Looking at Mark's Gospel in the Aramaic, this article
explores the 'Little Way' of St. Therese as the art of allowing Jesus to lift
us up like little children unto the shoulders of His Holiness.
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| 'Christ Blessing Little Children,' Charles Lock Eastlak, 1839. |
Setting the Scene
So Jesus is walking with His disciples. Earlier Jesus
carried out some missionary work, and coming through Galilee He foretells about
His pending death and resurrection. As they approach the fishing-village
Capernaum, ironically in contrast to the self-sacrifice of Jesus just mentioned
to them, the disciples are bickering among themselves— ‘Who among us is the
greatest?’
Jesus is aware of this but says nothing while on the
journey. He is patient. He lets them play ‘big shots.’ He knows full well that
He will teach them a lesson which will sink in all the more because of the
humiliation of been corrected. It’s easy to deny a sin when it’s hidden and
swimming around in the mind and heart. But it’s hard to deny a sin once it has
come out into the open in act or speech. By its outward manifestation one’s
need for purification is made clear. Jesus wants to expose to His healing Light
the remains of darkness within His disciples. He wants to purge them, as He
wants to purge us, of the darkness of sin. He wants to make them “children of
light” while there is still time (Jn 12:16).
They enter a familiar house to lodge, and Jesus baits
them, “What were you discussing along the way?” (Mk 9:33). The Greek here is
more direct—διελογίζεσθε: “What were you deliberating / debating / trying to
reason-out along the way?” The disciples are sheepish. They know exactly
what they were talking about, and they’ve been around Jesus long enough to work
out they were in the wrong. So they keep silent. They say not a word. οἱ δὲ ἐσιώπων πρὸς ἀλλήλους –
literally, “they were mute with one another,” or “dumb to one another.” And the
verb used here for ‘to be silent, mute, dumb,’ typically infers involuntary
muteness. Thus silence fell over them through the prick of their conscience.
They were mortified for having been caught out! Caught out by the one they were
trying to impress the most. Caught out in a fishing village mind you!
The Gospel of Mark goes on:
And he sat down and called the
twelve; and he said to them, "If any one would be first, he must be last
of all and servant of all." And he took a child, and put him in the midst
of them; and taking him in his arms, he said to them, "Whoever
receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me,
receives not me but him who sent me." (9:35-37).
In The Greek
Mark’s Gospel account is subtly different to both
Matthew’s (18:1-5) and Luke’s (18:15-17). Matthew and Luke record the aspect of
Jesus’ calling the little child over to Him, while Mark records the gesture of
Jesus in receiving the child.
The key Greek word here is ἐναγκαλίζομαι (enagkalizomai)
and within the syntactic-context means, “having taken him in His arms,” or
“having embraced him [in His arms].” The image is complimented by the Latin
translation of the Greek, quem cum conplexus esset, that is, The
child “whom when he had embraced / encompassed [with his arms].”
There is a lot to draw from with this imagery—Jesus embraces the child in His
arms and shows the child to His disciples, telling them they must imitate this
child, and receive all people, especially the vulnerable, with an encompassing
embrace of acceptance and whole-hearted love.
In The Aramaic
However, the Peshitta, written in Aramaic, paints a
different image. A tiny minority of scholars argue for the Aramaic primacy
hypothesis, at least for certain New Testament books, over the Greek. Putting
this issue aside, Aramaic was the lingua franca of first-century Palestine. Its
exegetical value can hardly be dismissed regardless of one’s stance. The text
and its translation is as follows:
(Hebrew script): ושׁקלה על דרעוהי
(Estrangelo script): ܘܫܲܩܠܸܗ ܥܲܠ
ܕܪܵܥܵܘܗܝ
and He took /lifted him on / upon
/ over his shoulders
The word ܕܪܵܥܵܘܗܝ / דרעוהי has
the singular masculine third-person suffix, type two—the form used for plural
nouns. Thus although the plural of the word ܕܪܵܥ / דרע can mean either arms or shoulders, the
preposition ܥܲܠ
/ על means “on, over, upon, above,” and makes
it most likely to mean “shoulders.”[1]
The image is quite different to that drawn from the Greek
and somewhat more powerful. Verse 36 would thus read, “And He [Jesus] took a
boy-child and set him in the midst [of them] and he lifted him upon His
shoulders and said to them…” Here Jesus is shown not to merely embrace the
child, and this is arguably a part of the process, but ultimately Jesus lifts
him up and places him on top of His shoulders, so that sitting or standing
there, the child would rise higher than Jesus’ head.
