St. Teresa of Avila praying before an image of Christ captive. (Licensed from Shutterstock Images)

On August 15, 1895, the feast of the Assumption (which was her personal feast-day), Therese's cousin Marie Guerin entered the Carmel of Lisieux.  Marie, at 25 a little less than three years older than Therese, was the younger daughter of Isidore Guerin, the brother of Therese's mother, St. Zelie, and his wife, Celine. Marie was lively, witty, affectionate, sensitive, and gifted with a beautiful soprano voice.

The feast of the Assumption

Even before her entrance, Marie had kept the feast of the Assumption as her personal feast-day (what is now sometimes called a "name day").  Before Celine's entrance in 1894, Marie had posed for Celine, who took a photograph of Marie to serve as a model for a painting of the Assumption Celine painted for the chapel of the Benedictines at Bayeux.  (if you click on the link to the photograph on the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux, you will find a link to Celine's resulting painting).

Madame Guerin had written Pauline, who was then prioress, asking deferentially that Marie's entrance might be set for her feast, August 15.  Marie's mother and father, both fervent Catholics, found her vocation a privilege, but they were deeply saddened by losing her.  Their older daughter, Jeanne, had married five years before and moved to Caen with her husband, and Marie's entrance left them bereft. 

Therese as assistant novice mistress

 From the time of Pauline's election as prioress in 1893, she confided privately to Therese the formation of the novices (Martha of Jesus, Marie-Madeleine of the Blessed Sacrament, Marie of the Trinity, Genevieve of St. Therese (her sister Celine), and now Marie Guerin, who took the name Marie of the Eucharist).  Mother Gonzague held the title of novice mistress; Therese was dubbed "senior novice" and assigned merely to help her, but Pauline said later that she was, in fact, depending on Therese to form all the novices.  Marie Guerin, the last to enter during Therese's lifetime, brought the number of novices to five: an injection of youth and energy to the community. 

Therese's poem "Canticle of a Soul Having Found the Place of Its Rest"

It was the custom for the new postulant to sing something for the community at evening recreation on the day of her entrance.  To showcase her cousin's lovely voice, Therese composed the poem "Canticle of a Soul Having Found the Place of Its Rest."  As usual, she wrote with sensitivity to the person and the occasion, but also expressed her own desires:

O Jesus! on this day. you have fulfilled all my desires.

From now on, near the Eucharist, I shall be able

To sacrifice myself in silence, to wait for Heaven in peace.

Keeping myself open to the rays of the divine Host,

In this furnace of love, I shall be consumed,

And like a seraphim, Lord, I shall love you.*

Sister Therese of St. Augustine left us testimony about what Therese meant by "loving like a seraph" in the "furnace of love."   At the 1910 Process, she testified:

In Sister Therese, the love of God dominated everything else; her dream was to die of love.  But then she would add:  "To die of love, we must live by love."  So she strove to develop this love day by day, because she wanted it to be of the highest quality.  Her ambition was to love like a seraph, to be consumed by the devouring flames of pure love without feeling them, so that her self-sacrifice would be as complete as possible.**

"Living on Love!," Therese's poem from February 1895

In this "Canticle," Therese sets forth some elements of a programme of life for her cousin.  But on the same day she left on Marie's bed in her new cell, the manuscript surrounded by flowers. a copy of her earlier poem "Living on Love!," written during the Forty Hours Devotion in February 1895.  This composition sets forth a far more powerful and detailed spiritual itinerary, rooted in the gospels and unlimited in scope.  Celine called it "the king" of Therese's poems.  The editors write of "the solemn fervor of this love poem," and its 15 stanzas are inexhaustible.  Here I quote only stanza five:

Living on Love is giving without limit

Without claiming any wages here below.

Ah! I give without counting, truly sure

That when one loves, one does not keep count!...

Overflowing with tenderness, I have given everything,

To His Divine Heart..... lightly I run.

I have nothing left but my only wealth:

Living on Love.***

1895: a year of grace for Therese

Marie's entrance enhanced the richness of the year 1895, the year of "the Mercies of the Lord" for Therese.  In 1894 she had been delivered from her father's long trial and now felt his closeness.  Then her deep desire of having Celine, her inseparable companion, join her in Carmel had been fulfilled.  After her rich play "Joan of Arc Accomplishing Her Mission," she had, at the request of Pauline, her prioress, begun to review her life and write her "thoughts on the graces God has granted" to her.  This review brought the graces of the past vividly before her.  In February Celine received the Habit, and her father's virtues were evoked in the sermon on that occasion.  Later in February Therese was inspired to write her great poem "Living on Love."  On June 9 she received the great grace of being inspired to offer herself, with Celine, to the Merciful Love of God.  During the summer she persuaded her oldest sister, Marie, to offer herself as well.  Now her cousin was coming to fulfill her vocation.

