This thanksgiving weekend marked a milestone in the life of Saint Therese Little Flower Parish in Kansas City: our one hundredth anniversary.  The rock band, Five for Fighting, in their turn-of-the-century hit song, 100 Years, sang “I’m ninety-nine for a moment and dying for just one more moment, but I’m moving on and counting the way back to you.”  The parish, similarly, realizes that time moves fast but we keep moving on seeking to make our way to God.

When we reach one hundred, whether a hundred years or a hundred anything, it is a good time to look back, reflect, remember, recall, reminisce, and reorient.  Jewish friends say that when they look back on their ancestry of nearly 5800 years with stories handed down from generation to generation (creation and the Garden of Eden, Noah and the flood, Abraham and the patriarchs, Moses and the exodus, the kings and prophets…), it can all be summarized in three short sentences: “They tried to destroy us.  We survived.  Let’s eat!”

The hundred-year story of the Saint Therese Little Flower (STLF) community is similar, and we celebrated with a Thanksgiving banquet feast.  A hundred years ago, the parish was established in the Blue Hills neighborhood on Kansas City’s eastside on Thanksgiving Day and named to honor the young Carmelite nun from Lisieux, France who was canonized that year, instantly becoming the most popular saint in the world.  Known as Therese of the Child Jesus, she made a promise before her death that she would spend her heaven doing good on earth and send roses from heaven to remind us that God is with us. 

The parish story unfolded through the decades and generations like that of Judeo-Christian history.  There were many events that could have destroyed us, from a mass neighborhood exodus, white flight, real estate redlining, prejudices, poverty, racism, low attendance, high crime, a struggling school, unsustainable ministries, more expenses than resources…; they all suggested that we should not have survived.  But we did!  While over ten other Catholic churches east of Troost all the way to the Truman Sports Complex and south of 17^th Street all the way to I-435 have closed in the past fifty years, STLF is the only one that remains.  We lament the closing of parishes in the same territory, including Immaculate Heart of Mary, Blessed Sacrament, Holy Name, Vincent de Paul, Annunciation, Saint Michael, Saint Stanislaus, Saint Augustine, Risen Christ, Our Lady of Lourdes, and Saint Louis. We were the lucky one.  “They tried to destroy us.  We survived.  So, we shared a thanksgiving banquet!”                   

But the story is more than that.  There were numerous miracles witnessed on that inner-city site; there were roses from heaven; there were reminders from the Little Flower that the Lord is with us; there were people with big hearts who grew up in the neighborhood, who kept in touch, sent funds, and periodically return.  There is something that happens on that holy ground at 58^th and Euclid that ties us to the divine and creates a feeling that all is well with our soul, that God is near, and that things will be okay.  Not only did we survive.  At times, we even thrived!  We exist today as a lay-led, justice-minded, Gospel-rooted community that gathers on Sundays in church in praise and then reaches out to the community throughout the week to offer direct help to neighbors in need while also addressing systemic issues to assist lowly and marginalized members of society.  And we are blessed to have many friends throughout the metropolitan area who help us make our way. Those who visit the parish often gain a deeper sense of their earthly purpose and a happier feeling about their place in the world.

Renowned speaker and author Maya Angelou once said: “People will forget what you said, and people will forget what you did, but people will never forget the way you made them feel.”  People come to STLF to feel the presence of God; they come from all directions because they know that they will feel the Lord’s grace in their heart, and they can feel it all the way to the core of their soul.  It inspires them in small, and sometimes big, ways to live life just a little differently, to be a little more kind or compassionate.  No one can destroy that.  It’s worth celebrating with a centennial feast of gratitude.