The profundity of this gesture is realised within the
context of Jesus’ lesson. He is teaching the disciples that if they want to be
great or ‘big’ in the Kingdom of Heaven, they must become small like children,
humble in service and simple in spirit. Jesus’ gesture of raising up the little
child upon His shoulders highlights this truth: if you are little in spirit,
God will lift you up to the heights of sanctity; if you make yourself last, God
will make you first in His Kingdom; if you humble yourself in the eyes of God
and men, God will exalt you in the sight of Himself and all men. In the words
of John the Baptist, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn 3:30).
St. Therese’s Lift / Elevator
St. Therese of the Child Jesus is a master of the art of
decreasing. It has become known as spiritual childhood and the sanctity of
littleness. Her ‘Little Way,’ expounded upon within her autobiography, Story
of a Soul, contains a reference that ties in nicely with this theme of
Jesus lifting the child upon His shoulders as an image of what perfect
spirituality means. She writes…
You know it has ever been my
desire to become a Saint, but I have always felt, in comparing myself with the
Saints, that I am as far removed from them as the grain of sand, which the
passer-by tramples underfoot, is remote from the mountain whose summit is lost
in the clouds.
Instead of being discouraged, I
concluded that God would not inspire desires which could not be realised, and
that I may aspire to sanctity in spite of my littleness. 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 elevators
instead. Well, I mean to try and find an elevator by which I may be raised unto
God, for I am too tiny to climb the steep stairway of perfection. I have sought
to find in Holy Scripture some suggestion as to what this lift might be which I
so much desired, and I read these words uttered by the Eternal Wisdom Itself:
“Whosoever is a little one, let him come to Me.” Then I drew near to God,
feeling sure that I had discovered what I sought; but wishing to know further
what He would do to the little one, I continued my search and this is what I
found: “You shall be carried at the breasts and upon the knees; as one whom the
mother caresseth, so will I comfort you.”
Never have I been consoled by
words more tender and sweet. 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.[2]
St. Therese’s words open the Gospel to us and help us
draw not just an intellectual lesson from this scene of Jesus’ lifting-up the
child, but an applicable spiritual reality: Jesus wants to make it easy for us,
He wants to make us happy, holy and to fulfil the deepest desires of our heart.
He doesn’t want us to thrash around in the spiritual life, making things harder
than it ought to be. He doesn’t want us to grind away in exerting our
will-power to make ourselves holy—boy, what a botch job we do! He wants to do
the sanctifying, and He wants us to learn to die to our grandiosity and to start
to surrender to His Will, to His grace at work within us, and for us to simply fulfil
our simple duties with great love and to constantly offer our imperfections
into His hand, while we try our best. Above all He wants us to always retain
the confidence of a child! To believe that God our Father loves us, and to
trust in that love.
The simple fact is that Jesus wants to lift us up like
children, He wants us, just as He wanted His disciples back then, to be little,
secure in the self-knowledge of our ineptness to be spiritual ‘big shots,’ to
put aside all such desires, and to simply rely on God for everything. He’ll do
the lifting!
In the Gospel, the child for his part had to do nothing
but allow Jesus to lift him up. Drawing from Matthew and Luke’s Gospel
this was preceded by Jesus’ calling the child over to Him. Here we thus see two
key steps that we must take—steps only made possible by God's grace of course!
The Call—The ‘Yes’
First is the call—Jesus calls us to Himself through so
many means, but above all, in our hearts, our consciences, our souls. God in
Christ has a plan for us, and each day certain duties and opportunities to love
and know Him have been ordained for us. The child in the Gospel responded to
the call of Jesus with a “Yes!” Maybe silently, maybe with a shout of glee, but
most likely with eagerness, maybe even running into His arms.
Spiritually speaking, are we like that child? Maybe not.
Maybe we’re zapped of childlike zest and are lounging around in the spirit,
content to live in our little slot like a sloppy mush of mashed potatoes which
some Cafeteria mama has slapped into the ‘designated place’ of a prisoner’s
food-tray. Jesus is calling to us, “Come on over here,” and maybe we’re content
to be blobs of apathy—not caring about our further conversion, or even anything
spiritual at all. Or maybe we’re like one of those flimsy toothpicks that break
too easily—too shy and timid with God and are ‘happy’ being misery-guts, complaining
about how bad or ‘blah’ we are to ourselves, to others, or to God in prayer, or
using it as an excuse ‘not to pray,’ instead of owning up for sins, repenting,
and moving on to run and spiritually hug Jesus who should be our focus.
