Saint Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897)

Instead of becoming discouraged, I said to myself: God cannot inspire unrealisable desires. I can, then, in spite of my littleness, aspire to holiness. It is impossible for me to grow up, and so I must bear with myself such as I am with all my imperfections. But I want to seek out a means of going to heaven by a little way, a way that is very straight, very short, and totally new.
- Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul, (Washington: ICS Publications, Third edition, 1996) 207
Love is nourished only by sacrifices, and the more a soul refuses natural satisfactions, the stronger and more disinterested becomes her tenderness. - Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul, 237

After a brief, but extremely well-documented life, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux died at twenty-four in the Carmelite convent she had entered at fifteen. She is still often the object of excessively sentimental devotion and yet she also wrote some of the most precious prose in our tradition. She was the woman of whom Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker, wrote admiringly, "Always she was praying that she would see things as they were, that she would live in reality, not in dreams." For Day, the concrete nature of Thérèse's teachings swept away abstract elements of Marxist theory to allow her to place her own work for reform and social justice in the context of a rich spirituality.
Thérèse is easy to overlook or misconstrue. Her writing presents her as a precocious and very narrowly educated schoolgirl. If you can struggle through her autobiography (especially Manuscript A of Story of a Soul), certain passages will strike you-things that no other schoolgirl would ever say. Repeatedly Thérèse offers this fascinating incongruity-this plainly imperfect fit between, on the one hand, the bright, well-brought-up child of the bourgeoisie, and the "old soul," on the other, so intent on shedding every obstacle to spiritual awareness that she is just barely in the body.
In Thérèse we are privileged to see for the first time an extremely close view of the earliest years of a saint and mystic-in-the-making. The brevity of her life, balanced by an extensive collection of letters, diaries, testimonies-and even photographs-allows and even obliges her biographers to examine exhaustively episodes that would have been passed over briefly in a longer life. We have been blessed in this because it is the smallest things that happened to Thérèse that have contributed to the process of her transformation. It is almost as if her spiritual development was so compressed and efficient because she knew from the beginning it would need to be.

Birth & Childhood

Thérèse Martin was the fifth daughter and youngest child of Zelie and Louis Martin; she was born on 2nd January, 1873, in the town of Alençon, in Normandy, France. When Thérèse was born, her mother was forty-two, and had been sick for eight years she would die four-and-a-half years later of breast cancer.
Thérèse fell ill soon after her birth; she was sent to a farm to be under the care of a 'wet nurse'. She eventually recovered at fifteen months and returned home, to become the special favourite of a very affectionate family. "My earliest recollections are of tender caresses and smiles" and "I was always cherished with the most loving care." It sounds idyllic-long walks in the meadows carried on her father's shoulders, games and reading in the evening, being adored by older sisters.
The family was particularly devout: Thérèse's parents went to mass every day and took communion four or five times a week, when it wasn't the standard practice. France, of course, was no longer an officially Catholic nation. By all accounts her early childhood was marked by parents who made a stand against contemporary society that was marked by isolating and defensive piety. The well-balanced and beautiful worldview that Thérèse eventually adopts is all the more remarkable given her early family background.
Before meeting, both her parents had attempted to enter religious life; both had been turned away-he because he did not know Latin, and she for no known reason. Denied admission, Zelie Guerin vowed instead that she would bring many children into the world for God. Meanwhile, to support herself and to provide the dowry she would need, she became a professional lacemaker. She quickly built up a small business that employed several other women that she had trained.
Louis Martin dealt with his own disappointment by constructing a way of life that was broadly monastic. A watchmaker and jeweller by profession, when not engaged in religious activities of one kind or another, he took long walks, fished, and read a great deal. One day, as the two of them were crossing a bridge from opposite sides (she was about twenty-seven; he was thirty-six), their eyes met. Certain immediately that this man was the father-to-be of all those planned children, Zelie found out who his family was and managed to meet him. They married three months later, but Louis did not respond immediately to Zelie's plans; the couple remained celibate for ten months until the intervention of their spiritual director. In time the strong sense of calling of Zelie was shared by her husband who applied himself to his children's upbringing with whole-hearted dedication. Zelie's business flourished and Louis quit his own to help manage hers.
While Louis was a dreamer, idealistic and introverted, Zelie was more extroverted, and she possessed a formidable energy and strength of will, was generous and very affectionate. She loved motherhood, adoring each new child in turn. Writing to Pauline, her letters are filled with news about three-year-old Thérèse: "She has a blonde little head and a golden heart, and is very tender and candid." Again, "She is going to be wonderfully good; the germ of goodness can already be seen." But also, "She is such a little madcap ... not nearly so docile as her sister. When she says 'no,' nothing can make her change, and she can be terribly obstinate. You could keep her down in the cellar all day without getting a 'yes' out of her; she would rather sleep there."

