ST. THERESE, SINNERS, PRIESTHOOD

ST. THERESE, PRIESTS, and THE PRIESTHOOD

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, aged 15, and took the name of Thèrése of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. Under obedience, she wrote her autobiography which she meant to be the story of divine grace in her life. Reading her diaries will persuade anyone that she had synthesised a deeply biblical way of living the faith in the full acceptance of human frailty.

PRAYNG FOR SINNERS

The great St. Teresa of Avila had always maintained the importance of praying for sinners. This was precisely one of the reasons that Carmel had such a fascination for the Little Flower. When she was 14 years old the whole country was talking about the notorious criminal Henri Pranzini who had murdered two women and a girl in the course of a robbery in Paris. As he was unrepentant, Thérèse decided to pray for him. Though she knew she could not save him from the guillotine, she believed she could intercede for his soul. She had a Mass offered for him, prayed fervently that he would repent, and asked God to give her a sign of his conversion. Imagine her joy when she learned that Pranzini had kissed the Crucifix before his execution! She also took this as a divine summons calling her to pray for sinners; even saw it as a confirmation of her vocation. Thérèse called Pranzini her “first child”. She surrendered her feast-day gifts of money as Mass offerings, explaining to her sister Céline, “It’s for my child; he must need it after all he’s done. I mustn’t abandon him now.”

PRAYING FOR PRIESTS

The other great work of Carmel was to pray for priests, something that Thérèse realised during a pilgrimage to Italy. She wrote, “I understood my vocation in Italy, and that’s not going too far in search of such useful knowledge. I lived in the company of many saintly priests for a month and I learned that, though their dignity raises them above the angels, they are nevertheless weak and frail. If holy priests, whom Jesus in the gospel calls ‘the salt of the earth’, show in their conduct their extreme need for prayers, what is to be said of those who are ‘tepid’?” This was not her judgement of priests, since she had always believed that the souls of priests were crystal clear, but she was beginning to understand how prayer for priests was included in the aim of St. Teresa’s reform. Thérèse was probably a little shocked to have her notion of sinless priests shattered, but she put her discovery to good use and reached out in love to them through her prayers.

A CASE IN POINT

Fr. Hyacinthe Loyson, a Carmelite priest, left the Church in 1869. Three years later he married an American widow, and they had a son. Hyacinthe Loyson went so far as to found his own church in 1879. He had once been an outstanding preacher in the world famous Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, and even after he was excommunicated he continued travelling around France, giving lectures. Much as the media hype is brought to bear on the slightest misdemeanours of priests today, the newspapers gave this “renegade monk” wide coverage. His case was finally brought to Thérèse’s notice when he visited Normandy in 1891. Thérèse unhesitatingly called him “my brother”, seeing him as a child of God in great need of prayer. She offered up her last Holy Communion for him. It was July 19, the feast of St. Hyacinthe in the Carmelite calendar of that time. Thérèse believed that, like Pranzini, Hyacinthe Loyson would be saved. Although Loyson was never formally reconciled to the Church, he died whispering “my sweet Jesus.”

DESIRING THE PRIESTHOOD

Thérèse understood so well the importance of the priests’ mission that it is not surprising she envied them their high privilege. The words in which she makes this avowal are instinct with the lively faith and fervor of a Curé d’Ars. “I feel within me the priestly vocation. O Jesus, how lovingly would I hold you in my hands when, at my word, you would come down from heaven! How I would have loved to give you to souls.” These brief sentences are so vibrant with noble ambition and pure feeling that they cannot but burn themselves into the minds of priests as they recall the “Magnificat” of their day of ordination. If there were a priesthood of desire like that of baptism, St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus would have received it with exultant joy after an arduous preparation. And how splendidly would she have allowed its ideal beauty to shine out in her life. As novice mistress she confided to one of her subjects,  “I believe I shall not live to see the age at which priests are ordained.     I should regret very keenly that I cannot be one.” Acutely ill in July 1897, she told one of her sisters, “The good God is going to take me before I should have reached the age of ordination, had I been able to become a priest.” She was delighted at the thought that St. Barbara had carried the Eucharist to St. Stanislaus Kostka when he was dying. “Why not an angel?” she asked, “Why not a priest? Oh well, we shall see wonderful things in heaven. I imagine that those who on earth longed for the priesthood will enjoy all its privileges in heaven.”

Much as she anticipated the joys of heaven, she was concerned about the priestly mission on earth. Her confinement within the walls of Carmel did not prevent her from sharing in missionary work by her prayers and sacrifices. The joy of her part in evangelisation can be evinced in her poem dedicated to Our Lady of Victories, Queen of Virgins, Apostle and Martyrs:

Mother, thy child with sweet emotion,

Singeth of grateful love to thee.

Thou hast fulfilled my heart’s devotion,

Ever my hope, my strength to be.

By ties of love, of pain, of pleading,

Thou didst unite me evermore

To toils of missionaries, leading

Noblest of lives on foreign shore.

Carmel for me is immolation

For those who forth to conquest go;

Spreading to souls of every nation

Flames that my Jesus cast below.