No one wants to be a blob of apathy or a flimsy-tooth
pick! Who doesn’t want to find a way of life that makes everything easier? Not
in a hedonistic or worldly sense—the cross is inevitable and necessary. But who
doesn’t want to taste and see what Jesus meant when He said, “my yoke is easy,
and my burden light” (Mt 11:30)? That those who pick up their daily cross and
follow Him can live life and live it to the full (Jn 10:10) just like a child who
has no worries and finds the secret to true and inner happiness?
Jesus is calling us, “Come my child.” He sees us as we
were made to be. He sees our inner child, who we really are, and who we’ve
always longed to be. Yes, He sees our sins, even the most secretive, which
hides who we are from ourselves and others, but unlike the world which fakes-it
and pretends the dirt of sin is clean, and that our sins make us innocent, He sees
our brokenness and shame for what it is and still unconditionally loves us. He
calls us to Himself. We need not wait to be ‘perfect’ before we respond or else
we’ll never get there. He wants us to come as we are, sorry for sins, but
confident in His big love. We needn’t worry about how dirty we are, if we’re
willing to say “yes” to His call of love He will wash us, He will give us
strength, guidance, the faith we need, the trust—we need only say “yes.”
We can even ask for the grace that we might want to say
“yes” and mean it. The difference between been a spiritual ‘big shot’ try-hard,
an apathetic blob, and a timid-flimsy-tooth-pick-of-a-soul is the “yes.” It all
begins and ends with “yes.” “Yes,” to whatever God is calling us to, wherever
that might be, and whatever that might involve. God doesn’t care much for pious
and holy experts, He only values the unconditional “yes” of the soul, because
with the “yes” of the weakest, most sinful, least virtuous, least polished, roughest,
crustiest and most inept soul on the planet, He can do infinitely more than He
can with the strongest, most mortified, pious and well-endowed soul who says
“no,” and wants to live the spiritual life according to his own way. Our “yes”
is everything to God. He loves it!
Allowing Jesus to Lift Us Up in Our Littleness
The second step of securing spiritual childlikeness or littleness
follows on from this. It is to allow Jesus to lift us up into His arms and upon
His shoulders. That is, to lift us up into His Holiness and Greatness, even
while we remain little and fumbling in our weakness. How do we allow Jesus to
do that? There are two key elements to this.
Not Bolting! A Constant ‘Yes’
Firstly, like the child in the Gospel we mustn’t run away
from Jesus and head into the hills! Maybe a little tentative squirming is going
happen, but we mustn’t bolt for it by our “no”. We mustn’t withdraw our “yes”
to Jesus and His plan for us: His plan for our life in general, and His plan
for our sanctity.
Both Matthew and Mark describe Jesus’ ‘setting the child
in the midst’ of the disciples. The Greek verb translated as “he set” is ἔστησεν,
which also means ‘to make stand, to set in place, to establish, to make halt.’
‘If one reads closely it is Jesus who is taking the child and setting the child
in their midst—it is the action of Jesus, not the child, which establishes the
child in such a position and makes the energetic bundle stay put. Likewise, it
is Jesus who will establish us ‘in the midst’ (ἐν μέσῳ) of His disciples, that
is, ‘in among’ His disciples, adding us to the ranks of His chosen ones and
close followers, or in the terminology of St. Therese, adding us to the host of
‘little victims of God’s love’. It has nothing to do with how good or bad we
are, or how perfect or imperfect—but it has everything to do with how good He
is, and how perfect He is. Jesus can do it, and He will do it, He will
establish us in His intimate company if only we say “yes” and keep saying
“yes.” We must trust that He can do it—obviously, since He is God! We need only
say “yes” and trust that He will say His “yes” in us.
Perhaps we might say to Jesus, “I say ‘yes’ with your
‘yes’ Lord.” Or, “I want what you want for me, and I surrender myself to Your
Will for me.” This kind of talk is the prayer of a child of God and Jesus loves
it, the Father loves it, and the Holy Spirits loves it. By means of such constant
“yeses” - daily acts of surrendering trust - constituting a single ongoing “yes,”
we allow Jesus to set us before Him, as He establishes us in a state of being
where we are supple and docile to His sanctifying actions carried out by means
of the Holy Spirit. Sanctifying actions at work within our inner life and outer
life. Everything will serve to lead us nearer to Jesus, nearer to God. For
“we know that all things work together for good to those who love God” (Rom
8:28a).
