‘LITTLE Therese,” was her reply when asked how she wanted to be called. “I am a very little soul who can only offer very little things to God,” she said.
The only means of making great progress on the way of love is to remain always very little. Little is the fundamental attitude on how man should respond to God who made Himself a little child wrapped in swaddling clothes on Christmas Day.
In the writings of Saint Therese the word “little” is repeated 1,981 times. To Fr. Maurice Bathelemy Balliere, an aspiring missionary priest entrusted by the Mother Prioress for Therese to pray for, she wrote: “I cannot fear a God who became so little. He is only love and mercy.”
She added “and of the Holy Face” to her religious name because she loved the baby Jesus, as well as His face during His passion. This is the mystical vision she saw on Christmas Day of 1886, narrated Rosemary Haughton in The Story of Saint Therese of Lisieux.
Family of faith and piety
Saint Therese was born on January 2, 1873, to Louise Joseph Aloysius Stanislau Martin and Zelie Marie Guerin, a middle-class family in Alençon, France.
Louis wanted to be a monk and Zelie, a nun. But the Saint Bernard Seminary rejected Louis because he did not know Latin. To Zelie, the superior of Saint Vincent de Paul said bluntly that religious life is not the will of God for her.
John Beevers in Saint Therese, the Little Flower: The Making of a Saint quoted Zelie’s prayer: “Lord since I am not worthy to be Your bride, I will marry. I beseech You, give me many children and let them all be consecrated to You.”
Therese is the youngest among nine children, but only five lived to adulthood and all became nuns; four Carmelites and one Visitandine.
The youngest of nine children, little Therese is the favorite in the family. A lively and happy child, she read the lives of saints and learned about how to live a life of holiness.
On how the readings inspired her, Therese wrote: “They intensified my yearning after the good and the beautiful, guided and enraptured the years of my youth. I caught a glimpse of the ideal of sanctity.”
She had her first communion on May 8, 1884, and confirmation on June 14. In school she was considered odd, but meticulously faithful to details of rules.
She applied in Carmel of Lisieux Monastery at the age of 9 and was denied admission. The only time she left Lisieux was when she went to Rome with her father and Celine on November 4, 1887.
In an audience with Pope Leo XIII she begged him to help her enter the Carmel Monastery. She broke into tears when His Holiness, instead of words of support to her plea, told her to “be patient, pray very much, seek counsel from God and her conscience.”
On New Year’s Day of 1888 she was informed that the monastery has accepted her application, but it was on April 9, 1888, that she finally entered cloistered life because of her age and frail health.
‘My call is love’
She was welcomed to the Carmelite Monastery of Lisieux by her older sisters, Sister Mary of the Sacred Heart and Sister Agnes of Jesus.
In her Spiritual Biography, The History of a Soul, she wrote: “O Jesus at last I have found my place in the church: my call is love.”
She took the name Therese of the Child Jesus, the name she desired when she was 9 years old.
A spiritual child of Saint John of the Cross, she lived his motto, “Love is repaid by love alone.”
“I understand so well that it is only love which makes us acceptable to God, this love is the only good I ambition,” she said.
She welcomed the silence, poverty, prayer life, simplicity of life in Carmel, convinced that she was destined by God to be a Carmelite until death.
With an ardent desire to be a saint like Teresa of Ávila, she performed all ordinary daily tasks in extraordinary way—with love.
She was even reprimanded by Father Blino who counseled her: “Confine yourself to the correction of your faults; see that you offend the good God no more; make some little progress each day, and moderate your desires.”
Although her health had never been very good since she entered Carmel, she lived a life of total abandonment and accepted the assignment—Mistress of Novices at age 20.
She taught the novices her method of spirituality, the Doctrine of Little Way.
Dark night of her soul
On Good Friday of 1897, she coughed blood but downplayed the incident. The community had been accustomed to her coughing spells, sore throat, fevers, on and off fatigue since she never complained of anything.
In May she was relieved of all her duties and later confined to the infirmary, her emaciated body reduced to a pitiable form.
Going through “the dark night of a soul,” she confided to her Sister Pauline the frightful thoughts that obsess her and requested her not to leave poisonous medicine within her reach.
Rev. Pere Godefrey Madelaine the community confessor counseled her to “copy the credo and wear it over her heart.” She did but wrote it in her own blood.
Sufferings did not affect her amiable cheerfulness nor dampen the community. She even joked. “When the Divine Thief comes to fetch me, put a candle in my hand but not the candlestick, please. It is too ugly.”
“I will spend my heaven doing good upon earth… I will let fall from heaven a shower of roses.”
On September 30, 1897, at 7:20 in the evening, Therese looked at the crucifix, lifted her head, with eyes fixed above.
“Oh I love Him…. My God…. I love you,” she said, and breathed her last. She was 24 years old.
Therese was declared saint on May 17, 1925, by Pope Pius XI and proclaimed her “the greatest saint of modern times.”
She shares with Saint Joan of Arc the title Patroness of France, and with Saint Francis Xavier, the Patron Saint of Foreign Missions to signify that prayer and action are complimentary in evangelization.
She was declared Doctor of the Church in 1997 by Pope John Paul II.
Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris College in Laguna.
Image credits: Jesus Totus2us.com