| A Little Flower for Jesus
Anna Querci, who is Italian, remembers, how she was encouraged as a child to make little sacrifices for Jesus, and how this helped form her character as an adult
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“Fioretti” or little flowers is the name given to a collection of stories and legends about St. Francis of Assisi, his miracles and the mortifications he was ready to undergo in order to grow closer to Jesus. So in the Italian language the word “fioretto” is used to describe the small sacrifices that we make in our everyday lives. It is a way of mortifying the “Self ” in us, of growing in charity, of learning service, forgiveness, patience and obedience. This phrase came back to my mind while I was discussing with some friends the attitude that we have nowadays to sacrifice. While there are still plenty of people making amazing sacrifices, in my opinion fewer and fewer people nowadays are willing to make small sacrifices, the ones that – when done with smiles on our faces and without complaining- can make life, especially family life, so much more bearable for everybody. The culture of self We live in a culture that gives a lot of importance to the “Self ”; we think that everything is our right and that giving up something to please another person is almost an infringement of our human rights. In my family, in Italy where I grew up, my parents had a way of encouraging us children to learn the art of making sacrifices. Did your sister want to play with your favourite doll and you didn’t want to give it to her? “Fai un fioretto per Gesu’” , Make a little sacrifice for Jesus, you were told and off went your doll with really no fuss at all (how could you refuse something to Jesus? You were small but you understood the importance of that request!!). Had you had a fight with your brother and you did not want to speak to him ever again? “Fai un fioretto per Gesu’ ” and you found yourself making peace with him and forgiving him, even if with some grumbling on your part. Making Jesus Happy The secret was in that little phrase “Fai un fioretto per Gesu’” . It worked like magic. Why? Because in doing as many fioretti as possible we were reaching our goal. You see, we were given this little paper dress - it was a dress for baby Jesus, we were told - cut out from a page of an exercise book - and in it many triangular snips had been cut. Every time you made a small sacrifice you lifted up one of those little triangles. The final goal was to lift them all up in as little time as possible so that baby Jesus could have his dress!! When you had done that, you received plenty of praise because you had been good and especially because you had made Jesus happy. That was all our reward. I checked with my mother to see if I had forgotten something; maybe we were given a special treat? No, came the reply, the reward was in making Jesus happy. You were then given another little dress and plenty of encouragement to do even better the next time and you started again. And it went on like that until you were old enough to stop, but by then the habit of making sacrifices had become a part of you. For us children it was like a game and there was competition among us to see who was the one who completed the dress in the shortest time. Does it sound like something from another era? It is. I am talking of something happening half a century ago and before then this little game had been played in my mother and my father’s families probably for generations. Did it work? It certainly did. In learning to make little sacrifices I learnt patience, tolerance, forgiveness, respect for others and for their needs. I also learnt not to be too attached to things and I was being prepared for the bigger sacrifices that later on life asked of me. Most of all, I learnt to love Jesus and to feel His presence in my life. The idea of making Him happy has stayed with me forever. He was like a big friend for me then and I wanted to make Him happy. He still is a friend for me now and I still want to make Him happy. Even now very few days go by without the opportunity presenting itself and me having to say to myself “Fai un fioretto per Gesu’” and that little phrase still works wonders! This time though it is done in the full knowledge that this is the least I could do to make happy the One who made the greatest Sacrifice of all for my sake.
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“Fai
un fioretto per Gesu’” (literally “make a little flower
for Jesus” meaning “make a little sacrifice for Jesus”).
These words resounded many times during my childhood and putting them
into practice helped to shape the person I am today. 
