I need not grow; on the contrary, I must remain little, I must become still less…I am but a weak and helpless child, yet it is my very weakness which makes me dare to offer myself, O Jesus, as victim to Thy Love” (Story of a Soul).
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, pray for us!
Reflection Questions
- What does radical detachment mean to you in your recovery journey? How do you remain attached to persons, places, things, ideas, perceptions, expectations, memories, resentments, pleasures, traumas, successes, or failures?
- How can you apply Saint Thérèse’s description of the “Little Way” to your journey of recovery? What do you think of her boldness in writing, “my very weakness makes me dare to offer myself, O Jesus, as victim of Thy Love?”
Daily Mass Readings
First Reading: Nehemiah 2:1-8
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 137:1-2, 3, 4-5, 6
Gospel: Luke 9:57-62
Reflection by Pete S.