In the community context, the Martin sisters were rather prominent at this time.  The community had elected Pauline, Mother Agnes of Jesus, prioress  in 1893, at the early age of 31.  This was a great grace for Therese.  Their oldest sister, Marie of the Sacred Heart, was "provisoire" (in charge of procuring food for  the community).  Therese was charged with helping to form the novices, and her poems and religious plays were beginning to make her a little more known among some of the nuns.  Only a few suspected the fire of love burning in her heart.

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* "The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux," tr. Donald Kinney, O.C.D.  (Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, 1996), p. 112.

**  "St. Therese of Lisieux by Those Who Knew Her," ed. and tr. Christopher O'Mahony, O.C.D.  (Dublin: Veritas Press, 1973, p. 193.

***  The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux, op. cit., p. 90.

Icon of the Face of Jesus. (Licensed from Shutterstock).

 "My Heaven on Earth"

Jesus, your ineffable image

Is the star that guides my steps.

Ah! you know, your sweet Face

Is for me Heaven on earth. . . .

Your Face is my only Homeland.

It's my Kingdom of Love.

Wolfgang Sauber / CC BY-SA

It was probably in the summer of 1895  that Therese wrote the poem "The Atom of Jesus-Host" at the request of Sister St. Vincent de Paul, a lay-sister who was evidently not enthusiastic about the monastery's receiving members of the rising bourgeoisie like the Martin sisters. 

Sister St. Vincent de Paul was remarkably devoted to the Eucharist, and she gave Therese her thoughts about herself as the "atom" of Jesus and asked for a poem on that theme.  The energy hidden in the atom had not yet been discovered; to Sister St. Vincent the word meant simply a tiny fleck of dust.*

When Sister St. Vincent de Paul entered the Carmel, she was distressed to discover that the grille between the choir and the sanctuary was covered with black cloth so that the nuns could not even see the tabernacle.  So great was her desire to be as near the Eucharist as possible that she used to spend the whole hour set aside for "mental prayer" in the evening before supper hidden in the corner of the choir closest to the little Communion grille.  This was one of the darkest corners of the choir, but was closest to the tabernacle on the other side of the grille. 

The editors of The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux describe this as "second-rate poetry that we will quickly pass over."  They are not mistaken, for, when she writes according to a unique inspiration, Therese's poems are more spontaneously written and more deeply felt than when she writes to order.  But this poem is of biographical interest because Therese wrote it for Sister St. Vincent de Paul, about whom her sister Pauline, Mother Agnes of Jesus, said "[Therese]  told me she had to overcome more antipathy for Sister St. Vincent de Paul (who was very smart) than for poor Sister Marie of St. Joseph (a mentally ill sister whom Therese helped in the linen room in 1896-1897). "1  Yet Therese wrote four poems for this Sister, and they are not devoid of Therese's own sentiments about the Eucharist.

Sister St. Vincent de Paul and St. Therese

Zoe Alaterre of Cherbourg, orphaned at age eight, grew up at the orphanage operated by the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul in Caen, where Leonie and Celine had boarded in the spring of 1889 to be near their father at the Bon Sauveur Hospital.  Entering at age 22, she was saddened that in Carmel she could no longer receive Communion every day.   She was talkative, had opinions about everything, and was called the "living encyclopedia."  Very courageous in suffering, she worked hard despite being chronically ill throughout her religious life.  Read about the phases of Sister St. Vincent de Paul's complicated relationship with St. Therese in her biography on the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.  And read the brief and somewhat humorous obituary circular Therese's sister Pauline, Mother Agnes of Jesus, wrote when Sister St. Vincent de Paul died in 1905. 

i thank the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux for digitizing and sharing the documents that permit us to know Sister St. Vincent de Paul. 

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* The Poetry of St. Therese of Lisieux, tr. Donald Kinney, O.C.D.  (Washington, D.C.: Washingotn Ptovince of Discalced Carmelites, 1996), p. 106.

1.  Biography of Sister St. Vincent de Paul on the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux at http://archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/les-soeurs-dexperience/st-vincent-de-paul/biographie, accessed 8/5/2020.

The Capture of Saigon by the French, February 28, 1859, paintd by Antoine Morel-Fatio. Public domain..

July 29, 1895

July 29, 1895 was an eventful day in the Carmel of Lisieux.  It was the first anniversary of the death of St. Therese's father, the now-canonized St. Louis Martin.  It was the feast of St. Martha, a special feast celebrated in honor of the lay sisters, and in 1895 Therese played the role of Jesus in a play she had written, Jesus at Bethany.  On top of that, Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart, a nun from the Carmel of Saigon who had lived at Lisieux since 1883, returned to the Saigon Carmel that day.

