Tuesday, 10/1/13
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Theresa of Lisieux, a
French Carmelite who lived from 1863 to 1897, dying of tuberculosis. On the
occasion her death, her community, as was the custom among Carmelites, sent a
brief history of her life around to the other convents. In her case, they augmented
that history with an autobiography she had written in obedience to her mother
superior. That summery of her life, that she called “The Story of a Soul,” somehow
got out to a world that has embraced her as its “Little Flower.”
It’s over sixty years since I read the story of her soul,
but let me mention a few items I recall. Her mother’s death when Theresa was
four, along with her own bouts of sickness and scruples, left her a weak little
girl until she was thirteen.
A highlight in those years had been her careful training for
her first confession. So, on the big day she felt she was kneeling next to God
to whom she could unburden her heart. That had her stunning the priest by
bursting out with, “Oh, I love you!”
The weakness of her nature was replaced by a great
staunchness on Christmas Eve when she was thirteen. As little girls would do,
she had put out her shoe for St. Nicolas. Then, she overheard her father asking
her sister, “How long will Theresa go on being a child?” Rather than being cast
down by those words, Theresa used them as a means for instantly becoming mature.
Seventy years before her time the French priest Robert de
Lamenais had composed a beautiful French translation of “The Imitation of Christ.”
With that as her constant friend, Theresa forged on to spiritual strength. At
fifteen she followed two of her sisters into the Carmelite Convent at Lisieux,
where she was later joined by a fourth sister who had been carrying for their
father.
As nuns reaching for sanctity, the Carmelite sisters had all
chosen one or another of the Church’s great saints as models, but Theresa found
her own way. Often troubled by weeks and years when God didn’t seem to be there
for her, Theresa began seeing herself as a pretty little ball that the Child
Jesus at time played with lovingly, while often deserting it in a corner for
long spells. That made her Theresa of the Child Jesus
With her tuberculosis severely weakening her, Theresa was at
first pleased by comments about her looking well; but then, on being greeted by
an equal number of comments on how poorly she looked; she decided against
letting the comments of others alter the way she felt in God’s presence.
The pains in her final weeks were unbelievably harsh on her,
but toward the end, she made them into sweet calls from her Jesus, and she
longed for more of them.
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