Saint Thérèse, a missionary heart

“I would like to travel the earth… Announce the Gospel in the five parts of the world and even in the most remote islands. » Thérèse, patron saint of missions? At first glance, it is a paradox: she only left her Normandy to go to Rome, before burying herself behind the fence… Thérèse, who certainly burned with the desire for adventure, to be ” warrior, apostle, martyr”, perceived the impossibility of it: “O Jesus! my love, my life… How can I realize the desires in my poor little soul? »

She discovered the answer while meditating on Saint Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: the Church is a body, of which Christ is the head. If she cannot be the arm, then she will be the heart: “My vocation is love! » Thérèse entered the Carmel because she “saw in prayer the most effective action to work for the salvation of souls”, explains Jacques Gauthier, theologian and specialist on Saint Thérèse.

“May Thérèse, in the heart of our mother Church, maintain the flame of love without which the works of the Church and even our ministry would be of little effect, but which maintains the Church in an authentic state of mission, the mission of Christ! » prayed John Paul II. Two missionaries were particularly entrusted to him, Fathers Roulland and Bellière. Through them, as now through her relics, she finally “traveled the Earth”.

Prayer Master

“My heaven is to remain always in his presence. » Thérèse makes the prayer very simple: “It is an impulse of the heart, it is a simple look thrown towards the sky, it is a cry of recognition and love in the heart of the ordeal as well as in the heart of the joy ; finally it is something great, supernatural which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus. » Prayer is not a rite, but “the spontaneous activity of one’s being, the outpouring of one’s life, one’s spiritual breathing”, explains Victor Sion. Thérèse received great gifts, but, like her, we can ask for the grace to know how to pray, and to work without rest or worry.

Because Thérèse encountered the same difficulties as us: boredom, distractions… to the point of falling asleep during her two hours of daily prayer at the Carmel. Especially since community prayer and the rosary are not in his temperament. She is a contemplative, focusing on a psalm verse for months, speaking to God as a friend. Thérèse’s prayer does not consist of performing feats, but of removing what obstructs God. At 24, she was ill with tuberculosis and plunged into the darkness of faith. Her stubbornness purifies her heart, detaches her from any search for ecstasies or consolations to direct her towards the sole will of God: charity and trust. When she doubts everything, she only says: “Lord Jesus, have mercy on me,” or even “Jesus!” » Or she says nothing, just watches.

Doctor of the Church

“I want to look for a way to get to heaven by a very straight, very short little way, a very new little way. » New point of astonishment. On the day of Thérèse’s funeral, a sister wonders what will be remembered about her. And it is this same Thérèse that John Paul II proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1997… “The spirit of truth opened to her and made known to her what he is wont to hide from the wise and learned in order to reveal it to little ones,” specifies the apostolic letter published then. Thérèse draws her knowledge of God from her heart and from the Scriptures. Neither treaty nor doctrine, God reveals himself in his life. This is what makes it so accessible. In a century marked by Jansenism, she discovers herself a child of a good and merciful God, who offers her salvation freely. “If anyone is very little, let him come to me,” she reads in the Gospel. His “little way” consists of accepting his smallness and abandoning himself in trust to welcome, empty-handed, the love and peace that God wants to give. Thérèse democratizes holiness. It is in the ordinary of days that everything is at stake. “Because it is small and weak, it signifies to those at the bottom that they are worthy of existence and that even greatness is for them,” analyzes the theologian Maurice Bellet. For her, love is the truth of everything, it makes up for everything. And it carries with it all those who, faced with an ideal of perfection, do not feel up to it…”

Guide in the test

“I do not desire suffering or death, and yet I love them both, but it is love alone that attracts me…” “Thérèse’s spirituality is positive but she also knows that we cannot cannot escape the tragedy of life: we are far from a Christianity which prescribes obligatory happiness,” explains François Marxer, teacher at the Jesuit Faculties of Paris. Thérèse experienced suffering in her flesh. Orphaned by her mother, marked by psychological frailties, agony and her night of faith which lasted eighteen months. There is no dolorism in her: she does not count on merits. She meditates on the condition of Christ on the cross, which every man joins in suffering. And now the suffering is no longer useless. It is a way to detach yourself from yourself, to love better. Find in God alone the source of your joy. Because Thérèse is passionate about the search for truth and her suffering protects her from illusion. When, after Easter 1896, she feared going towards nothingness, the persistent desire she had to love Jesus seemed to her the measure of truth. This ordeal brings her closer to those who do not believe and seek meaning in life. She also discovers hope, not a blissful optimism but a total trust in a God who will not abandon her.

A style

“I need to tell you about the little four-year-old elf. » “It seems that Thérèse was very funny during recess. I think she was happy. She had no taste for sadness,” notes Maurice Bellet, also reporting the words of Mother Marie de Gonzague about Thérèse: “Mystical, comical, everything suits her. » Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus kept the playfulness, mixed with deep seriousness, of her childhood, where she already played in the theater – later, she would direct Joan of Arc at the Carmel – and recounts her adventures with her cousin Marie or her sister Céline, worthy of the Countess of Ségur.

This childish side will make him imagine “an elevator” to go to heaven… However, there remains a style that can be an obstacle. Maurice Bellet, in love with little Thérèse, was one of them, initially discouraged by what he judged to be “mildness”: “Thérèse’s work is like an impressionist painting: if one has the nose above, we risk seeing only sentimentalism and missing the essential. » She actually found this freshness again after her “strange illness”. A time of silence and bouts of tears, from which she emerged thanks to a first mystical event at the age of 13: the Virgin smiled at her. We find this smile on many photos of Thérèse. It permeates his loving dialogue with Jesus and its symbolism: the roses, the birds… Everything reflects an invincible cheerfulness that will resist agony.