This is the first element of allowing Jesus to
spiritually lift us up upon His shoulders, instead of trying to grow to His
stature in vain. It is the means by which we allow God to dispose us to be
lifted up. The second element of allowing Jesus to lift us up can be framed
positively and negatively.
Spiritual Detachment—Trust
The negative requirement isn’t something bad, but rather,
a negation. It is detachment from all that is not God. Thus it is detachment
from ourselves, from our own supposed virtues, from our way of trying to grow
spiritually, from our life plan, and from the world and the trappings of material
life. It is to remain content and happy in one’s nothingness—one’s littleness,
ineptness. It doesn’t mean one stops trying to do their best, but simply, that
one remains detached from themselves so that despite their feeble efforts and
enduring imperfection, one is content to rejoice in their weakness because of
the space it leaves for God’s Strength to dwell, and the necessity it sets up
to rely even more on God and not on oneself. “Therefore,” writes St. Paul, “I
will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may
rest on me” (2 Cor 12:9).
A key to such detachment is self-knowledge about our
human limitation. We are imperfect, we are not saints in ourselves, and nor can
we make ourselves as such. Nor are we able to do everything, and in fact, we
cannot really do anything to moral perfection. By detachment we accept this
fact, embrace it, and let go of that spirit of ‘bigness’ which inclines us
toward thinking we’re alright on our own. By such detachment we know our need
for God and cling to Him. Such detachment makes possible “the freedom… of the children of
God” (Rom 8:21).
The thing is, we cannot inculcate the detachment we need
except imperfectly. Still, grounded in this truth, we must do the little we can, the best we can, in our
imperfect way, to detach ourselves from all that is not God. Essentially it
means having a balanced life that includes prayer, the Sacraments and deeds of
service—even to those nearest to us.
When it comes to carrying out harmless things we like
doing in life, detachment means moderation and doing such things from a higher
motive—to do it out of love for God, as an act of ‘offering it up’ and
thanksgiving, instead of just doing such things without any deeper motive.
When it comes to our loved ones, detachment doesn’t mean
cutting ourselves literally off from them or putting an emotional blockade
between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ but it means putting God first and loving them not
because they’re ‘loved ones,’ or ‘flesh and blood,’ or ‘favourite friends,’ but
because God wants us to love them. Such detachment means we don’t put our faith
and hope in our loved ones, expecting them to be gods who complete us and fulfill our every existential need. Such detachment thus frees us from burdening
others with overly-high expectations. We’re thus free to love for the sake of
love, and love is God. Such detachment makes us free like children, docile to
God’s Will, to even leave ‘loved ones’ for the sake of the Kingdom if
necessary. It is a detachment which cuts us off from our plans for our ‘loved
ones’ and leads us to accept God’s plan for them—even if it seems to be a very
slow work in progress. It’s a detachment grounded in the confident hope of joining them in the ‘forever
after’ of eternal life.
As mentioned, the irony is that such detachment cannot be
had except imperfectly if we try to be detached in our own strength. Our own
feeble cooperative efforts to be sanctified must be set within the broader expanse of our surrendering
our imperfect efforts into His hands, without even looking and bothering about
the progress of our sanctification, for that is God’s concern. Our detachment
must include detachment from ‘seeing how we’re going’ and ‘how we’re measuring
up’. To focus on these things is to lose our littleness and slip into becoming
spiritual ‘bigshots’. Our only concern should be to repent when we fall, to do
what we must with love, and giving it all to God, the good, bad and in-between,
trusting that He’ll sort us out and sanctify us.
Such blind trust in God’s greatness at work within our
soul is at the heart of spiritual detachment—a detachment which constitutes
‘littleness’ and the simplicity of spiritual childhood. This detachment is
alluded to in the Gospel by the phrase, “And he took a child”. For Jesus will
take us away from what can threaten our ‘littleness’ and so in drawing us to
Himself He will be able to lift us, being as we are small and light as a child,
and not some big heavy ‘adult’ who doesn’t give Jesus this permission because of
our attachment to our own stature of holiness.
