The message of Thérèse of Lisieux
Circular letter of the General Superiors of O.Carm. and OCD
on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the death of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
(Part 3)
II. Thérèse of Lisieux lives and bears witness to Jesus' plan of life
26. The celebrations of the hundredth anniversary of the death of our sister are an opportunity for us to re-examine her life and writings from the perspective of Jesus' plan of life and our socio-cultural and ecclesiastical environment. But reflections on her spiritual experience require from everyone, above all, a deep renewal of our Carmelite life. Thérèse reminds us of the fundamental values of the Gospel and invites us to focus on them. Through reading and meditating on the Word of God, she reveals the essence of our relationship with God, with others, and with things; she experiences it simply, naturally, and profoundly and conveys it through her life and writings.
1. God is close and loves us
Drinking from the living spring of the Word of God
27. Thérèse of Lisieux sustained her life and spirituality from the purest springs of the Word of God. At a time when the reading of the Bible was hardly accessible, she accomplished what the council later asks of all Christians, especially of consecrated persons: “By frequent reading of Sacred Scripture, they may acquire immensely valuable knowledge of Jesus Christ. For ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”10
28. She was faithful to the rules of the order and day and night meditated in the law of the Lord and stayed vigilant in prayer.11 Like Teresa of Avila, her mother, she also found in Jesus a living book12 and in following St. John of the Cross, she managed to “fix her gaze solely on Christ.”13 She herself tells us how she gradually moved from reading spiritual books that helped her greatly on her path, especially John of the Cross, to focusing on Sacred Scripture, especially the Gospels:
“But later on, all books left me dry… When I opened a book written by a spiritual author (even the most beautiful, the most touching), I immediately felt my heart constricting, and I read almost without understanding… or when I understand, my mind stops and cannot meditate… In this incapacity, Sacred Scripture and 'The Imitation of Christ' come to my aid. In them, I find solid and completely pure nourishment. But above all, the Gospel sustains me in times of inner prayer. In it, I find everything my poor soul needs. I discover in it constantly new lights, hidden and mysterious meanings… I understand and know from experience that 'the Kingdom of God is within us.'”14
29. Reading and meditating on the Word of God led her to reveal what is essential in Jesus' message for everyday life. This relationship between the Word of God and concrete existence leads her to recognize “precisely at the moment I need it, the light that I had not seen before… in the midst of daily occupations.”15 Even more, through His liberating word, Jesus becomes present in Thérèse of Lisieux: “I have never heard Him speak, but I feel that He is within me, in every moment. He guides me and inspires me on what to say or do.”16
30. In her mission to remind us of what is essential, our sister Thérèse places us before the Word of God as before a light that illuminates our steps (cf. Ps 119:105)17 and warns us that the condition for understanding the message of God is to have a childlike heart, open and ready for everything the Spirit allows us to discover as our vocation, our mission in the Church.
31. We must live in the school of the Word of God. It is “the primary source of every Christian spirituality.”18 The Church recommends communal meditation on Scripture not only for consecrated persons but also for all members of God's people. “From frequent contact with the Word of God, they have drawn the essential light for individual and communal discernment, which has helped them to seek in the signs of the times the paths of the Lord.”19
32. Thérèse of Lisieux, who desired to master the biblical languages to better appreciate the Word of God, was not granted the opportunity to experience the Church's new approach to Scripture. Nor did she have the resources we have today to better understand and assimilate the biblical message. Nevertheless, she fulfilled the command of the Carmelite rule to let the Word of God dwell abundantly in our hearts and mouths, so that all our actions may spring from it.20 Like her, let us read and meditate on the Word of God and carry out its demands with the help of the new means that God offers us at this moment in the history of the Church to deepen our understanding of His Word and better comprehend it.
Rediscovering the fatherly-motherly face of God
33. Thérèse lived in a time characterized by Jansenist spirituality, which distorted the face of God and represented Him unilaterally as a strict judge who could demand sacrifice to appease His justice.
