19/11/2025
Divine Flame, O very sweet Blaze!
I make my home in your hearth. In your fire I gladly sing:
I live on Love!…
St. Thérèse of Lisieux
There is something disarming about the spirituality of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. She never postured as a mystic, never claimed revelations beyond the ordinary grace available to every Christian. Yet she touched a depth that theologians spend lifetimes trying to articulate. Her words, “Divine Flame, O very sweet Blaze!” echo the ancient Christian insight that God does not merely illuminate the soul—He consumes it in love.
In Catholic theology, the Sacred Heart is not a metaphor. It represents the totality of Christ’s self-gift: His humanity, His mercy, His passion, the furnace of charity that drove His entire earthly mission. When Thérèse writes of making her “home in [His] hearth,” she is not being poetic for its own sake. She is describing the theological truth that holiness is not earned through heroic feats but received through surrender to divine love.
To “live on Love,” as Thérèse puts it, is to allow oneself to be shaped, purified, and animated by the Heart of Jesus. The image of fire is not accidental. Fire burns away all that is impure; it warms, it protects, and it transforms whatever it touches. Divine charity works the same way—relentless, refining, and deeply personal.
The saints often speak of God’s love as something fierce rather than delicate. That fierceness is not violence; it is intensity. It is the refusal of Christ to leave the human heart half-alive. For Thérèse, God is not simply an idea or an emotion but a living flame that reorders the soul from within, making it capable of receiving and giving love beyond its natural limits.
When a believer places their life in the Heart of Jesus, they are not stepping into a symbolic comfort zone; they are entering the very mystery of salvation. Christ’s Heart is the meeting place of humanity and divinity, the wellspring of grace, the model of authentic love that the world, in its fatigue and fragmentation, desperately needs.
To live on love, then, is not escapism. It is the most demanding and liberating decision a Christian can make: to let Christ’s fire become the logic of one’s life—daily, quietly, faithfully.
In a culture driven by performance and self-assertion, Thérèse’s spirituality remains radical. She reminds us that God is not searching for extraordinary achievements; He is searching for hearts willing to burn.
Living on love is not the task of the strong. It is the vocation of the willing.