SAINT THERESE OF LISIEUX CENTENARY REFLECTIONS
AUSTRALIAN DISCALCED CARMELITES NO. 4

Pieces of a Jigsaw Puzzle
THE SCHOOL DAYS OF ST. THERESE
Imagine, for a moment, a child sitting down in a quiet room with the scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle before her. She picks up each piece and tries to discover where it belongs. She tests to see how the curves and shapes and colours match the other pieces of the puzzle. She goes through the work of comparing and contrasting and judging. It is a slow business. The full picture is only arrived at when each piece finds its true place.
We can spend many years of our own life, particularly our early years, working on a certain kind of puzzle. It is the puzzle of trying to find out where we belong. It is the puzzle of trying to see clearly how we might fit into the bigger picture of our world. The puzzle of human belonging can be as frustrating as that impossible piece of a jigsaw that just doesn't seem to fit anywhere. Just as we might be tempted to bend or break that jigsaw piece to force it to fit in, so we can be tempted to bend or break ourselves in our efforts to belong. Clearly, in both puzzles, we need a lot of patience and confidence that everything does have a true place in that greater picture.
I have often heard it said that the time spent at school is the best and happiest of one's life. It wasn't this way for me. The five years I spent in school were the saddest in my life…
Story of a Soul, chapter 3.
In the early chapters of the Story of a Soul (the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux) she tells us of her family life. She grew up in a close-knit Catholic family in nineteenth century France. Her family was strongly bound together by faith and their love of God. God was a presence in their daily life and this sense of God's presence in the family was strongly felt by Therese, the youngest child. The family members communicated God's tender love to her and this was particularly important to Therese after her mother's death.
The familiar and tender environment of home communicated something of God's loving embrace to Therese. Reflecting back on those early years, she recognised the God-given privilege of such a positive and loving family environment. In her own words, her family was the "chosen soil" where she could grow and flourish like a flower. In a real sense Thérèse began to discover herself as loved by God through the love of her family.
The poor little flower had become accustomed to burying her fragile roots in a chosen soil made purposely for her. It seemed hard for her to see herself among flowers of all kinds with roots frequently indelicate; and she had to find in this common soil the food necessary for her sustenance!
Story of a Soul, chapter 3.
It is a common experience in human life that we most clearly recognize the things that matter to us when those things are taken away from us. We are all familiar with the saying "absence makes the heart grow stronger." We could also say "absence uncovers and shows what the heart loves and needs most deeply."
Therese's school years were a sad and difficult time for her. During those years she was faced with the question of belonging. The other children played and acted in a way that Therese couldn't understand. She had become used to her way of life at home: times of being alone, times of quietly reflecting and imagining. God, family devotion and play were all woven together in the home-life of young Therese.
At school the other children almost seemed to speak a different language to her: she was intelligent, imaginative and devotional and they seemed content to spend their lives playing with dolls! The young child, Therese, offered what she could in order to find a place in the common soil of her school. She told delightful and imaginative stories during lunch-time and soon had a large, happily captive audience of her fellow students. In the end the teachers put an end to her entertainments that drew the children away from their playground activities.
It comes as no surprise that Therese fell ill during this difficult time of her life. She had been through the death of her mother at an early age. Her dearest sister, Pauline, had left home and entered an enclosed monastery of Carmelite nuns. Therese herself was faced with the disheartening experience of feeling out of place and alone in the playground crowd of school. Soon there would be talk of another sister, Marie, leaving home to enter the same enclosed Carmelite community as Pauline. The safe and dependable environment of the family that spoke so reassuringly of God's tender presence seemed to be gradually slipping away from her. The strain of so much loss finally became obvious both in her relationship with God and in her physical health.
One evening Uncle took me for a walk and spoke about Mamma and about past memories with a kindness that touched me profoundly and made me cry…. That night we were to go to the Catholic Circle meeting, but finding I was too fatigued, Aunt made me go to bed; when I was undressing, I was seized with a strange trembling. Believing I was cold, Aunt covered me with blankets and surrounded me with hot water bottles. But nothing was able to stop my shaking which lasted almost all night.
