Lord, make me little.

We live in a world where everyone's competing for the "highest spot," the seat of power, the spotlight of recognition.

This isn't just about work. It's not just about "corporate" achievement, or social status. It's something that happens in the church, too.

Do I have a gift to teach? Well, then! They should make me a teacher! The Lord gave me this gift for a reason, therefore, I can do great things for the Kingdom of God, for our congregation, if only the leadership does the right thing and puts me in a position to teach!

Do I have musical talents? Put me in the front of the church! We might even imagine ourselves in that role before it's ours and imagine it is the Lord's vision, when it's nothing more self-aggrandizing fantasy. Let me lead the people in song! I will be the first of many voices, and together, we'll praise the Lord!

It is true, those gifts we've been given should be returned to God. They are not our own. What do I have to offer God that's of any merit besides that which is not my own, that which came from Him? Nothing of my own is a worthy sacrifice, thus, all I can offer of myself is what He's made of me. I am but a lump of clay, and not a particularly pliable one. But in his hands, I can become something beautiful, not because my essential nature is anything of its own, but because the potter's hands make common things beautiful.

My gifts, my ability to write, to glean insight from Scripture, to understand theological concepts and communicate them, is something I strive to offer back to the Lord through whatever means possible.

At the same time, though, we must consider the size of our hearts, and ask: is this truly an unblemished offering, or is my desire to teach, to sing, to lead, a way of serving me, myself, and I?

 

The Magnanimous Soul

Many of us who imagine we have the hearts of lions, in truth, have the hearts of lambs. We speak of the magnanimous soul, the great soul, and imagine that to be "great" in soul is to be super-sized in the eyes of the world.

The magnanimous soul, though, is the littlest soul of all. For it is not the soul that is magnified by the Lord, but it is the humble and smallest soul that magnifies the Lord, and therefore, becomes truly great.

Consider the words of the humble handmaid, the Blessed Virgin, who sang so beautifully in her Magnificat:

And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

for the Mighty One has done great things for me,

and holy is his name.

His mercy is for those who fear him

from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

(Luke 1:46–53, NRSV, emphasis added).

It is the littlest soul that magnifies the Lord. It is the one of low-estate, the humble handmaid, who is called "blessed" by all generations. It is the proud who are "scattered" in the thoughts of their hearts! What are the thoughts of "greatness" that your heart seeks to magnify unto itself? What is the high-estate you seek, even with good intentions in service of God?

There are those who must teach. There are those whose gifts might be put into the Lord's service. But it is not on account of the magnificence of the gift, but the greatness of the Lord, that the little souls, the humblest of handmaids, the hungriest of us who carry no nourishment of our own, are filled with good things.

In this way, it is not our talent, our abilities, or our skills, that receive glory. It is in this way that we receive grace that we not seek the aggrandizement of ourselves. It is the Lord who is magnified when the soul is small. It is in the rubble of our scattered and prideful thoughts, that we're brought down from our thrones, and the lowly are called blessed and lifted up as the moon, which produces no light of its own, but only reflects that light given it by the Sun. Yet it is the moon, scattered in the night's sky and accompanied by many luminaries, that provides the brightest light in the darkest night. It is the moon, nothing of worth of its own but a ball of dust, that carries the Sun's light into the dark world when the sun itself has hidden itself from plain view.

Do you desire to be great, to do great things in service of God? Then you must become small. To be truly and divinely luminous, you must stop reaching for the stars, but be content to be the moon. In this way, though you offer no light of your own, you will shine more brightly than the highest of stars.

Think of the magnifying glass. When you look through it one way, it enlarges what's beneath it. What happens when you turn the glass over and look through it the opposite direction? Then, what's seen is diminished in size. The eye that looks through the glass and sees what's magnified must appear smaller from the perspective of what's truly magnified, what's truly great, than even what's proper to its natural size.

It is in this way that the littlest soul is that which becomes magnanimous, it is the small soul that magnifies the Lord.

 

The Icon of the Infant

We see this most clearly in Luke’s Gospel, when people began bringing even their infants to Jesus. The disciples, acting as self-appointed gatekeepers of "important" ministry, tried to shoo them away. They saw children as a distraction from the "great" work Jesus was doing. But Jesus stopped them:

"Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." (Luke 18:16–17)

Notice that Jesus doesn't just say we should care for children; He says we must become them. An infant has no resume. An infant cannot boast of their "teaching gift" or their "musical talent." They have nothing to offer but their need. To be "great" in the Kingdom is to occupy the space of the infant: a state of total, unadorned dependency on the Father.

 

St. Thérèse and the "Elevator to Heaven"

This radical descent is what St. Thérèse of Lisieux captured in her "Little Way." In Chapter 9 of Story of a Soul, she describes a holy frustration. She looked at the great saints—the martyrs, the apostles, the brilliant doctors of the Church—and felt like a grain of sand next to a mountain. She burned with a desire to be everything: to preach the Gospel on five continents, to shed her blood, to be a priest.

