St Therese of Lisieux was born into a bourgeois home in Normandy, and at 15 entered an obscure Carmelite convent. She died, aged only 24, from tuberculosis in 1897. After her death, her fellow nuns wondered what on earth they could put in her obituary - she had, many said, done nothing special at all, and her short journey on this earth had been thoroughly unremarkable.
Yet, by 1899, her family considered leaving Lisieux because so many people were demanding to see where she'd lived, to pray at her grave, and to question her sisters about Therese's spirituality. What had happened?
In 1898, the convent had had published Therese's spiritual autobiography, "The Story of a Soul", and it had taken the world by storm. Everyone who read it was touched. They could all relate to her particular "brand" of spiritual progress, and their thirst for more knowledge about her was insatiable. Later, her letters, poems and other writings were also published, as were her conversations, and again, the public loved them. Admirers included the philosopher Henri Bergson, and great spiritual leaders such as Pope John Paul II.
Eventually she was canonized and given the title of "Doctor of the Church", and made a patron saint of Europe. Today, more than a million visitors visit Lisieux each year to pray at her tomb, and millions more the world over, including many Muslims, pray to her for help and try to follow what she termed her "Little Way" of spirituality, what some have called the "Way of Spiritual Childhood".
In many respects, this Way is like the Work. It embodies many of the timeless, universal spiritual practices that are common to all the great religions and also includes specific Catholic teachings, such as the need to "offer up" one's suffering. The Little Way differs radically from the Jansenist Catholicism then prevalent in France, which stressed the need to fear God, and was a gloomy, pessimistic approach to spirituality. Instinctively, people knew that Therese's Way was right: they could follow it themselves, and yet it could also inspire and guide great souls.
What was so special about it? And in what ways does it foreshadow the Work?
To understand Therese's Little Way, you have to understand Therese, the person. Her wonderful books are a fine introduction, but there are also many excellent biographies available now, among the best being those written by Guy Gaucher, Ida Gorres, and Jean-Francois Six. Do read them if Therese attracts you, but first read her own account of her spiritual growth.
But to gain much from it, you have to lay aside any prejudices against the somewhat flowery and sentimental language of late 19th century French Catholicism, and read the account as what it is; a straightforward response to a request from one of her sisters to write an account of their family life, so that they could all read and enjoy it together in the convent. Without this request, it would never have been written.
Therese was not identified with her writing. She gave it to her Mother Superior, who put it in a drawer and promptly forgot about it until after Therese's death. And Therese didn't mind. She simply accepted all that happened as coming from God's hand. If God willed that her work should be neglected, then so be it.
As a young girl, however, Therese acknowledged that she was both vain and proud. She loved the little blue ribbons that, when she was a child, set off her pretty blonde hair! When her mother presented her with a basket full of tempting trifles and asked her to choose something from it, as her sisters had done, Therese said firmly, "I choose everything!" and marched off with the basket.
Growing older, she realized her faults would displease God, and so, even before she entered the convent at the age of 15, she began to work on herself, refraining from gossip, letting go of her vanity, subduing her pride, visiting poor and sick parishioners.
But the then current spiritual climate encouraged people to add up their virtues and sacrifices, as though they were pearls in a heavenly crown! Therese, on the other hand, said that if she had any merits at the end of the day, she offered them all to God. If He, in His mercy, wanted to give her blessings, then she would accept them with open hands but with eyes shut, and turning her head away, so that she would not know what they were but would simply pass them on to others.
What is this but non-identification? And further, if, at evening, she found she had done little or nothing worthwhile and had failed in her efforts, then she would simply offer to God her failures, her "littleness".
This is the secret of her Little Way. It is for "little people", those who can see themselves clearly as they are and know they are without any merits of their own, but whose trust in God allows them to run to His mercy and offer up this self-knowledge.
And isn't this exactly what we do in the Work? Our necessary suffering includes the clear view we have of ourselves when we are brave enough to be honest, that we cannot "do" and frequently fail. To see ourselves in this way, without denying or justifying, is the greatest gift we can offer to Conscious Humanity, and the surest way to spiritual understanding.
Before Therese, nobody but the greatest saints dared to approach God in this way, and consequently people often felt cut off from Him and despondent about their spiritual progress. But Therese says, look, this is how we are, and we shouldn't try to run away from this knowledge, because God is merciful and kind and wants only our complete trust in Him. He never turns His face away from anyone who comes to Him honestly and asks for His mercy. And He is pleased when we accept His graces, which are completely unmerited by us, and when we use them for His glory.
All Therese's convent life centered around self-sacrifice. There were frequent mortifications and interruptions. She was prevented from becoming from identified with the work she was doing, whether physical or mental, by the demands of the next bell, ringing for choir or meal times, when she had to literally put down her pen in the middle of a word and present herself for the next task.
Her illness imposed terrible suffering, for there were no antibiotics, and she was denied pain relief. Today, we would see this as cruel and inhumane, but Therese simply accepted this, too, as coming from God, and refused to complain or to pity herself.
Daily meditation is part of a Carmelite's life, and she had begun this practice as a young child, sitting on her bed and "just thinking about God". In the convent, her hours of contemplative prayer were vital to her growth in knowledge and love of God. Like our morning preparation in the Work, they were the vital foundation of her whole day, and she never missed them.
During her short life she underwent two Dark Nights. The first, the Dark Night of the Senses, consisted of the life of penance and mortification she led as an enclosed Carmelite. The second, the Dark Night of the Soul, which she experienced in the final year of her life, consisted in feeling bereft of spiritual consolations, and that she was drifting along in a sort of twilight, underground.
On her deathbed, however, her sister nuns were struck by the sudden expression of wonder and ecstasy that she assumed just as she was dying. It lasted for several minutes, as though she was experiencing a direct vision of heaven itself, and they were in no doubt that when she actually died, she had gone straight there.
Shortly after she died, miracles began happening to those who invoked her help, and they have not ceased ever since.
In Work terms, I would venture to say that her life was so full of discipline and suffering, willingly accepted, that she accumulated a vast store of Higher Hydrogens, a huge amount of spiritual energy that could then be used by Conscious Humanity, by Jesus and His helpers, saints of all traditions, souls both unknown and unknown, to redeem, comfort and rescue those in distress.
Once a novice nun, finding convent life hard and coming to Therese for advice, complained, "How much I shall have to gain if I'm to make any progress!"
"No," said Therese. "Rather, think of how much you have to lose." She meant, of course, that growing in the spirit requires sacrificing pride, vanity, envy, and all selfish desires.
And that, too, is the Work.
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