The Journey of Thérèse of Lisieux

As a conformation to Christ:

Mercy in fragility and primacy of grace

First Meeting of Ongoing Formation of European Carmelites

October 21, 2023

Giampiero Molinari, O. Carm.

pdf To read the Questions for Reflection - Mercy & Grace (365 KB)

Introduction

In this year we are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (2 January 1873) and the centenary of her beatification (29 April 1923). 2025 will be the centenary of the canonization (May 17, 1925). As we know, UNESCO has also placed Thérèse among the historically significant women. All this is a good reason to take up her writings and reread her doctrine, trying to bring it into life.

In approaching Thérèse we must not forget a fact: if on the one hand she is certainly a light for having recalled the perennial values of the Gospel, on the other (like each of us) she remains a daughter of her own time. Her writing is influenced by the romantic and somewhat honeyed atmosphere of the time and is characterized by a wide use of diminutives, prolonged punctuation marks, etc. All this may not facilitate reading and also create a certain annoyance! If, however, a little effort is made and we go beyond this “rind”, we will discover a very deep spiritual experience (substantially not understood when the saint was alive) and a doctrine, which we can define as a narrative and symbolic theology.

The Experience of Divine Mercy in the Root of One’s Own Fragility:

A Microhistory of Salvation

We can consider Thérèse of Lisieux as the Doctor of divine mercy. This theme appears, in fact, as the leitmotif of the two autobiographical manuscripts in which she rereads her own life (Manuscript A, whose drafting begins at the beginning of 1895, and Manuscript C, written from June 1897).

At the beginning of Manuscript A, Thérèse outlines the intended purpose:

I will do only one thing: begin to sing what I must repeat forever – “The mercies of the Lord” (Ms A 2r).^[1]

Manuscript C is on the same wavelength; addressing the prioress, Mother Mary of Gonzaga, the saint writes: “Beloved Mother, she has expressed to me the desire that I complete with her my Song of the Mercies of the Lord” (Ms C, 1r).

In this regard, we must not underestimate the beginning “incipit” of Manuscript A: “Spring History of a White Flower” (Ms A 2r) – which would be better translated “small white flower” (respecting the original French) – since in Thérèse’s intention it contains a profound experience of God’s mercy. It is, in fact, the saxifrage^[i] that her father gives her after he confided to him the desire to enter Carmel: 

What I remember perfectly was the symbolic gesture that my beloved King made without knowing it. Approaching a wall not very high, he showed me some white flowers similar to miniature lilies and, taking one of those flowers, he gave it to me, explaining to me how carefully the good Lord had given birth to it and had kept it until that day. Hearing him speak, I thought I was listening to my story, such was the similarity between what Jesus had done for the little flower and the little Teresa” (Ms A, 50v. Bold mine).

In her Manuscripts, therefore, Thérèse rereads her own life as a micro-history of salvation: she is not the centre, but God’s merciful action in her. The saint is clear on this point: “it is not my real life that I will write, but my thoughts on the graces that the Good Lord has deigned to grant me” (Ms A, 3r). And shortly after: “The flower that will tell its story [...] he recognizes [...] that only his mercy has done all that is good in him” (Ms A, 3v).

1. The Context of Fragility

The theme of divine mercy shines even more if we consider Thérèse’s experience, especially in the first years of her life. A period marked by various traumatic events, which produce not minor wounds, blocking, in a certain way, the natural affective maturation. Here they are in summary:

1. The two separations experienced around the age of two months: from her mother, who cannot breastfeed her because of breast cancer and must entrust her to a nurse and, subsequently, from the latter following the return to the family.
2. The illness and subsequent death of her mother in 1877 (cf. Ms A 12r-13r):

I don’t remember crying much and I didn’t talk to anyone about the deep feelings I felt... I watched and listened in silence... [...], yet I understood (Ms A 12v. Bold mine).

On the following page we read:

starting from the death of Mother, my happy character changed completely; I became so lively, so expansive, shy and sweet, sensitive to excess. One look was enough to make me melt into tears (Ms A 13r).

