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Written by General Direction   
Friday, 18 May 2007
"Life is love"
A reflection on Saint Therese of Lisieux
in relation to the biennium on holiness


“My life is a lightning, an hour which passes,
it is a moment which flees and is gone.
You know it, my God, that to love you on earth
I only have this day”
(Saint Therese of the Child Jesus)

“We must therefore become holy and start immediately,
set out to do the work of our sanctification.
To bravely make the first step.
Today, not tomorrow. Right here, in this house”
(J. Allamano - “ I want you so”, pg. 46)


Introduction

Dearest Missionaries, by this writing we do not wish to multiply the already numerous publications on the Patron Saint of the Missions nor do we have the presumption of saying or adding something new to the very many reflections done and shared throughout the years in the Church on this Saint so pleasant and exemplary. We only wish to contribute to the reflection of the Biennium on our journey for sanctity, presenting a witness who still has much to say to our communities and to each Consolata missionary. “Little Therese”, the saint of spiritual childhood, helps us rediscover many aspects of our life which may appear to be insignificant, though read in the light of God they become manifestations of his love and marvelous presence in our daily life. She reminds us of the value of being saints, of the good done well, of the gift of one’s own life. She reveals to us the importance of accepting ourselves the way God has created us, of smiling in the presence of life’s wonders and our own weaknesses, of giving ourselves to the others as expression of our total gift to God. She highlights the need to make room within ourselves to the unending action of the Spirit against modern day tendency to super activism which then in the final analysis is just frustrating and useless.

Reading “history of a soul” one remains bewildered by her almost childish imagination, her style in writing divested of great literary qualities. One might often think that there is nothing new or important in this Saint so “little”. On the other hand, it is to be acknowledged that she has always attracted many people and has been loved exactly on account of her mystique, not sought or purposely created, but rather made up of simplicity, ascetic and detachment from her very self.

Our wish is that, by getting closer to this witness we may learn the way of the Gospel, be more solicitous in on our journey towards holiness, source of joy for us and hope for all.

“In order to walk one must be humble, poor in spirit and simple” (Therese of the Child Jesus).

Some aspects of her life

Therese Martin lived twenty-four years, from 2nd January 1873 to 30th November 1897: she spent fifteen years in her bourgeois comfortable family, of which four and a half years were spent at Alencon. After the death of her mother, she lives in Lisieux in the Buissonnets’ house, she spends nine years in the Lisieux Carmel where she reaches the top of her holiness. Twenty-eight years after her death, in the year 1925, Pope Pius XI proclaims her universal patron saint of the missions.

All is contrast in the life of St. Therese. Her language is poor, but her thought is resourceful. Her life, apparently without drama, it is a true tragedy of faith. Her life was spent within the confines of the four walls of a Carmel, nevertheless her message is universal. Therese has written a lot. She has left two manuscripts, the one of 1895, written on request of her sister Pauline who had preceded her in the Carmel and had become Mother Agnes, the other of 1897, the year in which Therese is sick and writes in obedience to her Superior, Mother Gonzaga. One is left astonished by the big number of letters written to her family and the two missionary “brothers”, let alone the notes sent to the sisters of the Carmel. She has composed many poems. Therese has suffered a lot. Suffering has carved her soul. In 1877 when she is four and a half years old she looses her mother. On October 1882, the one she had chosen as her second mother, Pauline, enter the Carmel at Lisieux. In 1883, she is sick of a strange sickness from which she miraculously recovers through the intervention of the Blessed Mother. In 1886, her older sister, Mary, also joins the same Carmel which even Therese will enter into on 9th April 1888. Sufferings press on. On June 1888, her father disappears for four days and then he falls into a state of psychological depression which will afflict him till his death, on July 1894. In 1896, during the month of April, her first hemoptysis occurs, a year of sufferings. May 1897 marks the beginning 0of a prolonged and terrible agony caused by tuberculosis.

This listing is by itself quite meaningful even though it does not mention the interior torments and anguishes of little Therese. She has plunged to staggering abysms which resemble the state of desperation which one would experience today if he were to face unacceptable situations, too heavy to be born. She has known temptations, doubts, anguish: “You dream of light, a homeland of more pleasant odors, you dream of eternally possessing the Creator of all these wonders, you believe one day you will come out from this mist which surrounds you. Go on! Go on! Rejoice of death which will give you, not just what you do not hope for, but a more profound night, the night of nothingness” (From her writings).

She never loses her faith and reacts with courage: “I am running towards my Jesus to tell him that I am ready to pour up to the last drop of my blood in order to witness that there is a Heaven” (From her writings). Therese teaches to “believe in Love” and to experience it in our daily life. She teaches to solve our daily problems in the light of faith, trust in the Father, love. The more you dwell with her, the more you understand that her holiness was made up of loving God every day, in the daily hustle and bustle of a normal life. Therese has been faithful in the small things like the good servant praised by Jesus. Therese is profoundly modern and present-day because she helps the spirit and the heart to combine earthly matters with heavenly ones and instill the sense of God and of his love into the concrete behavior of daily life. For us, Therese is a further stimulus to love and live our missionary vocation with intensity and love. Closed up in her Carmel, she traveled to the ends of the world: “I would like to be a missionary not just for some years; rather I would have liked to have been such from the creation of the world, and continue to be so till the end of time. But above all, my beloved Lord, I would like to pour my blood for your sake, up to the last drop... (From her writings).