Story of a Soul, chapter 3.
We are all familiar with the Old Testament story of God's chosen people as they left the slavery of Egypt in search of the Promised Land. In that story the Promised Land represented many things: God's gift of freedom, security, a place of great fruitfulness, a place where the hard-worn people could finally settle and belong. God did not lead those people to the Promised Land by an easy path. The Lord led the chosen people into the wilderness in order to teach them His ways. The wilderness was a place that forced the people to wonder, in their deepest hearts, "How can we go on? How can we survive day after day in such an impossible place?"
That impossible situation opened up the possibility of discovering the Lord in a deep and new way. God led his people into the wilderness so that they might discover, believe and say, "Our staying together and surviving as a people is impossible, and yet, here we are still together and surviving. There can only be one reason why this is so—it is because God is with us as our deep and true Provider. We know God is present because the impossible has become possible for us!"
Each of us shares that common journey of discovery. St. Therese was led into her own wilderness: the death of her Mother, the eventual departure of her two oldest sisters who were like mothers to her in her many needs, the difficulty of fitting into a school-life so different from her home life. She felt and was even physically shaken by this same question, "How can I go on when so much has been taken away? How can I go on when faced with such a daunting wilderness?" Therese began her journey of discovering the answer to these questions at the moment when she was most seriously ill. In her sickness she cried out for her mother. The pain of her loss was uncovered and cried out for an answer. At the moment of her greatest need for a mother's tender embrace and beauty she experienced the tender beauty of Mary, the Mother of God. This was the beginning of an unfolding experience in the life of Therese; an experience of the truth that lies behind the words "God hears the cry of the poor." In the Carmelite monastery of Lisieux, Therese would ponder her life experiences of God answering her cries and she would piece together a spiritual teaching which she would eventually call the Little Way. As a young Carmelite nun she would begin to teach, through word and example, that the uncovering of our poor human needs and limitations can becoming an opening where God can enter our heart and make a permanent home.
Finding no help on earth, poor little Therese had also turned towards the Mother of heaven, and prayed with all her heart that she take pity on her. All of a sudden the Blessed Virgin appeared beautiful to me, so beautiful that never had I seen anything so attractive; her face was suffused with an ineffable benevolence and tenderness, but what penetrated to the very depths of my soul was the "ravishing smile of the Blessed Virgin." At that instant, all my pains disappeared, and two large tears glistened on my eyelashes, and flowed down my cheeks silently, but they were tears of unmixed joy.
Story of a Soul, chapter 3
Therese discovered great healing in the smile and the loving gaze of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was the healing that flowed from the power of Mary's intimate, personal love. Therese's healing was united with the discovery that could only be expressed with the simple words "I am truly seen and loved." Such love can overcome, either suddenly or gradually, the deep barriers and torments in our hearts. And it is in meeting such a loving gaze that we discover our ultimate place of belonging.
At times when we feet that life is on top of us and we begin to feel drained and out of place it can be helpful for us to return to God through prayer. How often do we increase the pace of our lives out of fear of what we might find if we slowed down? How often do we madly scramble to fix up our own lives, and the lives of others, without calling to mind the possibility that God might be offering a better way if we would only turn to meet His loving gaze? Saints like Therese show us that there is nothing to fear and everything to gain if we bring our deepest needs into the presence of God. We can be truly nourished by simply spending time with the One who loves us. If we make time and space each day then God's love, and the love of Mary, can soak into us and gradually begin to change our whole way of living. Placed into God's hands, through such prayer, we find that God will move us into the place where we truly belong. No puzzle is too complicated for our God.

A PRAYER TO MARY
Holy Mary, mother of my Lord, you once gazed with tender love on St. Therese.
Let my eyes meet your eyes so that you might guide me into the peaceful presence of your son, Jesus Christ.
Pray that my heart, in its poor and hungry need, might be drawn more closely to your son who truly is the bread of life now and forever. Amen.

Extracts taken from THE STORY OF A SOUL by St. Thérèse of Lisieux,
ICS Publications, Washington. Reflections by Robert Donnelly

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