The Little Flower

"Thérèse of Lisieux is the patron saint of people with AIDS, aviators, florists, illness(es) and missions."  (An odd mix indeed!) According to one of her biographers, Guy Gaucher, after her death, "Thérèse fell victim to an excess of sentimental devotion which betrayed her. She was victim also to her language, which was that of the late nineteenth century and flowed from the religiosity of her age." Thérèse herself said on her death-bed, "I only love simplicity. I have a horror of pretence", and she spoke out against some of the Lives of saints written in her day," We should not say improbable things, or things we do not know. We must see their real, and not their imagined lives."

I always regarded devotion to "the Little Flower" as a sign of soppy piety, but can accept Gaucher's analysis as a reason to look beyond my gut reaction and take her insights more seriously.  These are some of her thoughts I agree with.

"Sometimes, when I read spiritual treatises in which perfection is shown with a thousand obstacles, surrounded by a crowd of illusions, my poor little mind quickly tires. I close the learned book which is breaking my head and drying up my heart, and I take up Holy Scripture. Then all seems luminous to me; a single word uncovers for my soul infinite horizons; perfection seems simple; I see that it is enough to recognize one's nothingness and to abandon oneself, like a child, into God's arms. Leaving to great souls, to great minds, the beautiful books I cannot understand, I rejoice to be little because 'only children, and those who are like them, will be admitted to the heavenly banquet.' "

"For me, prayer is a movement of the heart; it is a simple glance toward Heaven; it is a cry of gratitude and love in times of trial as well as in times of joy; finally, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus. . . . I have not the courage to look through books for beautiful prayers.... I do like a child who does not know how to read; I say very simply to God what I want to say, and He always understands me." 

"O Father in Heaven, Who through St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus of the Holy Face, dost desire to remind the world of the Merciful Love that fills Thy Heart, and the childlike trust we should have in Thee, humbly we thank Thee for having crowned with so great glory Thine ever faithful child, and for giving her wondrous power to bring unto Thee, day by day, innumerable souls who will praise Thee eternally.

 

St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus of the Holy Face, remember thy promise to do good upon earth, shower down thy roses on those who invoke thee and obtain for us from God the graces we hope for from His infinite goodness. Amen"

Therese of the Child Jesus

I have mixed feelings about the "Little Flower". Though I must say it's not her fault. The saccharine quality of some of the devotion surrounding her leaves me terribly cool. I blame the Victorians. In her own writings, Therese comes through quite differently.

"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 one 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."

From the Autobiography of Therese of Lisieux.

And also this snippet from the Universalis website.

What makes St Thérèse so special?

We have grown used to the idea that just as there are people with talents for sport or scholarship, and the rest of us can only admire them without trying to keep up, so there are people with a talent for holiness and heroic virtue, and the rest of us can only bumble along as best we can. We can’t do better because we’re not designed to do better, so there’s no point in trying. We sink into a consoling mediocrity.

Thérèse wrecks this. She was physically weak and psychologically vulnerable. For her the great saints were giants, they were inaccessible mountains, and she was only an “obscure grain of sand;” but she was not discouraged. St John of the Cross taught her that God can never inspire desires that cannot be fulfilled. The Book of Proverbs told her, “If anyone is a very little one, let him come to me.” If you only look, Scripture is permeated with images of our littleness and weakness with respect to God, and of his care for us in our insignificance.

Thérèse’s “Little Way” means taking God at his word and letting his love for us wash away our sins and imperfections. When a priest told her that her falling asleep during prayer was due to a want of fervour and fidelity and she should be desolate over it, she wrote “I am not desolate. I remember that little children are just as pleasing to their parents when they are asleep as when they are awake.”

Today, Therese's relics are on a tour of England and Wales. Again, venerating relics leaves me very cool indeed (the forearm of St Francis Xavier in the Gesu in Rome really made me squirm), but the very fact that on her this her Feast day they are in the great Anglican Cathedral of York Minster and that pilgrims are thronging there is truly marvellous. After a long chill in Anglican RC relations, it is good to feel a bit of a thaw. Perhaps that thaw is due to the moves of the ABC to bring about a more centralised Anglican Communion through Covenant and Instruments. Which poses the interesting question: "Does the end of Unity justify a means which changes the essential nature of Anglican Polity?" With my Anglo-Papalist leanings, I feel a degree of division in my own mind about all this. Unity yes, but Rome has to budge too. It cannot be totally about conforming to her. That is Conversion, not the convergence Geoffrey Fisher suggested to John XXIII.

But Therese remains a reminder ultimately to me of the truth of the Magnificat:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour;
he has looked with favour on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed;
the Almighty has done great things for me
and holy is his name.

Therese of Lisieux, pray for us.