1. “The way of the spiritual Childhood”

By this topic we arrive at the most intimate secret of the personality and life of St. Therese of the Child Jesus. She has lived the Childhood way, making it her characteristic, her mission. On 17th July 1897 she confides to Mother Agnes: “My mission is to enable people to love the Lord as I love him, and give them my little way” (From her writings).

But what is “the little way” made of? It has often been badly interpreted and rigorously judged. “The little way” is the offering of her own life as experienced by her, of her way of being and acting according to the Gospel. Therese wishes to be just the intermediary, the tool of Jesus. Littleness and humility attract the Lord and enable her to carry out her task, which is the same as Jesus’ himself, of whom she is nothing else than a collaborator. “I understood that I could not do anything by my own strength… I felt that the only necessary thing was for me to be evermore intimately united with the Lord, and the rest would be granted to me in addition. Truly my hope has never been disappointed... (From her writings). In Therese there is a permanent thought: that of finding a more rapid, direct way to love and be loved by God. Such way is abandonment, the acknowledgement of one’s own littleness, the perception of God’s motherly love: “Jesus does not ask me for great actions, but just love and gratitude” (From her writings). Therese has discovered the filial relationship with God, God’s fatherhood and his safety. She has perceived God’s motherly love, made of tenderness towards the little and simple ones. “Like a mother who caresses her son, so will I console you, carrying you on my arms and I shall caress you on my knees” (Is. 66:12-13). Therese plunges in God, in her faith for him, and such intimacy with the Lord guides, directs and inspires her. She proves that in order to become holy there is no need of acquiring all the virtues: “it is impossible for me to become greater, I have to put with myself the way I am and with all my defects” (From her writings). Above all, it’s necessary to acknowledge God’s permanent action: it is He himself who brings about the holiness of his sons. Therese’s experience strongly reminds the apostle of the primacy of interiority, intimacy with God, which is more than just sacrifices, prayers, and mortifications of time past, even those of the time of Therese. Above all, people expect from us the witness of a lived gospel which reveals the loving face of God. In order to talk about God, one must start by talking with God, and above all listen to Him. Apostleship is cooperation with God in Jesus Christ.

2. The missionary spirit

To well understand Therese’s missionary spirit we must view her in her own time. We can also say that, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, she anticipates the great intuitions of the II Vatican Council: in as much she remains a great testimony of the missionary Church. At the beginning of the eighteen century missionaries in the world numbered about five hundred. In 1870 they were eighteen thousand and the religious were even more. The nineteen century has been considered among the best missionary periods, sponsored by Popes, like Gregory XVI and Pius IX, aided by the interest of public opinion, even though it was considered at the same level as the colonization process with the well known consequences. There was a proliferation of male and female missionary congregations, ready to leave for far distant lands to build the Church. Limiting our attention to France, we may list Holy Ghost Fathers, the Institute for Foreign Missions of Paris, White Fathers, Sacred Heart Fathers, Oblates of Mary Immaculate and still others. Therese has a missionary soul filled with great desires. “Love encompasses all vocations” (From her writings), including that of the apostles who preach the gospel, the martyrs who shed their blood. Therese has a correct vision of the “pagan”: “The good Lord has created the child who does not know anything... He has created the primitive who, in his total misery, has just the natural law to go by; and God bends himself down to them! Better still, these are the wild flowers which capture him because they are so simple...” (From her writings). The decree of Vatican II on missionary life, paragraph 40, states: “Institutes of contemplative life, by their prayers, penances and tribulations, have the greatest importance regarding the conversion of souls, since it is God who, when prayed, sends workers into his harvest, opens the spirit of non Christians so that they may listen to the Gospel. He makes fruitful in their hearts the word of Salvation” (Ad Gentes n. 40). It is probable that those who wrote this text may have thought of the many contemplative Institutes present in mission countries, and in a particular way of the Carmel and of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus. She gives us the exact meaning of mission. Certainly she has heard about the missions, starting from her own family. Being fourteen years old, while traveling to Rome, she reads the Annales Missionnaires. Her sister, Celina, retells: “At the age of fourteen, after reading a few pages of missionary religious women in the Annales, she soon stopped reading and told me: “I do not want read any further; I already experience a violent desire to be a missionary...” (Advices and Recollections). She feels within herself a great desire to be a missionary: “...I would like to be a missionary not just for some years; rather I would have liked to have been such from the creation of the world, and continue to be so till the end of time. But above all, my beloved Lord, I would like to pour my blood for your sake, up to the last drop... (From her writings)

