But most of the Saints have accepted life among other people as the arena in which, by growing in patience and humility, they have gradually mastered the temptations and vexations which beset them, and thus succeeded in extinguishing their self-centredness and in making way for God.

Sometimes this was achieved through a constant and unspectacular succession of little trials such as affect us all.  So it was with St Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower of Jesus: “Love needs to be proved by action.  Well, even a little child can scatter flowers, to scent the throne-room with their fragrance…That shall be my life, to scatter flowers – to miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word, always doing the tiniest things right, and doing it for love”. (1) And when she died at the age of 24, her last words summed up her whole life; they were: “My God, I love Thee”. (2)

By contrast, the martyrs have achieved that elimination of self in its final and most dramatic way by laying down their lives for Christ’s sake and so giving themselves completely to God in the defence of the Faith.