We can’t make ourselves perfectly detached but Jesus has
given us His Mother, and through trust in Her, combined with our feeble efforts
given over to Jesus and Mary, we can possess Her perfect detachment. For Mary
is the one who “took (λαβὼν) the child” or “received the child” Jesus from the
Father in Heaven, and through Her perfect detachment, allowed Her human nature
to be lifted-up to be attached to the Godhead, and so God was able to be attached
to Mary and in Her womb become man. The detachment of Mary thus made it possible for
God to become a child; and our very own spiritual childhood is made perfectly
possible through Mary and Her detachment which we must claim and use in faith. Simply
speaking, to be perfectly detached we need to cling to Mary in true devotion so
that all that She is and has, including Her detachment, becomes our own.
Spiritual Attachment—Desire
The detachment we need to become like little children is thus
a grace from God, given through Mary. Detached with Mary’s detachment we are light
and ready to be lifted-up by Jesus upon His shoulders, into the height of His
Godhead. Yet it’s not enough to be light and ready in order to be
lifted-up, so that Jesus can compensate for our littleness with His Greatness. Jesus
works on love, and gives us freedom, and so we have to want to be
lifted-up. We need to desire to be little and to be lifted-up.
Detachment is one necessary side of this coin, yet ultimately
detachment is the underside of the more important positive side of attachment
to God. Basically, such attachment to God is founded in our desire, our
positive willingness to want to be lifted-up by God. This entails a desire to
let God be God within us, to want God to be able to use us as He wants to, to
complete His designs of sanctity within us. It means desiring that God would be
our everything. It is desire for God’s Will—pure and simple! Such desire says,
“Here I am Lord, I have come to do your will,” (Ps 40). This is all a synonym
for love—desire being the root of love. As Aquinas says, “Desire for a thing
always presupposes love for that thing.”[3]
The funny thing is, that even in trying to desire God’s
Will—to desire Him to lift us up and carry us on His shoulders, and to manoeuvre
us wherever, and in whatever way He knows best—we can fall prey to the spirit
of bigness, as if it were up to us to conjure the perfect desire to make us
perfectly disposed to God’s ways. We can’t do this, imperfection is our domain.
So how then do we desire God perfectly? Mary.
It was the perfect desire of Mary, so ardent in its longing
for the Messiah, that brought about the Incarnation. Not as the cause, but as
the instrumental cause. For while God the Word desired to become incarnate as a
child on earth, it was through Mary’s perfect desire for this mystery to be
accomplished that God could finally realise His desire to lift-up human nature
to an indissoluble union with the Divine. By our devotion to Mary, taking Her
perfect desire as our own, we allow God to make us true little children of the
Kingdom, lifted-up into the great holiness of His Divinity, just as through
Mary’s desire He too became a child, lowered into the fragility of our
humanity.
St. Therese highlights the essential role of desire in
her ‘Little Way.’ “I concluded that God would not inspire desires which could
not be realised, and that I may aspire to sanctity in spite of my littleness.” God
wants us to be filled with desires set on Him, namely, of becoming intimate
with Him, and therefore of becoming holy. The thing is, the substratum of the
Theresian logic of sanctity is ‘littleness’ and thus she says, “I am not
trusting in my own merits, for I have none; but I trust in Him Who is Virtue
and Holiness itself.”[4] For
Therese, God is her Holiness. Hence we must interpret the essential role of
desires in the ‘Little Way’ as referring to little and imperfect desires on the
part of the soul—however great they may be, but as deriving their greatness and
efficacy in realising what is desired because of the faith placed in the corresponding
desires that are found in God—desires which are perfect and efficacious. The
unspoken medium here is Mary—so central to Therese and her personal Carmelite spirituality;
whom the logic of Catholic faith tells us is the created treasury of God,
perfectly disposed to Him. In Mary then, we will find the perfect desire we need
to live out the ‘Little Way’. We will long and desire for God, yearning to be
lifted-up into His Holiness—into perfect union with Him—with that perfect
longing and desire of Mary.
The Arms of God: Mary and Joseph
We have covered something of what it means to allow Jesus
to lift us up upon His shoulders, but what are the arms of Jesus? This sounds
like a strange question. Well, He was both God and Man, and so the literal human
arms of Jesus were the instrument of what we might figuratively call the Divine
Arms of Jesus—signifying the might and loving strength of the Godhead. As in “mighty
is Your arm” (Ps 89:13) and “your right hand supported me, and your gentleness
made me great” (Ps 18:35).