Death of her mother

Zelie never doubted the vocation of her daughters; with Thérèse she had a special intuition. She was decidedly the stronger parent; her husband was burdened by a certain fragility that would become more pronounced as he grew older. The girls began to speak protectively about him. After their mother's funeral, they arranged among themselves that the youngest two, Celine and Thérèse, would adopt the eldest two as their second mothers. Thérèse went to Pauline, Celine to Marie.
The death of Zelie, was a devastating blow to the whole family. They moved soon after to the town of Lisieux, where Louis hoped to put painful memories behind them all. He also wanted to protect his daughters from the worldliness of their friends and relatives in Alençon. Pauline (aged 16) and Marie (aged 17) took full responsibility for the youngest two, as well as running the household and servants and guided both the intellectual and spiritual development of their younger sisters. The first word Thérèse read was heaven, and her earliest reading lessons were from the Bible. She adored Pauline and obeyed her in everything.
Thérèse's recollection of these days regarding spiritual things can seem lamentably precious and external: pretty strings of beads on which to record daily "sacrifices," beautifully bound little books to hold "acts of virtue" (each page decorated, of course, with a flower-roses for acts of love, violets for acts of humility, and so on). No sooner are we aware of this claustrophobic atmosphere when we must also recognise its strengths. In one of their frequent theological discussions, for example, Thérèse asked Pauline about fairness in heaven: is glory distributed evenly or do the spiritual giants get more- Pauline's masterful answer is recalled years later by Thérèse:
You sent me off to fetch one of Father's big glasses and had me put my little thimble by the side of it; then you filled them both up with water and asked me which I thought was the fuller. I had to admit that one was just as full as the other because neither of them would hold any more. That was the way you helped me to grasp how it was that in Heaven the least have no cause to envy the greatest. (45) All references are to Story of a Soul.
This surely is the origin of that fervent celebration of diversity with which Thérèse commences her memoirs: "I understood how all the flowers He has created are beautiful, how the splendour of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not take away the perfume of the little violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy" (14).
Thinking about her life, Thérèse saw it as falling into three periods. The first, extremely happy, ended when her mother died. The second lasted about eight years and was a time of utter disequilibrium and struggle. The third, began with her 'second conversion' at thirteen when she rediscovered her spiritual and emotional footing, extended through the rest of her life.

The Distressing Years

After her mother's death, little was seen of the wildness that Thérèse had displayed as a little girl. Her stubbornness changed into a will of steel, and became 'inordinately conscientious' and 'unnervingly self- controlled'. Her infant sensibility now became extremely pronounced, subjecting her to fits of depression and anxiety attacks.
At eight and a half, Thérèse started school in a class of girls several years older because she had been so well prepared. Despite her nearly perfect grades and her painfully exemplary behaviour, the experience was disastrous. She was timid and shy and never learned to enjoy the (sometimes rough) games that went on at recess. She would remark of herself later that she had never had the art of getting people to like her. Her family only found out later, when she wrote about it, how unhappy she had been; she confided in none of them at the time. Very likely, being able to return to their midst every evening was all that made school endurable: their ignorance of her misery probably allowed her to forget it when she was with them.
When Thérèse was nine, she received another deep blow in the loss of her beloved second mother-not to death, but to the Carmel in Lisieux. "In one instant, I understood what life was; until then, I had never seen it so sad; but it appeared to me in all its reality, and I saw it was nothing but a continual suffering and separateness" (58). At a deep level, she understood and accepted these things as true. But as a nine-year-old girl, she was absolutely unready to accept this appalling vision of things, and began to have incessant headaches, fits of shivering and tears which would come over her and then high fevers and terrible convulsions. Her condition lasted for months.
The cure would come in a form that answered precisely the sense of abandonment that underlay her condition. Fearing for her life, her sisters knelt one night before a statue of the Blessed Virgin. Thérèse looked over, and "suddenly the statue came to life, and Mary appeared utterly lovely. Then all my pain was gone." She realized that she had a mother, after all, whom nothing and nobody could take away.
Thérèse recovered, although school continued to be sheer hell for her. She could not form friendships-not even with her teachers. It didn't help that her sister Celine flourished at the same school. Looking back, Thérèse remains baffled: "When I noticed Celine showing affection for one of her teachers, I wanted to imitate her, but not knowing how to win the good graces of creatures, I was unable to succeed" (8o). She became increasingly more indrawn and isolated and more preoccupied with her spiritual state. Before her first communion, she wrote out three resolutions: "I will never lose courage. I will say a Memorare every day. I will take pains to humble my arrogance." Of her confirmation, soon afterward she wrote, "On that day I was given the strength to suffer." She needed an extra measure of courage to face what lay ahead.

