The Context of Holiness: Psychological and Spiritual Reflections on the Life of Saint Therese of Lisieux (Revised Edition)

by Marc Foley

As I gazed at him, a man many years my senior bathed in the light of the waning day, a poignant sadness came over me at the prospect of his death. “How I will miss him when he is gone,” came to my lips, which I repeated over and over to myself. That morning he and I had a heated argument. But as I looked at him slowly trudging across the field, what we had argued about shrank to its proper insignificance. Because I beheld him bathed in his mortality, I was able to see him in the light of eternity. For the first time in my life, I could perceive a deep goodness in this man, buried beneath a mound of little irritating mannerisms and idiosyncrasies. Learn “to see beneath the surface of circumstances and events,” said Thérèse to Céline, and it will prevent you from making rash judgments upon others.37