3. The departure for Carmel of her sister Pauline, whom Thérèse had chosen as her second mother (cf. Ms A 13r):

I did not know what Carmel was, but I understood that Pauline would leave me to enter a convent, I understood [...] that I would lose my second Mother!... Ah, how can I tell the anguish of my heart?... In a moment I understood what life was [...] a continuous suffering and separation. I shed very bitter tears... (Ms A 25v. Bold mine).

4. Narrating the departure for Carmel of his sister Mary – who, after the separation from Pauline, had taken as her only support (cf. Ms A, 41r) – Thérèse returns to the theme: “Pauline was far away, very far from me... [...]. Pauline was lost to me, almost as if she were dead” (Ms A, 41r-41v). These are very strong words, which reveal the drama she is experiencing.

1. The Experience of Mercy with Marian and Christological Tones

As we know, all these traumatic situations cause the onset of a psychosomatic illness, characterized by symptoms such as insomnia, tremors, headaches, hallucinations, etc. It is a kind of neurosis and childhood regression. Paradoxically, it is precisely in this phase of extreme fragility and vulnerability that Thérèse experiences God’s mercy, to the point of affirming – rereading her own life – that the characteristic of love, of grace, is to humble oneself (cf. Ms A 2v). The saint can say this because she experienced at this particular juncture a God who bends down to her misery. For this reason, in writing Manuscript A, now “matured in the crucible of external and interior trials” (Ms A, 3r), she cites Psalm 22 (The Lord is my shepherd), highlighting with conviction: “The Lord has always been compassionate and full of sweetness towards me” (Ms A, 3v).

The healing journey lived by the saint (which we could define as a sort of personal “path of salvation”) is characterized by two fundamental stages with a Marian and Christological tone, respectively.

We all know the story of Our Lady’s “enchanting smile” (Cfr. Ms A 30v-30r), thanks to which Thérèse regains a substantial (although not complete) basic serenity: “all my sufferings vanished” (Ms A 30r), “the little flower was being reborn to life” (Ms C 30v), we read in Manuscript A. Reading this story carefully we will realize that the saint perceives the smile of the Virgin as the reflection of God’s tenderness. This can be guessed from the use of the symbol of the “sun” that is applied to God to emphasize his benevolence (cf. Ms A 3r), but later it is also extended to the Virgin Mary (cf. Ms A 29v) and to the creatures themselves at the moment in which they are perceived in the act of mediating the care of the divine Sun (cf. Ms A 24r).

Although restored, Thérèse is still distinguished by a remarkable hypersensitivity, which she defines as an “ugly defect” (cf. Ms A 44v). She describes as follows:

I was really unbearable for my excessive sensitivity; so, if I happened to unintentionally give a little displeasure to a person I loved [...] I wept like a Magdalene and, when I began to console myself with the thing itself, I cried for having cried... (Ms A 44v).

At this point the merciful action of the Father will take on a Christological connotation, centred on the abasement of the Son of God in the mystery of the Incarnation. This is the well-known “Christmas Grace” of 1886 (cf. Ms A 44v-45v), defined by the saint: “the grace of my complete conversion” (Ms A 45r). It constitutes, in fact, a real “watershed”: Thérèse perceives herself so transformed that she no longer recognizes herself; From that moment, she writes, “I walked from victory to victory and began, so to speak, ‘a enormous race!...’“ (Ms A 44v).

For the theme we are dealing with, the synthesis proposed by Thérèse herself is interesting:

In an instant the work that I had not been able to do in 10 years, Jesus did it by being content with my good will that I never lacked (Ms A 45v).

In this rereading of the event of Christmas 1886 I seem to grasp, in fact, how the saint is now aware of  the primacy of grace: it is always the love of God that takes the first step, being content with our “good will”.  

