The Story of a Soul, Saint Therese of Lisieux (selection from Part III, Session 3)

We end with a selection from Saint Thérèse of the Infant Jesus and of the Holy Face, who was declared a Doctor of the Universal Church by Pope John Paul II in 1997, who called her “a Teacher for our time.” Indeed, though she entered heaven in 1897, Saint Thérèse can be seen as the great, perhaps decisive, inspiration for the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on the universal call to holiness. Saint Thérèse teaches us the “little way” to heaven in entrusting ourselves to Jesus and concentrating on making simple sacrifices in the course of everyday life. This emphasis on littleness deepens our understanding of filial adoption, that is, our being made children of the Father through incorporation into the eternal Son. Jesus Christ is the eternal Child of the Father, and lives wholly on the will of the Father. We followers of Jesus can find no other way to happiness than in this mystery of Trinitarian littleness, this absolute dependence on love. And Thérèse’s little way makes clear that our everyday lives, in their minutest aspects, ought to embody the glory of God’s love. It also makes clear that all are called to holiness: there is a heroism in the self-sacrificial love of ordinary life (think of the love of parents) that may not appear spectacular but that is in fact world-shaking: the smallest act of genuine love opens the world to the torrent of Trinitarian love. Love is the source and goal of all: this is the mystery of the Trinity which enfolds all of space and time.

To be Your Spouse, to be a Carmelite, and by my union with You to be the Mother of souls, should this not suffice me? And yet it is not so. No doubt, these three privileges sum up my true vocation: Carmelite, Spouse, Mother, and yet I feel within me other vocations. I feel the vocation of the WARRIOR, THE PRIEST, THE APOSTLE, THE DOCTOR, THE MARTYR. Finally, I feel the need and the desire of carrying out the most heroic deeds for You, O Jesus. I feel within my soul the courage of the Crusader, the Papal Guard, and I would want to die on the field of battle in defense of the Church. …O Jesus, my Love, my Life, how can I combine these contrasts? How can I realize the desires of my poor little soul?

…During my meditation, my desires caused me a veritable martyrdom, and I opened the Epistles of St. Paul to find some kind of answer. Chapters 12 and 13 of the First Epistle to the Corinthians fell under my eyes. I read there, in the first of these chapters, that all cannot be apostles, prophets, doctors, etc., that the Church is composed of different members, and that the eye cannot be the hand at one and the same time. … Without becoming discouraged, I continued my reading, and this sentence consoled me: “Yet strive after THE BETTER GIFTS, and I point out to you a yet more excellent way.” And the Apostle explains how all the most PERFECT gifts are nothing without LOVE. That Charity is the EXCELLENT WAY that leads most surely to God.

I finally had rest. Considering the mystical body of the Church, I had not recognized myself in any of the members described by Saint Paul, or rather I desired to see myself in them all. Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that if the Church had a body composed of different members, the most necessary and most noble of all could not be lacking to it, and so I understood that the Church had a Heart and that this Heart was BURNING WITH LOVE. I understood it was Love alone that made the Church’s members act, that if Love ever became extinct, apostles would not preach the Gospel and martyrs would not shed their blood. I understood that LOVE COMPRISED ALL VOCATIONS, THAT LOVE WAS EVERYTHING, THAT IT EMBRACED ALL TIMES AND PLACES.... IN A WORD, THAT IT WAS ETERNAL ! Then, in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out : O Jesus, my Love.... my vocation, at last I have found it.... MY VOCATION IS LOVE ! Yes, I have found my place in the Church and it is You, O my God, who have given me this place. In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be Love. Thus I shall be everything, and thus my dream will be realized.

…You know, Mother, I have always wanted to be a saint. Alas! I have always noticed that when I compared myself to the saints, there is between them and me the same difference that exists between a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds and the obscure grain of sand trampled underfoot by the passers-by. Instead of becoming discouraged, I said to myself: God cannot inspire unrealizable desires. I can, then, in spite of my littleness, aspire to holiness. It is impossible for me to grow up, and so I must bear with myself such as I am with all my imperfections. But I want to seek out a means of going to heaven by a little way, a way that is very straight, very short, and totally new. We are living now in an age of inventions, and we no longer have to take the trouble of climbing stairs, for, in the homes of the rich, an elevator has replaced these very successfully. I wanted to find an elevator which would raise me to Jesus, for I am too small to climb the rough stairway of perfection. I searched, then, in the Scriptures for some sign of this elevator, the object of my desires, and I read these words coming from the mouth of Eternal Wisdom: “Whosever is a LITTLE ONE, let him come to me.” [Prov 9:4] And so I succeeded. I felt I had found what I was looking for. But wanting to know, O my God, what You would do to the very little one who answered Your all, I continued my search and this is what I discovered: “As one whom a mother caresses, so will I comfort you; you shall be carried at the breasts, and upon the knees they shall caress you.” [Is 66:12-13] Ah! Never did words more tender and more melodious come to give joy to my soul. The elevator which must raise me to heaven is Your arms, O Jesus! And for this I had no need to grow up, but rather I had to remain little and become this more and more.

READING QUESTIONS:

1. Relate Thérèse’s little way of love to the universal call to holiness described in Lumen gentium. Why do you think John Paul II found Thérèse to be so relevant to what the Holy Spirit is asking of Christians today, in a globalized modernity?

2. In what way is love the vocation of every Christian?

3. Reflect on spiritual childhood in Péguy and on the fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the greatest of all created persons, keeps nothing in reserve in her childlike Yes to the will of the Father. Is the “littleness” of childlikeness before God at odds with being a fully mature human man or woman? For what purpose do we seek to cultivate our spiritual powers to know and love?