34. The reading and meditation of Sacred Scripture led Thérèse of Lisieux to listen to Jesus, who revealed to her the true face of God: a merciful father-mother who invites us to live in the attitude of sons and daughters with surrender and trust, and in self-giving to God's love, responsibly accepting the mission to proclaim God's plan for humanity. Thérèse understood “how Jesus desires to be loved” and offered herself as a victim of merciful love that desires to share with all.21
Prayer as simple and childlike dialogue
35. In agreement with her Mother Teresa of Avila22, Thérèse of Lisieux experiences prayer as an intimate and loving dialogue with God the Father-Mother.23 The strength she shares transforms into a vital experience and opens her to the necessity of evangelical self-denial so that prayer may be true:
“My whole strength is prayer and sacrifice. These are the invincible weapons Jesus gave me. They touch souls far more than words.”24
Her prayer became simpler and led her to the source of living water or united her with the divine fire that purifies and transforms: “For me, prayer is the flight of the heart, it is a simple glance toward heaven, it is a cry of gratitude and love in trials and in joy. In short, it is something great, supernatural, that enlarges my soul and unites me with Jesus.”25
From holiness understood as “perfection” to holiness as community
36. The rediscovery of the fatherly-motherly face of God was the starting point for a new path to holiness that she experienced especially from 1894, following her experience of weakness. Jesus showed her, as she herself says, that this path consists in surrender and the trust of a child who sleeps peacefully in the arms of their father:
“Let the little one come to me, said the Holy Spirit through the mouth of Solomon, and the same Spirit of love also said: 'The little one is forgiven out of mercy.'” By His name, Isaiah reveals to us that on the last day… 'As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; I will carry you on my hip and rock you on my knees'… Jesus does not ask for great deeds but only for surrender and gratitude.”26
37. Here we encounter the transition from fear to trust. We stand before God as sons and daughters before a father and mother. God ensures that everything contributes to our good, even our weaknesses and mistakes:
“Trust and nothing but trust must lead us to love…” “...it pleases Him when He sees that I love my smallness and my poverty, my blind hope in His mercy” … “to love Jesus, one must be the victim of His love – the weaker one is, without desires and virtues, the more capable one is for the action of this Love, which consumes and transforms.”27
38. At the root of our vocation to the consecrated life in Carmel is the Lord's initiative. Individuals called to respond to God's invitation entrust themselves to His love and realize the absolute sacrifice of their own lives by “entrusting everything present and future into His hands.”28 Like Thérèse of Lisieux, we are also called to deeply experience the reality of the fatherly-motherly face of God; to live prayer as a loving conversation with God and as contemplative contemplation of reality, as listening to God, so that we may dedicate ourselves to our brothers and sisters; understanding holiness not as “perfection” but as community with God through faith, hope, and love. Theological holiness, as represented by the rule and St. John of the Cross, who was through his writings the father and spiritual teacher of Thérèse of Lisieux.
Faithfulness to the entrusted mission and purification of faith
39. The freely given experience of the fatherly-motherly face of God, which has been revealed to us in Jesus, and the faithfulness to our own vocation – the mission we responsibly accept as sons and daughters of God, enter into the dynamics of the Easter mystery of death and resurrection and open to purification and testing of faith. Thérèse of Lisieux managed to express this by adding to her name “of the Child Jesus” in an indissoluble unity “and of the Holy Face.” The Incarnate Word, who invites us in the mystery of His childhood to trust, love, and surrender, is also the suffering servant who leads us into the mystery of suffering that He endured before us. Suffering which arises from the faithfulness to the mission entrusted to Him by the Father.
40. It is during the process of purification of faith that Thérèse discovers and understands her vocation. Her apostolic desires to proclaim the joyful message of salvation transform into a martyrdom of love when she does not know how she can reconcile everything she longs for with what she can accomplish. In this situation, God makes her understand, in the light of chapters 12 and 13 of the first letter to the Corinthians, that the Church is a body and that its heart is love, which sets all other members in motion and thus contains all other vocations, embracing all times and places; therefore, she exclaims: “...finally, I have found my vocation! My vocation is LOVE! ... Yes, I have found my place in the Church, and this place you have given me, my God! ... In the heart of my Mother Church, I will be love... Thus I will be everything… Thus my dream will be fulfilled!!!”29
41. In her Last Conversations, what has been termed “the suffering of St. Thérèse of Lisieux” clearly emerges.30 These are purifying nights, provoked by illness, darkness, doubt, fear of death. In her efforts to remain faithful to her contemplative vocation, she undergoes the Calvary journey: “At that time, I had great inner trials of every kind. (So much so that I sometimes even wondered if there was any heaven.)”31 The purifying night was particularly intense in the last months of her life. In them, she drinks the cup of pain to the dregs. Like Jesus, she gives her life for others.
42. The Easter dimension of the consecrated life includes the cross and pain, if we are to be faithful to the fulfillment of our vocation in the mission of the Church,32 for “the mission (to proclaim the Gospel, i.e., missio) is very important for any society (institute), not only for institutes of apostolic active life but also for contemplative societies. Before the mission manifests itself in external deeds, Christ must be proclaimed to the world through personal witness among people.”33 In fulfilling our mission, we are called, like Thérèse of Lisieux, to experience purification by faith, which is the shield protecting us from the snares of the enemy,34 and to accept the cross, which is “the supreme sign of the abundance of God's love poured out on humanity, a great testimony to the saving presence of Christ, especially in times of difficulty and temptation,”35 in hard situations, including persecution and martyrdom.