1. The Underlying Message:

A Gaze of Faith that Opens to Hope

Through her experience, therefore, Thérèse opens us to hope: no wound, no limit can block our path of maturation towards holiness if we surrender ourselves to the transforming action of the Spirit. Limitations, wounds, psychophysical fragility, the ‘chiaroscuro` (light and shade] of life can become horizons of grace to^[2] the extent that our daily life is given with trust to God.

Thérèse could very well turn in on herself, remain a prisoner of her wounds. Openness to grace, on the other hand, enables her to leave the “childhood phase” (cf. Ms A, 44) to live in the perspective of the gift of self: “I felt [...] the need to forget myself to please and since then I have been happy!” (Ms A 45v), she writes at the conclusion of the story of the “Christmas Grace”.

The saint invites us to refine our gaze of faith: despite all the setbacks that may arise, in the soil of our life there are many seeds of God’s mercy (cf. Dt 6:10-13). Pope Francis also reminds us of this in the Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et exsultate: “Look at your history when you pray and in it you will find so much mercy. At the same time this will nourish your awareness that the Lord keeps you in his memory and never forgets you” (n. 153).

It is precisely this awareness, matured over the years, that leads Thérèse to a new vision of perfection. She talks about it in folio 32r  of Manuscript A (which according to Conrad de Meester, ocd represents one of the best formulations of the “little way”^[3]):

I always feel the same bold confidence to become a great Saint, because I do not rely on my merits, since I have none, but I hope in Him who is Virtue, Holiness Itself: it is He alone who, being content  with my weak efforts, will raise me up to Him and, covering me with His infinite merits, will make me Holy (Ms A, 32r. Bold mine).

It is  the primacy of grace, the awareness  of the gratuitousness of salvation, to which the saint arrives through a gradual journey of conforming to Christ.

Conforming to the Face of Christ:

From voluntarism to the gratuitousness of salvation

Simplifying the debate a little, we can affirm that the dominant spirituality at the time of Thérèse is characterized by rigorism, asceticism, the offering to the Justice of God in reparation for sins and voluntarism. At the centre we find personal effort, the need to acquire merits.

This atmosphere is obviously also breathed in the Carmel of Lisieux (although the spiritual vision of St. Francis de Sales is also gaining ground) and we can also see it in Thérèse. On January 8, 1889, two days before the clothing, she wrote to her sister Sr. Maria of the Sacred Heart: “How thirsty I am for Heaven [...]. But it is necessary to suffer and weep to reach it... Well! I want to suffer whatever pleases Jesus” (LT 79). In the same year, reporting on the speech of a preacher, she wrote to Céline: “Holiness consists in suffering and suffering everything. “Holiness! it must be conquered with the unsheathed sword...” (LT 89).

1. “The Mysteries of Love Hidden in the Face of our Bridegroom” (Ms A 71r):

Devotion to the Holy Face and the Illness of Louis Martin

Another traumatic moment in Thérèse’s life is represented by the illness of her father, to whom she was very close. A source of particular suffering will be his hospitalization, on February 12, 1889, in a psychiatric hospital in Caen, due to the intensification of senile dementia. The expressions with which the saint recalls the event are significant:

Ah, I didn’t say that day that I could suffer more!!! Words cannot express our anxieties, so I will not try to describe them (Ms A 73r).

Even with suffering (as also shown by the graphological examination of the letters written in this period), Thérèse faces the new trial with great spiritual maturity. Her father’s illness led her to deepen her devotion to the Holy Face, already lived in the family and later in the monastery. In fact, in the no longer recognizable face of the father she sees the features of the Suffering Servant described by the prophet Isaiah (cf. Is 53:1-5 and 63:1-5) and understands more deeply the abyss of humiliation into which the Son of God wished to descend.

The close link that Thérèse places between the trial that struck her father and the Passion of the Lord appears clearly in a Holy Face that she draws in a chasuble shortly after the death of her father, which took place on July 29, 1894. Observing it even superficially, in fact, the similarity of this image of the Holy Face with the somatic features of Louis Martin does not escape^[4].

