Tag Archives: Carmelites

St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus

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St. Thérèse  of Lisieux was born January 2, 1873 in Alençon, France, the youngest of 9 children. She died in 1897, only 24 years old. Her father, Louis Martin, was a watchmaker; her mother Zelie, a talented lace maker. Pope Francis declared them saints on October 18, 2015, praising them as Christian parents who created “ day by day an environment of faith and love which nurtured the vocations of their daughters, among whom was Saint Thèrése of the Child Jesus.”

St. Thérèse  is one of three women doctors of the church, along with St. Theresa of Avila and St. Catherine of Siena. A few months before her death September 30, 1897 she said, “I feel that my mission is about to begin, to make God loved as I love him, to teach souls my little way…It is the way of spiritual childhood, the way of trust and absolute surrender.” From the time of her death, Thèrése has been teaching her “little way” to countless numbers here on earth. Her feast is October 1.

We know a lot about her, thanks to her own writings and the witness of those who knew her. Her mother, who died when she was 4, wrote of her intelligence and strong spirit. As a little girl, she climbed  onto a swing outside their home and demanded to be pushed ever higher.

Thérèse  described herself and her strong desire for life in a simple story from childhood: “One day, Léonie, thinking she was too big to be playing any longer with dolls, came to us with a basket filled with dresses and pretty pieces for making others; her doll was resting on top. ‘Here, my little sisters, take something; I’m giving you all this.’ Céline took a little ball of wool that pleased her. After a moment’s reflection, I stretched out my hand saying: ‘I want it all!’ and I took the basket without further ceremony

Thérèse  wanted it all. Her “little way” “the way of spiritual childhood, the way of trust and absolute surrender” let God be the creator of her all, for she knew God wanted her to have more than she could ever dream. God would give her everything.

She called herself the “little flower,” one among many flowers in God’s garden. God was the sun that gave her light and the soil that nourished her. She would grow as God willed.

The Lord led her and taught her,

and kept her as the apple of his eye.

Like an eagle spreading its wings

he took her up and bore her on his shoulders.

The Lord alone was her guide. (Entrance antiphon of her Mass, October 1st)

For us today Thérèse  is an important teacher and Doctor the Church. She lived in a world of growing unbelief and a church that was reaching out to worlds unknown. How shall we live in such a world? She offers  wisdom.

The Carmel of Lisieux has a wonderful website about her.

St. Therese of Lisieux

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St. Therese of Lisieux was born in Alencon, France in 1873, the youngest of 9 children. The year she was born the economies of Europe and the United States failed; historians call it the Long Depression; it lasted for 6 years, till 1879. France was hit the hardest.

During this time, her mother died, when Therese was 4 year’s old. Her family was never poverty stricken, but her biographers say she experienced a sense of helplessness and suffering as a child.

She had a spiritual experience on Christmas day 1886, when she was 13. She would always have a special devotion to the Child Jesus. She entered the Carmelite convent when she was 15 and for the next 7 years she lived the simple, routine life of a Carmelite nun until her death of tuberculosis on September 30, 1897. She was only 24.

She kept a notebook of her reflections on the spiritual life and after she died her two sisters who were also Carmelite nuns made the notebook public. They called it The Story of a Soul and it became a spiritual classic among Catholics. Therese called her spirituality “the little way.”

She had a great desire for God and she wanted to die for God if she could. In The Story of a Soul she recalls her envy of people who did great things for God, who built hospitals or were great theologians or who traveled as missionaries to other continents.

Emerging from its depression, France embarked on what it called a “civilizing mission” into Asia and Africa, and one way it tried to civilize places like Vietnam (French Indo-China) was to send Catholic missionaries there. In exciting times like these, Therese thought of herself, living unknown in a convent, as a nobody.

But she made a spiritual discovery:

“Since my longing for martyrdom was powerful and unsettling, I turned to the epistles of St Paul in the hope of finally finding an answer. By chance the 12th and 13th chapters of the 1st epistle to the Corinthians caught my attention, and in the first section I read that not everyone can be an apostle, prophet or teacher, that the Church is composed of a variety of members, and that the eye cannot be the hand. Even with such an answer revealed before me, I was not satisfied and did not find peace.
I persevered in the reading and did not let my mind wander until I found this encouraging theme: Set your desires on the greater gifts. And I will show you the way which surpasses all others. For the Apostle insists that the greater gifts are nothing at all without love and that this same love is surely the best path leading directly to God. At length I had found peace of mind.
When I had looked upon the mystical body of the Church, I recognised myself in none of the members which St Paul described, and what is more, I desired to distinguish myself more favourably within the whole body. Love appeared to me to be the hinge for my vocation. Indeed I knew that the Church had a body composed of various members, but in this body the necessary and more noble member was not lacking; I knew that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love. I knew that one love drove the members of the Church to action, that if this love were extinguished, the apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel no longer, the martyrs would have shed their blood no more. I saw and realised that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and every place. In a word, that love is everlasting.
Then, nearly ecstatic with the supreme joy in my soul, I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my call is love. Certainly I have found my place in the Church, and you gave me that very place, my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and thus I will be all things, as my desire finds its direction.”

Her love transformed all she did, however small, into a gift for God.