But she realized she was too small to climb the "rough stairway of perfection." Instead of despairing, she sought a shortcut. She wrote:

"I wanted to find an elevator which would raise me to Jesus, for I am too small to climb the rough stairway of perfection... The elevator which must raise me to heaven is Your arms, O Jesus! And for that I had no need to grow; on the contrary, I had to remain little, I had to become still less."

Thérèse discovered that "littleness" wasn't a lack of ambition, but a reordering of our deepest desires. She was a small nun, frail and weakened by illness, who nonetheless desired to become like a priest, a great evangelist who could win countless souls to Christ, who desired to become a martyr and shed her blood in testimony to our Lord.

When St. Thérèse looked at the "body of Christ" described by St. Paul, she felt a profound ache. She read 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul explains that we are all different parts of one body.

She saw the "higher gifts"—the apostles, the prophets, the teachers. But Thérèse wanted to be all of them. She wanted to be a soldier on the battlefield and a priest at the altar. This wasn't ego; it was a heart so full of love for Jesus that one single role felt like a cage. At the same time, she recognized none of these things were available to her.

So, she turned to Scripture. She wrote that she opened the Epistles of St. Paul to find an answer, and her eyes fell upon these words:

"Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? Now eagerly desire the greater gifts. And yet I will show you the most excellent way." (1 Corinthians 12:29–31)

This "most excellent way" led her directly into the famous "Hymn to Love" in 1 Corinthians 13. As she read Paul’s insistence that even if he had the faith to move mountains or gave his body to be burned, but had not love, he was nothing, the light broke through.

She realized that Love is the "engine room" of the Church. If the heart stops beating, the hands cannot work and the mouth cannot preach. It was like a light from heaven had shone upon her, even in her sickbed, in a convent, hidden from the world. Thus, she cried out in her autobiography:

"I understood that Love comprised all vocations, that Love was everything, that it embraced all times and places... in a word, that it was eternal! Then, in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: O Jesus, my Love... my vocation, at last I have found it... MY VOCATION IS LOVE!"

Little Thérèse saw that by being the "heart" of the Church—the hidden, humble, small pump that circulates love to every other member—she could be the apostle, the martyr, and the teacher all at once.

 

The Profound Path of Self-Emptying

We often mistake the "Little Way" for a pithy sentiment—just "doing small things with great love." But it is far more demanding than that. It is a profound path of self-emptying.

To be the "little child" of Luke’s Gospel or the "little soul" of Thérèse is to undergo a counterintuitive transformation: you must become smaller to become truly great. It is the recognition that our "great" talents are often just weights that sink us more deeply into the world, and that by clinging to them, they bind us to the earth. We must become like children, who cling not to what's at their feet, but raise their arms heavenward from a position of small stature that they might be taken in the Lord's arms and lifted to His bosom.

If you seek to be a priest, an apostle, or a teacher, or even lead a committee, or to sing for the church, because you want to be "something," you are still standing on your own two feet, trying to reach the shelf, striving to find a step-stool that by your own strength you might reach what you're seeking.

But when you accept your own spiritual poverty—when you become so small that you can no longer reach the bottom step of the ladder—that is when the Lord reaches down.

In the economy of Grace, you do not fly by growing wings of your own achievement. You fly because you have become light enough for Him to carry. Like St. Thérèse, we find that when we stop trying to be the "great soul" the world admires, and instead become the "infant" Jesus invites, we are raised to His knee. It is only from that humble height that we can truly see the world through the eyes of Love.

We often mistake humility for a lack of ambition, or what the ancients called 'pusillanimity'—the puny soul. We think being small means having small desires. But St. Thérèse shows us that the little soul is the most ambitious of all. She didn't stop wanting to change the world; she simply stopped trying to be the engine of that change.

The misunderstanding of the 'Little Way' is that it’s a path for the weak. In reality, it is a path for the incredibly brave—those brave enough to abandon the safety of their own 'great' resumes and trust that they can do more as a grain of sand in God's hand than as a giant on their own feet. This "little" soul is not the "pusillanimous" soul, it's not the puny soul that is the opposite of a great soul. Rather, it is a kind of littleness that still reaches up, it is the little soul that still desires greatness in and through its littleness. It is the soul that recognizes in its weakness, in its "smallness," He is magnified. And in His embrace, held dear in our smallness, we become truly great, magnanimous souls.

 

How to Live it

If your vocation is Love, you no longer need to be the best teacher or the loudest singer. You become the one who loves the teacher and supports the singer. You find joy when "higher spots," the seats of recognition are filled by others, because you know that by loving them, you are the lifeblood that sustains their work.

