Today is the centenary of the canonisation of St Therese of Lisieux. I find the advice she left in her writing very appealing. She helps us deal with apparently tiny everyday frailties. She focusses on things we do that are easy to overlook, offering ways to help us begin to learn to be kinder, which surely can never be a bad thing.
For example, one of the nuns she shared her life with made a great clatter with her rosary each evening and Thérèse found the noise distractingly irritating - until she taught herself to hear the clatter as a kind of music. As a chronically irritable person - the sound of plastic bags on buses makes me furious - this is very helpful and valuable advice.
Perhaps St Thérèse's approach to life is best summed up in this short fragment from her:
“We should judge our neighbour favourably in every circumstance & make it become a habit of ours to overlook his faults. Just as we—almost spontaneously—give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, let us also make this an integral factor of our relations with those about us.”
Not easy I grant you but worth a try.
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