The Carmel of Saigon and Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart

After the French conquered Saigon in 1859, more missionaries began to go there.  The Lisieux Carmel, which had a fervent missionary consciousness, supplied, on request, four "foundresses" for the Carmel of Saigon in 1861.  They founded the Carmel in "really heroic conditions."  Two of them, whose health could not adapt to the vastly different climate, returned to France, but the community remained and began to receive native applicants.  Among them was Maria de Souza, born in Macao in 1850 of a Portuguese father and a Chinese mother.  She entered the Saigon Carmel in 1874, when baby Therese in far-off France was a year old.  [See a photo of the Saigon Carmel on the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux]. Professed in 1876 as Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart, she had a strong desire to transfer to a French Carmel.  The Lisieux Carmel received her in June 1883, about a month after the Blessed Virgin had obtained the cure of ten-year-old Therese. 

Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart and Sister Therese at the Carmel of Lisieux

Indochina, then called "Cochin-China," became a French colony in 1887, a year before Therese entered at Lisieux.  Sister Anne, a member of the community for almost five years, welcomed Therese when she entered on April 9, 1888.  Eight days later Sister Anne gave Therese a holy card on the theme of "the cradle as the first altar of sacrifice," no doubt because the postulant was given the name "Therese of the Child Jesus."  On it Sister Anne inscribed Therese's name, her own name, and the words "United in prayer and sacrifice."  The text on the reverse was titled "The sacrifices of the new law of love."  Later Therese drew a graph on this holy card, using the design, which she adapted, for her painting "The Dream of the Child Jesus." 

In 1893 Mother Marie of the Angels, creating a word picture of each Carmelite of Lisieux for the Visitation at Le Mans, wrote:

Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart, who came from Saigon. A real Chinese type, whose mother is Chinese and whose father is Portuguese.  Filled with spirit, knowledge, and talents, she works wonderfully, but her little strength doesn't allow her to be assigned jobs.  Fervent as a seraph, and truly edifies us by her bravery and her devotion.1

 Just as several of the French foundresses could not adjust to the drastic change in climate, Sister Anne never adapted from the heat of Saigon to the cold and fogs of Normandy.  Her health continued to deteriorate, and she had to give up her dream of remaining at Lisieux.  On July 29, 1895 she had to return to the Carmel of Saigon.

St. Therese's possible departure for Indochina

After she left, the bond (strong since 1861) between the Carmel of Lisieux and that of Saigon remained powerful.  In the second half of 1896, the Saigon Carmel was asking for "foundresses" [French citizens,necessary to make a new foundation in the colony of Cochin-China] for a new monastery at Hanoi.  Mother Gonzague considered sending MotherAgnes of Jesus, then Sister Genevieve (Celine) and Sister Marie of the Trinity, and finally Therese herself.  In November 1896, the Carnelites began a novena to now-St. Theophane Venard to know whether God wanted Therese to go to Indochina.  During the novena, her health grew worse, and she never transferred there.

St. Therese's letter to Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart in Saigon

On May 2, 1897, a special feast day at the Lisieux Carmel, Therese, at the suggestion of her prioress, Marie de Gonzague, wrote a letter to Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart in Saigon.  She wrote:

I recall with joy the years I spent in your company. . . . The hot sun of Saigon is nothing in comparison with the fire burning in your soul.  Oh, Sister! I beg you, ask Jesus that I myself also may love Him and that i may make Him loved.2

Therese sends her respectful good wishes to the new prioress, who had succeeded Mother Philomena of the Immaculate Conception from Lisieux; Mother Philomena had died in 1895. 

When Therese was in the infirmary, her sister Celine, Sister Genevieve, seeing her so ill, remarked "When I think that they are still waiting for you in Saigon!"  Therese answered:  "I'll go there very soon; if you only knew how quickly I will go!"  The chapel in the Carmel of Saigon today contains a replica of Therese's shrine at Lisieux. 

Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart's one testimony about St.Therese

Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart was to die in Saigon in 1920.  Unfortunately, neither the Carmel of Saigon nor the Lisieux Carmel prepared an obituary circular for her.  For what is known and for her photo, see Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart on the Web site of the Archives of the Carnel of Lisieux.  Yet Sister Anne lived long enough to offer a valuable testimony about St. Therese.  Toward the end of Sister Anne's life, when the not-yet-canonized "the Servant of God, Sister Therese of the Child Jesus" had taken the world by storm and it was known that Sister Anne had lived with her in France for seven years, she was often asked about Sister Therese, and she answered in words that show how well Therese succeeded in her desire to live a completely hidden life:

There is nothing to say about her;she was very good and very self-effacing; one would not notice her; never would I have suspected her sanctity.3

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1.  Sainte Therese de l'Enfant Jesus at de la Sainte-Face, Correspondance generale, T. II.  Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1992, pp. 1174-1175.  Translation copyright Maureen O'Riordan 2020.

