St Thérèse of Lisieux

St Thérèse of Lisieux, the humble, obscure French Carmelite nun, could be, if properly understood, perhaps the most inspiring and relevant saint to the vast mass of people in our age. In her autobiography she described her 'Little Way', that attitude of approaching God that Benedict XY said 'contained the secret of sanctity for the entire world'. Pius X called her 'the greatest saint of modern times' and Pius XI referred to his canonisation of her as 'the star of his pontificate'. Such papal eulogies are not uttered lightly. The 'Little Way' means that Thérèse found God where he always is, in the apparently banal, ordinary routine of every day in the present moment from which he never withdraws - though in our earthly trials he often seems to.

In the bull of canonisation Pius XI said she fulfilled her vocation and achieved sanctity 'without going beyond the common order of things'. This phrase is the key to understanding her message and popularity.

Her life was simple, devoid of the drama and conflicts that characterise the lives of so many saints, but in the framework of that simple life - so common to virtually all people - she, by her love, faith and childlike trust in the merciful love of God - sublimated the ordinary trivia of life and achieved sanctity. Hence her extraordinary relevance to us all.

Early life
Thérèse wanted at first to become a foreign missionary but finally concluded that she could help in the conversion of even more souls by joining a contemplative order.

She was only fourteen when she made application to enter the Carmelite Convent. Her father took her on a pilgrimage to Rome and during a general audience in the Vatican she was presented to Leo XIII. Despite the prohibition to speak, she asked the pope to allow her entrance into Carmel at the age of fifteen and he gently assured her she would enter if it were God's will - and she did.

Spirituality of Thérèse

To the external eye there was nothing extraordinary about her life in the convent. Her love of Christ, however, seemed boundless. As a missioner in spirit, she wished she could preach the gospel in every continent. She even adopted, as it were, two missionaries as 'spiritual brothers' and prayed for them constantly, and ultimately extended her prayer for all missioners - now she is patroness of all foreign missions.

Put simply, her basic spirituality is this: wherever we are and whatever we do, Christ is always with us, very close to us, loving us and his love possesses always the quality of mercy. St Thérèse says to us: 'I have found him and I know the way that leads to him, here in the modern world ... the little way of confidence and love'. To achieve this goal, we must discipline ourselves to become, spiritually, a little child, trusting always and totally in God - 'confidence, nothing but confidence' in God's merciful love.

There were, however, some big crosses in the convent life - certain difficult nuns, including a superior, health problems and worst of all, a crisis of faith. The first manifestations of a tubercular condition came some eighteen months before her death. During her final illness she was often racked with pain and plunged into a bitter temptation against faith. Shortly before her death she said: 'I did not think it possible to suffer so much'. Her final words were: 'My God, I love you'.

Courage, love, blindly trusting in God in everything, right to the end of her bitter physical and spiritual sufferings. Hardly the 'Little Flower' 'the unfortunate soubriquet often added to her name!

Through her writings, St Thérèse speaks to us all, and to such varied and gifted persons as Georges Bernanos, Paul Claudel, Dorothy Day, and countless others . . . because she preaches a lived theology, a simple, realistic spirituality for us all.

God does not demand great things of us, she says, but only the little things of which we are capable. He does not ask us to be 'great' - but to remain 'little', with childlike trust in the Father's love, as Christ urged us: 'Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the Kingdom of God'. Or again: it is not what you do or what you have but what you are in the sight of God!

Thérèse and atheism

Pope Paul VI described atheism as 'the most serious problem of our time' and one French bishop at Vatican II drew attention to the fact that 'for the first time in the history of the Church a council is meeting in an age of atheism'. Fr Michael Gallagher SJ, in his fine booklet, Help My Unbelief, highlights the unexpected atheism of St Thérèse and adds that it seems incredible that such a young nun whose whole life had been so sheltered should be haunted by atheism as experienced by Dostoevsky and even Neitzsche yet she tells us of her haunting fears that God might be a mere illusion and that despair was inevitable and the ultimate truth. These fears of atheism - this dark night of the soul - dominated her inner life during the final phase of her existence.

