St Thérèse and the God who wants us

The Carmelite Monastery in Melbourne has been the National Shrine of St Thérèse of Lisieux since 1929 when the Sisters officially moved from Sydney. Sr Maria Hughes has been with the monastery since 1964 and is arguably St Thérèse’s biggest fan. She was gracious enough to take the time to discuss the significance of St Thérèse and what it is she can offer people living in the modern world.

Marie Françoise-Thérèse Martin (popularly known as Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, or the “Little Flower”) was born in 1873 to Louis and Zélie Martin and would later become a Discalced Carmelite. In 1925 she was canonised by Pope Pius XI and in 1997 she was made a Doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II. This latter move was one that took many people by surprise. The obvious candidate for the next female Doctor – someone who is deemed to have offered a sound and unique contribution to the development of Church teaching and theology – was St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) because of the contribution she made to philosophy.

Yet, Pope John Paul II chose St Thérèse, one of the reasons being her ‘little way’. She earnestly desired to be a saint, but, in a monastery, couldn’t perform any of the heroic deeds of sanctity that she wanted to. She wanted to be a missionary, an apostle, a priest and a martyr. Recognising the smallness of her position, she developed what she considered to be an ‘elevator’ to heaven. Elevators had recently come into vogue in France. Instead of climbing what she called the ‘steep stairway of perfection’, she wanted to take the ‘little way’ of spiritual childhood; accepting her position as a child of the Father and paying attention to the purity of her love in all things, no matter how small.

As St Thérèse famously said:

I understood that Love contains all the Vocations, that Love is all, that it embraces all times and all places . . . in a word, that it is Everlasting! . . . I have finally found my vocation: My vocation is Love!’

Popularity

In the late 1920s St Thérèse was very much ‘taking the world by storm’, Sr Maria said. One of the reasons, she suggested, was because Thérèse did not fit the ‘expected categories’ of what it meant to be a saint:

She was very, very young. She entered Carmel at age fifteen and she died aged twenty-four of tuberculosis. But in those short years she plumbed the depths of what it meant to be a lover of Jesus.’

Part of her gift was to penetrate the ‘harsh ambience’ of her religious milieu, coloured as it was by the Jansenism of the time. Jansenism was a breed of Catholicism commonly referred to as “Catholic Calvinism” because the God they worshipped was obscenely judgmental, and his creation was practically beyond salvation. Under Jansenist influences, the ‘hell-fire and brimstone’ sermons she listened to terrified the young Thérèse to such a degree that she developed excruciating scruples. But it was her gift, in time, to ‘discern beyond that,’ Sr Maria said, ‘to plumb the depths of the real face of God, to reveal the face of God as Jesus did in his time, to the people of his time.’ The real face of God was of one who was compassionate and understanding, who was Merciful Love.

Even the great Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar loved St Thérèse for this reason. A man of his intellectual stature and renown recognised that she was the antidote to something deeply troubling in their own religious tradition, what he called ‘the hard core of Pharisaism . . . that will-to-power disguised in the mantle of religion.’

One of the reasons people feel an aversion towards St Thérèse, however, is because of the way in which she writes. Sr Maria acknowledges that ‘it seems to be very sentimental, very sugary, very floral,’ but also that this is a superficial reading of the young saint. Underneath this, she reveals what it means to be ‘experiencing one’s profound weakness and helplessness, but at the same time to be aware that we don’t have to earn sanctity. We don’t have to earn God’s love. It is a given.’

And Thérèse’s secret is to indicate the ways in which we can open ourselves to be aware, first of all, of the great givens in our life through gratitude. God loved her, and that love was the most precious energy in her life. And it’s possibly that energy that Thérèse honed into and that took possession of her heart.’

Sr Maria said that she reads Thérèse’s autobiography, The Story of a Soul, frequently, continually mining it for rich treasures. One of the things she notices every time is that ‘you never feel yourself judged by Thérèse. But she takes you back, in her childlike way of writing, to a simplicity you experienced as a child that is very valid . . . It’s often not until down the track that we reconnect with those experiences because we’re so busy growing up.’

St Thérèse also offered a gift to monastic life, Sr Maria said. This gift ‘was to remind us that it doesn’t matter what vocation we choose; we are all equal before God . . . there is no hierarchical ladder to God’s love. We, as monastic religious, are no better than someone struggling in their family situation.’

‘There’s time for everything under the sun in monastic life,’ she said, referring to the amount of time allotted for prayer and work and liturgy, ‘but basically, it is a frail human being living it.’

A certain emphasis has been, in the past, on striving for perfection, which has been rather counter-productive in many ways because, as Thérèse says, the greatest challenge is how to be human and loving and accepting, and how to struggle with your own complex personality and to mature in your awareness of your emotional life and how that impacts you on your journey.’

Contemplation

In this way, St Thérèse has much to offer the modern world, defined as it is by the grind of city living and constant digital connectivity. Even though we live in one of the most affluent countries in the world, and have an abundance of material possessions, ‘what we desperately need is this experience of the God who wants us. And he won’t settle. He won’t let us alone if we continue to chase other things.’

One of the problems of trying to live prayerfully in the modern world is that prayer all too easily becomes another ‘thing’ we do amidst the many other ‘things’ we have to do: ‘If we want to live a life of prayer, it’s essentially about wanting God. We can want prayer, but do we want God?’

The contemplative gift in this day and age is to switch off the machinery, to unplug the earplugs, and to listen to the harmony of nature, and the harmony in our own hearts, and respond to a love that draws us like a magnet to something bigger than ourselves, to experience some quiet time in our life where we can be quiet, as Thérèse said, to simply sit with the one that we love. And for her that was Jesus, and that sitting with him, that simply being with him, is prayer.’

This isn’t the type of prayer we’re used to. Normally we’re quite comfortable telling God exactly what we want and when we want it, but according to Sr Maria ‘that’s pretty kindergarten stuff.’ Real prayer begins with a desire for God and a desire to be with God.

One of the ways in which St Thérèse can help us, Sr Maria said, is by reminding us to reconnect with the beauty of creation:

[Thérèse] was very tuned in to nature, and I think that is one aspect of present day living to help open our contemplative capacity, to the beauty, to the goodness, to the abundance with which nature surrounds us. It brings to mind the contemplative flow of God’s energy, of his grace, and of the openness of a relationship of great simplicity. There is so much given that we are not aware of.’

In 2020, the relics of St Thérèse were hosted at the Carmelite Monastery in Melbourne, along with those of her parents. The last time this happened it was only the Little Flower’s relics and that was in 2002. Back then the Kew Junction was packed with traffic and thousands of visitors came through the monastery night and day to pray with St Thérèse. This time, with the lockdowns, it was very quiet.

There was nobody else in the Church except the Sisters and it was a very precious time.’