This is especially profound as we age, as our bodies grow weaker. St. Thérèse died at twenty-four of Tuberculosis, at an age when most of us are still struggling to "find ourselves." She died in obscurity. During her short her life, she'd never made the front-page of papers. No one knew her name. She was an unknown.

Yet, it was in her frailty and obscurity that she penned the words quoted above.

It was then that she discovered, no longer oppressed by what she'd called her "greatest fear," that she'd become a burden to the community as she suffered a long illness, that her heart remained alive. It was in this humble estate that she penned words that have inspired millions, and has led to her being called the "greatest saint" of the modern era.

I think there's something profound that as we grow older we can learn from this young nun who'd died too soon (by our reckoning, not the Lord's) and had never been graced with a single gray hair.

Maybe you recall the time of your youth when you were beautiful, full of energy, and could do great things in your parish. Perhaps you lament that your singing voice, that once praised the Lord in front of many, has suffered with age and you can no longer carry a tune. Maybe you once had a position to teach, and for whatever reason, you no longer hold that role. Maybe you still have talents that are going unnoticed, unused, in the church, and you lament that those who may have less skill, less knowledge, less talent than you are serving in a way you are certain you could do better.

Such thoughts are not foreign to my mind. Given my credentials, that I used to preach in a congregation, that I've even taught at seminaries, I've felt the wound to my ego when someone who has comparatively less knowledge is tasked to teach a class in church, to assist in some way, when I was never asked.

This kind of thing used to eat my lunch. It used to bother me. However, God has given me a great grace, even in the wake such moments of supposed "rejection," to surrender all to the Cross, to "die" to the "greatness" of self, to assume the posture not of the Apostle preaching at Pentecost, but of the humble handmaid who in her littleness magnified the Lord. In an abundance of Love, our Lord has shown me a better way, a smaller way.

Today, if I feel such self-aggrandizing temptations come to mind, they are quickly disarmed by a simple prayer:

Lord, make me little! Make me smaller, still!

Perhaps, you came to faith later in life, and you worry that you'd squandered most of your life without doing a single thing in service of God and the Church, and feel at your age, you have nothing left to offer the Body of Christ.

How wrong you are if such thoughts are given a place to dwell in your heart and mind. Remember this: you still have the only thing that matters! The only thing that truly builds up the body of Christ. You have that which many in their youth lack, what most with all their talents, never consider.

You still have a heart. You still have love.

You can still become like the infant, the child, who is taken upon our Lord's knee. In this way, He raises us all up as if on an elevator to heaven, itself. Yes, even at ninety, you can be as the child, when you embrace your littleness and raise your hands to the one who carries you in His arms.

It is these our Lord holds the closest to His heart.

What of my schooling, of my expertise, of my talent? What of the letters that human institutions have added to my name? It's all rubbish, every bit of it. I should sooner cast it all into a blazing furnace, lit by hellfire itself, than cling to any of it. I should sooner flush it all than boast of any of it.

Instead, I stand with the children, with the elderly, with the sick. I turn my eyes up to the loving gaze of our Lord. I extend my arms, and allow Him to lift me to His heart. From there, I will be nothing but His, and He will do with me whatsoever He likes.

And for now, what he's asked me to do is simple. To sit in my little room and write. What happens with such words, well, that's for Him to decide. What He does with my littleness, well, I can only pray that He might grace my miniscule soul in His infinite love to magnify Himself. In that way, I should become as great as any saint.

I do not write to reach millions. I write in hopes that my words might touch a single soul who might, in turn, become yet smaller, and therefore much greater, than I. 

This is my faith, and I believe it. I will become a saint, though I should think it most fitting I become among the forgotten saints than one of great renown. The greatest saints, I suspect we will one day learn in heaven, are those whose names the world forgot.

I say none of this to boast. Everyone reading these words is called to bear the same luminous title of 'saint'; it is nothing unique to me, but unique to all who have been made in God's image, whose image is apprehended and restored in suffering and the cross.

I will not achieve the slightest degree of sainthood by my merits, for I have none.

What was available to the saints whose names we know and remember is not available to me. I am no St. Thomas Aquinas. He was gifted more greatness in intellect in his little finger than I have in my entire being. I am no St. Paul, given a vision from Christ, and a world-changing mission, and a martyr's death. What illuminations I've received pale in comparison to those of St. Catherine of Siena, St. Theresa of Avila, or St. John of the Cross. I am not even the little St. Thérèse, who was unknown in her time, but nonetheless had a religions vocation. I have nothing of the sort, and I thank God I do not, for I am of such a weak constitution that were I granted any of these things I'd surely take hold of them as if they were my own, and out of such fertile soil, I'd produce only weeds. Were I given such things, I'd be no saint at all, but the opposite. It is only in lacking such things that I can become a saint. It is only in this way: that I become less, become smaller, so that in my smallness, I should be the least of all the saints, and in this way, among the greatest. For this is the way He magnifies Himself.