HUMAN THÉRÈSE

THE HUMAN THÉRÈSE

            Popularly known as the Little Flower, she was born Thérèse Martin in Alencon, France, the youngest of five sisters who became nuns. She entered the Carmelite monastery at Lisieux at the age of 15 and took the name of Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. Told to write the story of her life, she composed an autobiography she said reflected not on what had occurred but on grace at work in the events. She declared she had suffered much, but even in the excruciating darkness of mystic purification she continued to rejoice in the outpouring of divine love for her. Thérèse makes her story a canticle of gratitude to Jesus Christ, whom she sees present with her in every experience. Her teaching shows how the most ordinary existence contains potential for extra-ordinary holiness. Thérèse invites others to follow her “little way” of spiritual childhood, which she describes as an attitude of unlimited hope in God’s merciful love. Her moral option fills the book of the “anawim Yahweh” whose relationship with God is instinct with a placid but bold confidence that owes everything to the divine Giver. It was early on that Thérèse placed all her trust in God. “...but in my case, had not my heart been lifted up to God from its first awakening, had the world smiled at me from the cradle, there is no knowing what I might have become.” And in her last poem she wrote: “O thou who cams’t to smile on me, in the morning of my life, Come, Mother, once again and smile - for lo ! ‘tis eventide.”

NATURAL CHARM               Even though her heart was given to God, it did not lose its natural charm thereby. A paragraph from her diary: “I chose as friends two little girls of my age. But shallow are the hearts of creatures. It happened that for some reason that one of them had to remain at home for several months. While she was away I thought of her very often, and on her return showed great pleasure at seeing her again. All I met with, however, was a glance of indifference  -  my friendship was not appreciated. I felt this very keenly, and I no longer sought an affection  which had proved so inconsistent. Nevertheless, I still love my little friend and I pray for her; God has given me a faithful heart, and when once I love, I love forever. But perfect love can only exist upon earth in the midst of sacrifice. A heart given to God loses none of its natural affection; on the contrary, that affection grows stronger by becoming purer and more spiritual.”

NATURAL SENSITIVITY                 To prove once again that he could make use of people with the frailties that human nature is heir to, God chose Thérèse who herself admitted, “My heart is naturally sensitive and it is precisely because of its capacity for pain that I wish to offer to our Lord every kind of suffering it can bear.” She may well have taken umbrage at Pope Pius X’s description of her as “the greatest saint of modern times”, since she knew well how painful and it times stubborn a process was sainthood. Her mother described the little Thérèse as a “little imp of mischief...One doesn’t know how she will turn out...she is so thoughtless...she has a stubborn streak that is almost invincible.” Capable of violent outbursts of  temper, sensitive, touchy, moody,  a victim of  scrupulosity, she would weep at the slightest affront, and then weep again for having wept ! At the impressionable age of four she had to endure her mother’s death. Childhood’s gay abandon dissolved into withdrawal and introspection, leaving her more timid, scrupulous and sensitive than ever. What Thérèse later called her “conversion”, happened on Christmas Eve, “the night of illumination”, when “our Lord turned my darkness into a flood of light.” In a divine instant her identity received the impress of maturity. By this time Thérèse was 13; yet even at 20 (and at Carmel) she had not lost her sparkle. “She is filled with tricks...a mystic...a comedienne...she can make you shed tears of devotion, and she can just as easily make you split your sides with laughter”, observed her prioress.

FRAILTY and HIDDENNESS                        Sincere awareness of her weakness and an ardent desire to love and be loved were the dual motors of her psycho-spiritual progress.  “I am resigned to see myself always far from perfect, even glad of it.” Natural possessiveness was matched by the reflex to be possessed. “I have flames within me”, she says, “I want to be set on fire with love.” And with the seal of finality her choice fell on someone frail and sensitive, with a great longing to be accepted and loved: Jesus. If flesh is synonymous with frailty, then for Thérèse the Word became weakness, whose persistent refrain she echoed and re-echoed. Like Wordworth’s  “violet by a mossy stone, half-hidden from the eye”, she chose Shakespeare’s “blessedness of being little”, believing her true humanity lay in hiddenness, and it pleased God to keep her inconspicuous even in her own community. How successful she was in this can be gauged from a remark of a community member just a few weeks before Thérèse’s death. “She’s a sweet little Sister, but what will we be able to say about her after her death ? She didn’t do anything.”  Little did that community member realise that within that fragile human frame vibrated a dynamic of articulate mysticism that still electrifies the human spirit and that would merit her the splendid title of  “Doctor of the Church”.  Reading her diaries alone will persuade anyone that she had synthesised a deeply biblical way of living the faith in the full acceptance of human frailty.

                        The exterior life of Jesus and Mary at Nazareth was so run of the mill that the neighbours were scandalised when Jesus announced  his divine mission to them. The supernatural instinct which drew Therese of Lisieux to Nazareth was an authentic one. Here she discovered that she could live the reality of things, could be completely possessed by God, without its showing externally. The life of Jesus and Mary is the living illustration and affirmation of the highest mystical life, with complete detachment from outward appearances, i.e. from all mystical phenomena. The essence of the mystical life is constituted uniquely by God’s possession of the soul, independently of all sensible phenomena which are at best only secondary components. This simplification is a kind of cleansing which leaves the mystical life purer and loftier. God can produce the most profound supernatural changes without any external signs marking his action, for the senses (and the psychological consciousness which registers these things) are very far from the depths where supernatural marvels are effected. They may, however, be perceived in the works of charity and justice.