In the light of Scripture and her father’s illness, Thérèse discovers the essence of the Holy Face: she speaks of “mysteries of love” (cf. Ms A 71r), of “hidden beauties” (cf. LT 108). In her letter of 4 April 1889 she wrote to Céline: “Jesus burns with love for us [...] Look at Jesus in his Face and there you will see how he loves us (LT 87).

In the disfigured Face of the Lord, Thérèse contemplates God’s crazy and gratuitous love for each one of us, beyond our merits. Before that Face there is no longer room for optional, for titanic effort or for the search for merits, but gratitude for an ever anticipated divine grace. Suffering itself acquires meaning only if it is the consequence of love and fidelity to the Gospel. In the letter of July 6, 1893, the saint addresses Céline with these significant words: 

He [Jesus] teaches her to play at the bank of love; but, no, rather it is He who plays with her, without telling her how He does, since this is her business and not Thérèse’s; what concerns her is to abandon herself, to give herself without reserving anything, not even the satisfaction of knowing how much the bank yields (LT 142. Bold mine).

And in the Act of Offering to Merciful Love, of 9 June 1895, she writes: “In the evening of this life, I will appear before you empty-handed, because I do not ask you, Lord, to count my works” (Pr 6. Bold mine).

Significant is what the saint reports in the last pages  of Manuscript C (written in June 1897, therefore three months before her death): “here below I cannot conceive of an immensity of love greater than that which you were pleased on my part to lavish freely without any merit on my part” (Ms C, 35r. Bold mine).

Conrad De Meester summarizes Thérèse’s journey in these terms:

Holiness [...] is no longer a conquest but a grace received. Man, before the God of love, becomes more passive, more receptive. [...] man’s first commitment is to open himself completely to the Redeemer, while his effort becomes collaboration^[5].

And further on: “The will to conquer has been completely transformed into receptivity to the gift”.^[6] Obviously this does not mean a low-profile spirituality: Thérèse in fact – De Meester underlines – “does not neglect any effort to be faithful [...] to the will of God as it is manifested in concrete life.”^[7] The difference lies in a greater peace of mind in the face of powerlessness and one’s own fragility. Letter 142 of 6 July 1893, which we have already quoted in part, constitutes a sort of “manifesto” in this regard.

1. “Let Me Resemble You, Jesus!” (Pr 11)

At this point in her journey, therefore, Thérèse sees holiness from a radically new perspective: it is a question of growing ever more in likeness to the Face of Christ. This is what she expresses in a very short prayer, written on a small parchment in which the Holy Face was depicted. The text sounds like this: “Make me resemble you, Jesus!” (Pr 11). Significant is the fact that the saint always carried this prayer with her, together with others, in a bag pinned with a pin on the side of the heart: almost a visible manifestation of the desire to live the gift of self as a response to the gratuitousness of salvation.

^[1] I quote the writings of the saint using the following volume: S. Teresa di Gesù Bambino, Opere complete. Scritti e ultime parole, LEV-Edizioni OCD, Città del Vaticano-Roma 1997. [Quotations in the original Italian text are translated in this English version unofficially.]

^[2] A. Piccirilli, Fragile come tutti, felice come pochi. Teresa di Lisieux e le nostre ferite, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo 2019, 14. [English translation of book title: Fragile as everyone, happy as few. Thérèse of Lisieux and our wounds.]

^[3] C. De Meester, Teresa di Lisieux. Dinamica della fiducia. Genesi e struttura della «via dell’infanzia spirituale», San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo 1996, 208-210.

^[4] The image is visible in P. Descouvemont – H. N. Loose, Teresa e Lisieux, LEV, Vatican City 1995, 207.

^[5] C. De Meester, A mani vuote. Il messaggio di Teresa di Lisieux, Queriniana, Brescia 1997⁵, 44.

^[6] Ibid., 52.

^[7] Ibid., 53.

^[i] Translator: Saxifrage, also known as rockfoil, any of the flowering plants of the family of Saxifragaceae.