For her, all this was not a literary game, or an escape dream, but rather a reality well rooted in the depth of her life. Christian tradition has always linked the contemplative vocation to the apostolate, through prayers for the preachers of the Gospel and also establishing monasteries in mission countries. The Carmel of Lisieux was corresponding with that of Saigon which it had founded in 1861. Divine Providence has allowed that Therese could become spiritual sister of two missionaries. Mother Agnes, her Superior, noticing the incomparable quality of the soul of her younger sister, on October 1895, entrusts to her the seminarian Bellière, who will eventually become a White Father. Later on, when Therese is already gravely affected by the illness which will cause her death, Mother Maria Gonzaga, on 30th May 1896, entrusts to her, as a second brother, Father Rouland of the Foreign Missions. With these two missionaries she will have a rather small exchange of correspondence, but nevertheless precious for us since it allows us to know her missionary soul. We have sixteen letters in all, of which five of them were written during the last three months, prior to her death; we may therefore state that the last months of her short life were tormented by her concern for the mission, as if she wanted to hurry up in handing over her message.

For our Saint mission is: “to work for the salvation of souls”, a saying already outdone, but which for her it has the same meaning we confer to it today and is directly connected to our own Founder. It is enshrined in it the very great value of one’s suffering in order to carry out the mission in union with Christ. For her the secret of every apostolate is to love Jesus. It is love of Christ, love for the souls to be saved, which inspires his prayers and penances. In obedience to her first nurse and at the cost of much fatigue, Therese used to walk in the garden: “I am walking for a missionary”. These are the horizons of Therese’s missionary soul: love inspires her penance and prayer. Love profoundly unites her with missionaries, and this is more evidently so with her two brothers. Love which never ends gives her hope of continuing her mission in heaven. Therese’s credit is to have discerned and lived that which is essential. She writes to her “young missionary brother”: “My only weapon is love and suffering, while your weapon is your word and apostolic fatigue” (From her writings).

Conclusion

Approaching, without many pretensions, this witness, always actual and alive in the Church, many are the questions which we carry within ourselves and that we wish to confront among ourselves so as to qualify our missionary life through holiness.
 
1. What can a Consolata missionary find in the “overwhelmingly spiritual” teaching of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus?

2. What kind of relationship may exist between the Saint of Lisieux, detached from the world, and the urgency of the happenings of our time which require our response and commitment?

3. What can we learn from a Saint who has “fled the world”, whereas our vocation calls for, not to run away from people’s life, but to be open and welcoming towards the world?

Therese exhorts us to believe in love and to experience it in our life every day. She teaches to solve problems in the light of the gospel with faith and great love. She urges us to live our daily life with solicitude, having a universal spirit, holding the world in our hearts. Therese, with an unending passion which encompasses the whole world, brings this love in her daily life and tasks, through all that is human, in the ongoing enfolding of her life.

Finally, in our temptations, crisis, desperations and discouragements, she inspires us with a desire for the absolute, an unconditional faith in God. In the same page in which she tells us of her interior darkness, she writes: “I believe that I have made more acts of faith this past year than in all the rest of my life” (From her writings). That is why her message is always modern and makes her close to each one of us who still toils, though we also believe that life is love.

Fr. Aquiléo Fiorentini, IMC
Fr. Stefano Camerlengo, IMC
Fr. Francisco López, IMC
Fr. Antonio Fernandes, IMC
Fr. Matthew Ouma, IMC


For a better understanding

1) “I have finally found my vocation, my vocation is Love!... In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be Love… thus I shall be all…” (“History of a soul”).
Edith Stein, also a Carmelite Saint, writes to a friend who declares of not loving Therese’s style: “What you are writing to me regarding little Therese surprises me. Up to now I had not even thought that it could be read with such approach. My only impression was that I was in the presence of a human life which was uniquely and totally penetrated, to the very end, by the love of God. I do not know anything greater and I wish, in as much as possible, to carry a little of it in my life and in that of those who surround me”.

2) Questions for personal or group reflection
1. How can they become important elements and tools for an evangelical discernment: the word of God, personal and community experiences, our encounter with Christ, the challenges faced by us every day? How can they help us read-interpret the “story of God” within and for ourselves?

2. For our missionary vocation it is fundamental to proclaim Jesus by the witnessing of our life, conduct and actions. We ask ourselves: what changes are necessary in our religious, institutional, communitarian and personal system in order to make our life more evangelical?

3. New things are born and take root there where a good spirituality is thriving. Ultimately it is a matter of cultivating faith and prayer. How? What can we do so that our life of people consecrated to mission be a laboratory of spirituality, a place to cultivate the spirit and acquire the spiritual dimension present in ever thing and in every person?

4. Which ones, in our life, are the main obstacles to the realization of God’s will? Am I willing to organize my life so that I may live it as a gift of love?

3) Biblical texts:

Is. 66, 13-12 / 1 Cor.1, 26-29 / Lk. 5, 5-11 / Gv. 15, 14-16 / Lk. 14, 25-35 / Rom. 11
Last Updated ( Thursday, 17 May 2007 )