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| "14th-century fresco of the Flight into Egypt at the Decani Monastery in Kosovo." [Credit: Via His Eminence Metropolitan Savas of Pittsburgh], source. |
Yet we must remember that the Incarnation, that is, that the
Word’s taking on human nature was enabled to occur because of a God ordained Incarnational-context.
This living context was a family and relied on two human persons and their
marriage: Mary and Joseph. It was Mary and Joseph who in a sense gave the human
nature to God, which is to say, God gave Himself a human nature through Mary
and Joseph. Mary directly as Mother, and Joseph indirectly as ‘one in spirit’
with Mary, and as virginal father of the Incarnate Word.
This is why Fr. Andrew Doze in his excellent and compound
book on St. Joseph, refers to Mary and Joseph as the arms of God—the two
created beings through which God carries out His work.[5] After
all, we use our arms for work, and God uses Mary and Joseph as His arms to
carry out the work of redemption and its ongoing process in the sanctification
of the Church, including our own personal sanctification. It was through these
two ‘arms’ of Mary and Joseph that God carried out the work of the Redemption—which
begun with the Incarnation; and so too, through these chosen arms of the Body
of Christ, God continues His sanctifying work in and upon us.
What does this mean? It means Jesus the Head of the
Church will do the lifting—bringing us into the height of His own Holiness so
long as we are little like children, but that this lifting and making us into
children, is carried out by means of the Arms of Christ’s Mystical Body: Mary
and Joseph. (Whether we realise it and/or capitalise on it or not). Our true devotion
to them will secure us as little children of the Kingdom. For devotion to Mary
and Joseph brings us into a participation in the Incarnation Mystery and while enfolded
in their patronage they will teach us the art of littleness. Why? Because they’re
experts of littleness—since they knew the Great God as a tiny infant and little
child. Mary held Him in Her arms, and Joseph held Him on top of his shoulders.
Now Mary and Joseph as Spiritual Parents, mediating the Parenthood of God, want
to help us become little like Jesus. In this way Jesus as the God-Man will be
able to embrace us as little children brought to perfect imitation of Himself,
who became a child for our sake, and shall lift us up onto the shoulders of His
Divinity, exalting us to the heights of His Godhead.
Conclusion
The Aramaic really gives us a beautiful image: Jesus
lifting-up a little child upon His shoulders and presenting this child as the
model of sanctity—as a model of the perfect citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. First
Jesus called the child to Himself, then he took the child and placed him in the
midst of His disciples. He then lifted the child up and placed him on top of
His shoulders, higher than the stature of all the other disciples who had just
been bickering about who was the ‘greatest’. Jesus makes a clear message by
this gesture: this child is the greatest, and others who spiritually become
like this child in littleness of spirit.
God doesn’t want spiritual ‘big shots’ who are great at
being holy in their own strength, He wants little souls, humbled by their own
weakness, yet who are on fire with the bold confidence of children that God their
Father in Jesus, by the Spirit at work in Mary, will make up for their lack. That
God will supply them with the strength they need to say “yes” to Him, will
supply them with the trust they need to preserve in this “yes,” and will hand
out the grace they need to be detached from ‘bigness’ and to desire the God of
Greatness. These souls rejoice in their imperfect littleness, and armed with
the perfect littleness of the Virgin Mary which they’ve made their own, they run
toward God, certain that He will lift them up through the arms of their devotion
to Mary and Joseph, unto the shoulders of His great holiness—one shoulder
representing the might of His love, the other, the might of His mercy, and on
these shoulders as their foundation stone, they stand secure, clinging to Jesus
who is their Head.
[1]
M. Jastrow, Sefer Millim, p.324, accessed http://cal.huc.edu/showjastrow.php?page=324;
see also the translation of Mark 9:36 in Glenn David Bauscher, The Peshitta
Aramaic-English New Testament: An Interlinear Translation, 3rd
ed. (Lulu Publishing: 2009).
[2]
Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, chp. 10, accessed http://www.storyofasoul.com/chapters-9-to-11/
[3]
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II, 27, iv, ad.2.
[4]
Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, chp. 4.
[5]
Andrew Doze, Saint Joseph: Shadow of the Father (Alba House: 1992). Cannot
find our copy of the book, but it’s in there somewhere!