Thérèse wrote in her memoirs: 'Jesus taught me to realise the existence of souls who have no faith'. She had entered into a state of emptiness where 'everything had disappeared'. And so she writes: 'Although I have no feelings of faith, I shall try to carry out works of faith, even when I get no satisfaction out of it'.
Even as her own faith seemed devoid of meaning, she offered up to God her own harrowing experience of spiritual darkness so that 'those not yet illuminated by the torch of faith may behold it at last'.
To conclude: here again, St Thérèse is pre- eminently a model and inspiration for our times, an age more than ever perhaps doubting the reality of God, but deep down dissatisfied with the very transient, superficial material pleasures and inwardly yearning for deeper, spiritual, eternal truths, confirming St Augustine's famous dictum: 'You have made us for yourself, 0 Lord, and our hearts are restless till they rest in you'.

Thérèse's thoughts on the missions

A Carmelite's zeal ought to encircle the earth. I don't see why I should not manage, with God's grace, to be of use to more than two missionaries at the same time. How can I cease to pray for all missionaries everywhere? Not to mention those ordinary parish priests whose work is sometimes quite as uphill work as preaching to the heathen.'

She constantly offered up her sufferings for the missions - today she is the patroness of the missions.

Thérèse's thoughts on love

How did Jesus love his disciples? And why did he love his disciples? You may be quite sure that their natural qualities did nothing to attract him. After all, he stood at an infinite distance from, them; he was eternal knowledge, eternal wisdom - they were only Poor sinners, so ignorant, their thoughts so earth-bound; yet Jesus calls them his friends, his brothers...

I began to see how imperfect my own love was; it was obvious that I did not love my sisters as God loves them. I realise, now, that perfect love means putting up with other people's shortcomings, feeling no surprise at their weaknesses... To love your neighbour as yourself - that was the rule God laid down before the Incarnation; he knew what a powerful motive self-love was and he could find no higher standard by which to measure the love of one's neighbour... And the "new commandment" Jesus gave his apostles ... I am to love them as Jesus loves them... Lord, you never tell us to do what is impossible and yet you can see more clearly than I do how weak and imperfect I am... Always, when I act as charity bids, I have this feeling that it is Jesus who is acting in me.'

Thérèse's thoughts on prayer

'What an extraordinary thing it is, the efficacy of prayer! Like a queen, it has access at all times to the Royal presence and can get whatever it asks for. And it's a mistake to imagine that your prayer won't be answered unless you have some- thing out of a book, some splendid formula of words... 'I tell God what I want quite simply, without any splendid turn of phrase and somehow he always manages to understand me. For me, prayer means launching out of the heart toward God; it means lifting up one's eyes, quite simply, to heaven, a cry of grateful love from the crest of joy or the trough of despair... It's a terrible thing to admit, but saying the rosary takes it out of me more than any hair shirt would. I do say it so badly! ... I could not understand it because I have such a love for the Blessed Virgin ... I say an Our Father and a Hail Mary very slowly indeed. How they take me out of myself then... The Blessed Virgin is not angry with me; she shows that by always coming to my rescue the moment I ask her to. Any anxiety, any difficulty, makes me turn to her at once and you could not have a more loving mother to see you through'.
St Thérèse closes her life story with these words: 'One glance at the holy Gospel and the life of Jesus becomes a perfume that fills the very air I breathe; I know at once which way to run. I don't try to jostle into the front rank, the last is good enough for me. I won't put myself forward like the Pharisee, I'll take courage from the humble prayer of the publican. But the Magdalen, she, most of all, is the model I like to follow: that boldness of hers, which would be so amazing if it were not the boldness of a lover, won the heart of Jesus, and how it fascinates mine. I'm certain of this - that if my conscience were burdened with all the sins it is possible to commit, I would still go and throw myself into our Lord's arms, my heart all broken up with contrition; I know what tenderness he has for any prodigal child of his that comes back to him. No, it's not just because God, in his undeserved mercy, has kept my soul clear of mortal sin, that I fly to him on the wings of confidence and love.'

Thérèse's cult and canonisation

Worldwide reaction to the life and autobiography of St Thérèse was quite phenomenal - her book translated into at least 50 languages and Pius XI described the enthusiasm as a 'hurricane of glory'. The Holy See waived the usual 50 years' waiting period and allowed the investigation for beatification to be inaugurated. She was beatified in 1923 and canonised in 1925, less than 28 years after her death - possibly a record in Church history. And now many bishops throughout the world have petitioned the pope to declare her a Doctor of the Church.

Her doctrine? A simple, relevant, humble spirituality we can all understand and put into practice. By materialist standards Thérèse was a nonentity and a failure, but as St Paul reminds us, 'the things that are unseen are eternal'. The more we study her life and writings, the more we realise the profound truth in the observation of Benedict XV: 'Thérèse contained the secret of sanctity for the whole world.'