THE “LITTLE WAY”              There is no such thing as “adult baptism;” all baptisms are children’s baptisms, whatever the age of the recipient, for “unless you become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven”, said Jesus. There is a quality in man that specifies his nature as no other quality does, and that is his capacity to achieve his humanity by surrendering himself unreservedly to God. Jesus realised it on the cross: “Father, into your hands...” Young as she was, Thérèse attained maturity by way of littleness. She had only to be herself  -  weak, fragile, and a little child, to let herself be carried. “I can see that it is enough to recognise one’s littleness”, she said, “and give oneself wholly like a child into the arms of the good God.”

THE TEST                                                       Her “little way”, however, was not without its agonising over “faults” and frets about displeasing God and trying to earn his love. This performance-related meandering lasted three years and a half, when finally a retreat director “launched me full sail upon the waves of confidence and love.” She made the voyage without the perks of miracles, visions or voices. All she had was the staid sacrament of the present moment. “I have frequently noticed that Jesus does not want me to lay up provisions. He nourishes me at each moment with a totally new food. I find it within me without knowing how it is there. I believe it is Jesus himself hidden in the depths of my poor little heart; he is giving me the grace of acting within me, making me think of all he desires me to do at the present moment.” Thérèse’s little way of trustful surrender would not pass muster without the gruelling test that she depicted as the “thickest darkness” that enveloped her especially the last Easter of her life. Her lungs were already invaded by pulmonary tuberculosis. She had coughed up blood  -  the sign in nature of the divine summons, a “distant murmur”, she observed, “which announced the Bridegroom’s arrival.” What she went through from then on could just about be expressed in words carved out of the darkest caverns of her vocabulary. Encased in “heavy fog” that suddenly becomes “more dense”, which not the slightest sliver of heavenly light can pierce. The thickening opaqueness mocks her with the voices of a thousand sinners that death will expose her to ultimate futility  -  “the night of non-existence.”  “I do not want to write any more about it”, since “I fear I might blaspheme.” Her accumulated excellence was being drained into the “black hole” of her “little way.” Pointing to a row of chestnut trees, she said, “Look, do you see the black hole...where we can see nothing; it’s in a similar hole that I am as far as body and soul are concerned.....what darkness. But I am at peace.” Peace in darkness. Can the unaided human spirit attain to this bizarre synthesis ?  “If I had no faith”, Thérèse confessed, “ I would have inflicted death upon myself without a moment’s hesitation. Yet will I trust him.”

AND FINAL SURRENDER               Were faith not the pearl of great price, it could do without testing; and irritants and doubts would help ditch it on the roadside of life’s journey. Thérèse’s doubts were so grave as to make her say, “I don’t believe in eternal life. I think that after life there will be nothing more. Everything has vanished from me.” Yet she clung to the one thing that mattered. “All I have is love.” The last line she ever wrote was, “I go to him with confidence and love.” Suffering and  death revolted her, as they would any human being. Her Lord had recoiled from their prospect, too. But like her Lord she believed here was transforming power and movement  -  the strange, shattering and clarifying experience we call the Paschal mystery. Surrendered brokenness is goodly material for surpassing beauty. Her sister Celine sat by her bed and asked, “What are you doing ?”  “You should try to sleep.”  “I cannot”, replied Thérèse, “I’m praying.”  “What are you saying to Jesus ?”

“Nothing  -  I just love him.”

THE AFTERNOON OF 30 SEPTEMBER 1897                     Thérèse had asked that she might die the death of the crucified Jesus. And it was granted her. On the afternoon of 30 September her temptations against faith were so violent that she was in total darkness. Hours before her death her forehead was crowned with beads of perspiration. She was agitated and begged those around to sprinkle her with holy water. Between gasps and close to despair she said, “How we ought to pray for the agonising !”  At this point, Mother Agnes, seeing her sister in this condition, was bewildered. She knew well that Thérèse was a saint, but this looked to her more like the death of a sinner. She rushed out to an older part of the monastery to a statue of the Sacred Heart, of which she was very fond, and pleaded, “Oh Sacred Heart of Jesus, do not let my sister die in despair.”  This revealing incident helps us understand better the transition from the agony to the ecstasy of the last moment.

                                                Thérèse had forewarned them: “Do not be surprised; I have asked to die the death of Jesus on the cross, when he said, ‘Father, why have you abandoned me ?’”  She entered the horrendous night of Jesus’ forsakenness, when all hell was let loose in the form of diabolical temptations. If St. John of the Cross said that the death of the just is an event of love that carries them away peacefully, it was not the death that Thérèse knew. But her torment only served to burn away the residual dross in the gold of her spirit. Her face suffused with love, with dying lips, Thérèse of Lisieux breathed her deathless whisper:

“My God, I love you.”