One would have to pass through this martyrdom to understand it well ... All my most simple thoughts and actions became the cause of trouble for me, and I had relief only when I told them to Marie. This cost me dearly, for I believed I was obliged to tell her the absurd thoughts I had even about her. As soon as I laid down my burden, I experienced peace for an instant; but this peace passed away like a lightning-flash, and soon my martyrdom began over again. (84-85)

Thérèse had fallen victim to "the terrible sickness of scruples" (Story of a Soul 84). The word comes from the Latin scrupulus, which means a small sharp stone, something that "weighs" on the mind and hurts, like a pebble in the shoe. Scruples are a serious affliction, symptomatic of an acute, paralysing self-consciousness.
Her sister, Marie-down-to-earth and unflappable-took Thérèse in hand now with breathtaking competence. She allowed Thérèse to tell the priest only two or three imagined sins at each confession, and even specified which ones. While Thérèse's affliction continued it did not deepen.
Tears, agitation and over-sensitivity-typical perhaps for girls of her age-but in Thérèse's case, it was exacerbated by an obsession with being good. We read with some dismay that Celine said later of this period, "She kept a grip on herself at every moment, and in the smallest things." She fell ill again-not seriously this time-but enough to persuade her father that she should be withdrawn from school and complete her education (such as it was) with private lessons.
In October of that year, Marie followed Pauline into Carmel, and Thérèse fell into deepening solitude. "I was really unbearable because of my extreme touchiness.... If I caused someone some little trouble, I cried like a Magdalene, and then when I began to cheer up, I cried for having cried..." (97). The turning point finally came at Christmas. It is wonderfully typical of Thérèse, this mystic who admits as a professed nun to having slept through virtually all of her appointed hours of prayer, that the transformative moment of her life came not as a dazzling visionary experience, but in the context of a perfectly harmless domestic episode.

Christmas Grace

The family tradition was that the children would find their shoes filled with candy and small gifts on Christmas Eve. Papa and the three youngest girls arrived home from mass, and while Thérèse was upstairs to remove her hat, about to run down and make a fuss over her gifts, she heard her father, in a rare moment of irritability, say to Celine that he was glad this will be the last year. Since Thérèse had really only put her shoes out to entertain him anyway, she was deeply mortified. Celine, knowing her sensitivity, urged her not to go down stairs: she might cry if she tried to open her presents in front of her father just then.
"But Thérèse was no longer the same." (98) She felt an influx of strength and clarity that she could only assume was a gift from the Child Jesus. "I descended the stairs rapidly; controlling the poundings of my heart, I took my slippers and placed them in front of Papa, and withdrew the objects joyfully." That night, she wrote, "began the third period of my life, the most beautiful and the most filled with graces from heaven" (Story of a Soul 98). "I felt charity slip into my soul, and the need to forget myself and to please others." (99)
It sounds so trivial, yet Thérèse identifies this event as her "second conversion"-the grace to leave childhood. The external form is not important: it is merely the "outward and visible sign" of a transformation that has been building for years and will go on bearing fruit across the years to come. From this moment on, thirteen-year-old Thérèse was able to shed the overwhelming timidity and self-consciousness that had marred most of her childhood. She blossomed in every way, and everyone recognized it. A talented student all along, she only now discovered a real passion for learning and read science and history with enormous delight. Recalling the cry of Jesus on the cross awakened in Thérèse a great thirst for souls, particularly the souls of "great sinners." (99)
Her great struggle to be good was behind her. She must still strive (like all of us) but she now understood that it is not our own strivings, in the end, that bring us closer to God. She learnt to accept her limitations and trust in God to remove them-opening herself to God's transforming grace. We must do the same! In fact, for the rest of her life, the whole focus of her practice would be to put herself entirely at God's disposal until at last she could say, "Now abandonment alone guides me-I have no other compass!" (178).

[To be continued...]

This account draws heavily from the masterful and refreshing work of Carol Lee Flanders, Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1993), chapter 7. The full work is highly recommended, as also is the biography of Thérèse by Ida Gorres, The Hidden Face (London: Burns & Oates, 1959)

Read another account (part 1) (part 2) (part 3)
See also: Reflections written for the Centenary of the Death of Therese
See also: Therese & Maurice