By Stephen P. White

But first a note: Be sure to tune in tonight - Thursday, October 3rd at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss the second Synod on Synodality now underway and other developments in the Universal Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.

Now for today's column...

One of the delightful consolations of the Catholic faith is that we seem to have a patron saint for everything, no matter how serious or seemingly trivial: St. Claire of Assisi is the patron saint of television; St. Peregrine the patron of those suffering from cancer; St. Anthony the patron saint of lost items; St. Hyacinth the patron of those in danger of drowning; St. Bibiana patroness of hangovers; St. Drogo is patron of ugly people; and so on.

Unlike the process of canonization, which has become formalized over the centuries, there is usually no official process by which a saint becomes patron of one thing or another. Occasionally, we get a formal declaration, as when, for example, Paul VI declared St. Benedict to be patron of Europe. But usually patronage is assigned by acclamation or tradition, and matches some event or condition from the saint's life to the object of patronage. St. Denis was beheaded, so he gets to be the patron saint of headaches.

Sometimes the connection between a patron and a cause is less obvious. For example, Thérèse of Lisieux, is one of several patron saints of aviators, though she died several years before Wilbur Wright watched his brother Orville take flight at Kitty Hawk. Her cult was growing rapidly in the first decades of the twentieth century, and she quickly became a favorite of French aviators during the First World War. The patronage stuck.

Aviators and flight crews are not the only ones entrusted to the patronage of the Little Flower. Pope Pius XI declared her patroness of the missions in 1927, and Pius XII named her among the patrons of her native France in 1944.

There is a beautiful irony, of course, in St. Thérèse being the patroness of missions and missionaries. She lived most of her 24 years in the near-total obscurity of her parents' home and, for the last nine, within the walls of the Carmel at Lisieux. A world traveler like Francis Xavier or Junipero Serra she was not.

I was thinking of St. Thérèse earlier this week when her feast day, October 1, happened to coincide with the opening of the latest session of the Synod on Synodality. The synod is devoted to the theme "How to be a missionary synodal Church," so perhaps it is fitting that such an event would open on the feast of the patroness of missions and missionaries.

I am not going to go so far as to suggest that St.Thérèse be made the patron saint of Synodality. (The multi-year synod process has not always been exactly emblematic of her "Little Way.") But if the object of the entire synodal exercise is to renew the Church for the sake of mission, then perhaps it makes sense to consider what the patroness of missions and missionaries can teach us about how to do that.

Last October, Pope Francis published a short apostolic exhortation (titled, "C'est la Confiance") on the life of St. Thérèse, holding her out as "a model of evangelization." As Pope Francis noted, it was unflagging confidence in the love and mercy of God which enabled Thérèse to live as she did. She lived, not for herself, but for others. "Thérèse never set herself above others," Pope Francis wrote, "but took the lowest place together with the Son of God, who for our sake became a slave and humbled himself, becoming obedient, even to death on a cross."

"Jesus does not demand great actions from us," St. Thérèse wrote, "but simply surrender and gratitude." This is how she grew in holiness: not through self-assertion but through su...