July 23, 2022

“Little things with great love.”  This was the spiritual mantra of the Little Flower, adopted by a certain mother of the poorest of the poor, which makes the bold claim that the all is contained in each individual thing.  How easy it is to constantly stay at the level of the big picture, mentally moving around concepts about strategic planning, obsessing about how to successfully rebrand our organization, crunching numbers and data to improve our financial footing, all the while forgetting the texture and concreteness of life at an ants-eye level.  To do little things with great love is, in some ways, a humble admission that our limited minds could never really figure things out, but that we can get glimpses of the meaning of it all by living creaturely, with our boots on the ground, embracing the simple daily realities offered to us within our modest slice of the big picture.  Let’s therefore take a lesson from the disciples who, having sequestered themselves in the literal “upper room,” surrendered their need for perfect understanding and allowed their feet to touch the earth (Acts 2:41-42).  In this way, we shall become sacramental, like the Little Flower, spending our days doing little things with great love exactly where we stand, celebrating the beauty and goodness of life in the details.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.