2  Letters of St. Therese of Lisieux, Vol. II: 1890-1897.  Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Discalced Carmelite Friars, 1988, pp. 1090-1091.

3.  Ibid., p. 1091, note 2.

I thank the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux for digitizing Therese's letter to Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart and for making it possible to link to her photo and biography, to the holy card she gave Therese, and to the paintiing Therese produced from that holy card.

Jesus at Bethany, Therese's fourth 'pious recreation'

for the feast of St. Martha, July 29, 1895

DeFacto / CC BY-SA

 At the Lisieux Carmel, the feast of St. Martha on July 29 was celebrated as the feast of the lay-sisters.  At that time the monastery, somewhat mirroring the class structure from which its applicants came, had two ranks of sisters: the choir nuns, who recited the Divine Office in choir, and the lay-sisters, called in French "converse."  The lay-sisters, of whom there were five in Lisieux Carmel in 1895, wore a white veil all their lives.  They did not recite the Divine Office, substituting a certain number of "Our Fathers."  They went to bed earlier than the choir nuns and got up earlier, and they were responsible for much of the monastery's heavy domestic work: cooking, gardening, looking after the poultry.  They often came from poorer families and had had less education than the choir nuns. 

On the feast of St. Martha, the roles were reversed.  All the choir nuns gave small presents to the lay-sisters, and, because a much richer menu was permitted, the benefactors of the monastery, the Guerin family, sent in lavish treats for them. See the letter of Marie Guerin (Sister Marie of the Eucharist) to her parents in 1896, thanking them for melons, chocolates, and other delicacies. All the lay-sisters signed it.

The lay-sisters were not allowed to set foot in the kitchen; instead, the novices had free rein there on that day.  For the novices, the day was somewhat hilarious; see Marie Guerin's letter to her father in 1898 describing their adventures and how thoroughly they enjoyed the feast.

In 1895 St. Therese wrote a simple but profound play, "Jesus at Bethany," for the feast-day recreation.  It had only three characters:  Jesus (played by Therese); Mary (played by Marie of the Trinity); and Martha (played by Therese's sister Celine, Sister Genevieve of St. Teresa).  It is a dialogue in which Jesus speaks at length first with Mary and then with Martha.  All the lines are written to be sung (to four different melodies).  Note that, like many people at that time, Therese believed that St. Mary Magdalene was a former prostitute and that she and Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, were the same person.  Thus her character is called "Magdalene."

Unlike other authors, although Therese mentions the contrast between contemplation and action that Mary and Martha are often thought to represent, she does not dwell chiefly on it.  Instead, her interest is in whether the "pure soul" (Martha) or the "repentant soul" (Mary, in the play usually called only "Magdalene") can love God more.  In the first manuscript of her memoir, which she is writing this year, she presents this conflict, expressing her profound conviction that the pure soul can love at least as much.  God has loved that soul more by preventing it from falling in the first place.

Mary is grieved that she has caused Jesus sorrow, but he assures her that

with a single stroke of flame

I can change hearts.

Your soul, made young again

By my divine look,

Will bless me without end

In eternal life.

This theme of the divine "look" that instantly rejuvenates the soul is dear to Therese; it appears in the "Offering of myself to Merciful Love" she had just made on June 9.  Her Jesus insists that he loves both sisters:

My goodness without equal

Would like that the sinner

And the virginal soul

Rest on My heart.

He promises Mary that one day she will rise higher than the angels and asks her on earth 'to draw hearts to Me."  Martha enters the dialogue with the complaint she makes about her sister in the gospel.  He acknowledges Martha's generosity but wants something more from her.  She realizes:

I finally understand it, Jesus, supreme beauty.

Your divine look has penetrated my heart.

All my gifts  are too little, it is my soul itself

That I must offer You, O very loving Savior . . . .

Jesus tells Martha that she offers him innocence and Mary has humility.  Martha understands the union of their apostolate:

Jesus, to delight You, I want all my life

To despise honors and human glory.

While working for you I will imitate Mary

Seeking only Your divine gaze.

Therese insists gently that it is not whether one is engaged in work (which must be accompanied with "fervent prayer") or in contemplative prayer that matters; "it is your heart that I desire."  These are only four verses from this artless but significant "pious recreation," which sheds light on a theme extremely personal and dear to Therese. 

Thanks to the generosity of the  Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites and the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux, you can read the text of Jesus at Bethany online.  When you have done so, I highly recommend consulting the volume The Plays of Saint Therese of Lisieux, perhaps the least-known volume of the works of St. Therese published by the Institute of Carmelite Studies.  Its introductions and notes set forth the community context in which each play was written and performed and offer invaluable insight into  the place each composition has in the tradition of the Teresian Carmel and in Therese's personal development.

I thank the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux for the two letters of Marie Guerin which give us such a personal taste of this annual feast.