Table of Contents
We tend to imagine holiness happening in dramatic places.
Mission fields.
Monasteries.
Martyrdom.
We do not imagine it happening on the 5 freeway at 5:17 PM.
We do not imagine it happening when someone is chewing their food too loudly going “chump, chump, chump.”
Or when we are interrupted mid-sentence.
Or when the WiFi drops.
Or when the line at Costco is somehow longer than the Exodus.
And yet, if we are honest, this is where most of our actual moral battles take place.
Not in grand theological disputes.
But in micro-irritations.
And this is precisely where St. Thérèse of Lisieux quietly overturns our expectations.
This article will show how we ordinary sinners in our ordinary annoyances can become extraordinary saints.
The Revolution of the Little Way for ordinary sinners
Thérèse wrote:
Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice… doing the smallest right and doing it all for love. -— St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Letter 191 (to Céline), 1896
She also wrote in Story of a Soul:
“What matters in life is not great deeds, but great love.”
— Story of a Soul, Manuscript C
Notice what she does not say.
She does not say:
- Seek dramatic suffering.
- Manufacture hardship.
- Wait for heroic martyrdom.
She says: miss no single opportunity.
The Little Way is not spiritual minimalism. It is spiritual precision. It recognizes that most of us are not called to die for the faith in a coliseum — but we are called to die to ourselves 47 times before lunch.
Saint Mother Teresa emphasizes this point when she says:
Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
The Catechism teaches:
By his passion and death on the Cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering. (CCC 1505)
That includes the suffering of being stuck behind someone going 42 mph in the fast lane.
If suffering has been transformed by Christ, then even the small, irritating, ego-pricking sufferings of daily life can be united to Him.
The Hidden Theology of Irritation
Why do small inconveniences feel so disproportionately powerful?
Because they attack something deep.
They expose:
- Our desire for control.
- Our sense of efficiency.
- Our expectation that life should flow according to our will.
- Our impatience with finitude.
Traffic is not just traffic. It is a forced meditation on creaturehood.
You want to move.
You cannot move.
You are dependent on thousands of other drivers.
Your schedule bends.
Suddenly, you are not sovereign.
And our pride does not like that.
St. Augustine reminds us that disordered love — amor curvatus in se, love curved inward on itself (love of self) — is the root of sin. Often what irritates us is not the inconvenience itself but the obstruction of our own plans (cf. City of God, XIV.28.
The small cross reveals the large ego.
Which is precisely why it is so spiritually effective.
“He Who Is Faithful in Little…”
Our Lord says:
“He who is faithful in little is faithful also in much.” (Luke 16:10)
We prefer the “much.”
God usually gives the “little.”
Second Vatican Council teaches:
All the faithful of Christ… are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity. (Lumen Gentium 40)
Not some of the faithful.
Not the religious elite.
Not only contemplatives.
All.
And for most of us, perfection of charity will be forged not in dramatic heroics but in repeated restraint of irritation.
Not rolling the eyes.
Not muttering under the breath.
Not mentally condemning strangers.
Not replaying imaginary arguments in the car.
These are not small things in the moral life. They are daily crucifixions of self-will.
Even the Saints Had Nervous Systems
Once, I brought irritation over daily traffic to confession. I had been commuting a 20-minute drive that regularly took over an hour. I found myself frustrated nearly every day.
My confessor smiled and said, “Honestly, I think Mother Teresa would get annoyed too.”
That comment was unexpectedly liberating.
Holiness does not erase adrenaline.
Sanctity does not rewire your nervous system into angelic detachment.
The question is not: Did I feel irritation?
The question is: What did I do with it?
St. Francis de Sales writes:
“Have patience with all things, but first of all with yourself.” — Introduction to the Devout Life, Part III, ch. 1
That includes patience with your own humanity.
Even the saints experienced bodily fatigue, stress, hunger, and inconvenience. The Incarnation itself tells us that digestion, exhaustion, and physical limitation are not beneath divine dignity.
Christ assumed a human body. Which means He assumed inconvenience.
There Are No “Little” Crosses
St. Josemaría Escrivá said:
Do everything for Love. Thus there will be no little things: everything will be big. — The Way, no. 813
This is the hidden mathematics of sanctity.
A small irritation + ego + resentment = spiritual decay.
A small irritation + humility + offering = sanctification.
Same event.
Different interior response.
Eternal difference.
St. Paul writes:
We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance. (Romans 5:3)
He does not specify the size.
Endurance built in traffic is still endurance.
Patience practiced in a grocery line is still patience.
Charity shown toward a loud chewer is still charity.
God wastes nothing.
The Freeway as Cloister
We romanticize cloisters and deserts.
But perhaps your desert is a cubicle.
Your cloister is a commute.
Your hidden martyrdom is the daily, unglamorous death to self no one applauds.
Thérèse again:
What matters in life is not great deeds, but great love.”
The freeway might be your monastery.
The interruption might be your penance.
The inconvenience might be your hidden Calvary.
And the beautiful thing is this:
You can become a saint without changing your zip code.
You can become a saint in Southern California traffic.
You can become a saint in line at Costco.
You can become a saint in the small humiliations of embodied life.
Holiness is not primarily about dramatic suffering.
It is about repeated surrender.
The small crosses arrive daily.
They are precisely measured.
And they are rarely impressive.
But if offered, they are transformative.
Miss no opportunity.
Not even the 5 freeway (or whatever your freeway system is)
So even us ordinary sinners can become extraordinary saints!
Sources:
Augustine of Hippo. The Confessions. Translated by Maria Boulding, New City Press, 1997. View Concept: Amor Curvatus in Se.
Bible Gateway. “Luke 16:10.” New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE). Read Passage.
Catholic Church. Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd ed., Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2000. CCC 1505: The Meaning of Suffering.
Escrivá, Josemaría. The Way. Scepter Publishers, 2002. Point 813: On Little Things.
Francis de Sales. Introduction to the Devout Life. Edited by Allan Ross, Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1924. Read Online.
Second Vatican Council. “Lumen Gentium: Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.” Vatican Archive, November 21, 1964. Chapter V: The Universal Call to Holiness.
Thérèse of Lisieux. Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Translated by John Clarke, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1996. Official Biography and Works.