A spiritual guide for our times
Last week, the Church celebrated the feast of. This 19th century Discalced Carmelite nun, also popularly known as "The Little Flower", is one of the most loved saints in Church history. Who would blame Pope St Pius X for calling her "the greatest saint of modern times?"
I am particularly captivated by a very telling portrait of St Thérèse presented by her subprioress when the saint was 20 years old.
"Tall and strong, with the appearance of a child, a tone of voice, an expression, hiding within her a wisdom, a perfection, a perspicacity of a fifty-year-old. . . . Little innocent thing, to whom one would give God without confession, but whose head is full of mischief to play on anyone she pleases. Mystic, comic, everything ... she can make you weep with devotion and just as easily split your sides with laughter during our recreations" (GC 2:778).
Yet, this delightful young girl who entered the Carmelite convent to give herself entirely to God for the salvation of the world, experienced that anguish we all experience from time to time. That anguish which confronts us, head on, with our solitude, our desperate quest for a meaning to our life. Let us not forget that, as we continually deal with the need to search for what is an "an authentic existence" and "true life", at times, we fear that we will never be able to enjoy our life, here is Thérèse's experience which strengthens us.
"When I want to rest my heart fatigued by the darkness which surrounds it by the memory of the luminous country after which I aspire, my torment redoubles; it seems to me that the darkness, borrowing the voice of sinners, says mockingly to me: 'You are dreaming about the light, about a fatherland embalmed in the sweetest perfumes; you are dreaming about the eternal possession of the Creator of all these marvels; you believe that one day you will walk out of this fog which surrounds you! Advance, advance; rejoice in death which will give you not what you hope for but a night still more profound, the night of nothingness.'" (SS 213)
Even though almost consumed by this terrible existential anguish, Thérèse kept searching. Nevertheless, she did not engage in a cold intellectual quest for truth but made a humble and decisive choice.
She opened the Bible and from it she would be providentially led out of her existential doubts to a flourishing and joyful life which simple faith certainly instils in the open heart and mind of the believer. Notice how she tackled the doubts she naturally harboured concerning her place in the Church, society and the world at large.
She writes: "Martyrdom was the dream of my youth and this dream has grown with me within Carmel's cloisters. But here again, I feel that my dream is a folly, for I cannot confine myself to desiring one kind of martyrdom. 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. . . . The answer did not fulfil my desires. . . . I continued my reading, and the Apostle explains how all the most perfect gifts are nothing without love. I finally had rest... I understood that love comprised all vocations, that love was everything, that it embraced all times and all places. Then, in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out... my vocation is love" (SS 193-94).
Today, do we not seek love? Do we not expect to be loved to love back? But, what kind of love are we searching for? Possessing others, making them the objects of our likes, and erroneously call our mastery of them "love"? Or let others approach God and help them to become what He wants them to become? The latter is the kind of love St Thérèse embraced as her vocation.
Saint Thérèse, teach me to love as you loved. Amen.
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
Paola