Last words can tell you a lot about a person.
I want to share a few last, or nearly last, words, ranging from the hilarious to the sublime:
Gen. John Sedgwick, peering over a parapet at Confederate snipers in 1864: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.”
Oscar Wilde, in a shabby Paris hotel in his final weeks: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has got to go.”
Winston Churchill, on his 75th birthday (not his deathbed, but it’s too good): “I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”
St. Lawrence, as tradition has it, while being slowly roasted to death: “Turn me over. I’m done on this side.”
Lady Nancy Astor, waking to find her whole family gathered around the bed: “Am I dying or is this my birthday?”
St. Edith Stein, taking her sister Rosa’s hand as the SS came for them in 1942: “Come, let us go for our people.”
St. Thomas More, on the scaffold: “I die the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”
And the most sublime of all: St. Thérèse of Lisieux, whose feast day is today. On September 30, 1897, at 24 years old and suffocating from tuberculosis, she fixed her eyes on the crucifix and said, “Oh! I love him… My God, I love you!”
In 1997, St. John Paul II named Thérèse a Doctor of the Church. It’s a title the Church has given to only 38 saints in 2,000 years, for teaching that belongs to the whole Church.
She’s the youngest of them, and one of only four women. They call her the Doctor of Love. And she never even went to high school, let alone college. She’s also considered the patroness of missionaries, though she spent the last nine years of her life inside the walls of one small convent.
Years after entering the convent, she agonized over her desire to DO so many things for God…to be a missionary, a martyr, and more…when she read the words of Saint Paul about how we are many parts but one body in Christ. She concluded that her role was to be the heart. “My vocation is love!” she wrote. “In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be love.”
She knew that in the end, one thing matters. Not doing BIG and extraordinary things, but doing everything with extraordinary love. She lived like it. And she died with it on her lips.
Don’t waste the days you’ve been given.
Your life can look the same today as yesterday…on the outside…
But if you’re more intentional about doing everything out of love for God and people, you’ll be that much closer to sainthood yourself, without even having to change jobs.
Lord, help us love like Thérèse.
