Spiritual Life

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who found the great staircase of perfection far too steep, dreamed of an elevator to lift her up to Jesus. She found it in the end, she writes: it was the arms of Jesus, carrying her because she was little. The spiritual life often comes down to that image. You do not climb, you let yourself be carried, and you start again every morning. A spiritual life emoji should speak of that kind of growth, slow and stubborn.

In practice it is made of small things. Five minutes of silence before switching on your phone, a psalm read on the bus, a candle 🕯️ in a corner of the bedroom, the evening examen so dear to Saint Ignatius. It is also Sunday Mass, a retreat now and then, a spiritual director who listens and asks the right questions. Nothing spectacular, but it all adds up, a bit like watering a plant.

For now we make do with 🌿, 🙏 and ☀️. We dream of an emoji showing a shoot growing at the foot of a cross, a light ladder reaching toward a star, or a little heart watering itself. If an image comes to mind for “I’m moving forward, slowly,” send it in: the inner life deserves its own pictogram too.