Saint Therese of Lisieux: A Gateway

"Resplendent with love." Courtesy of l'instantane Normandie

In Misericordiae Vultus, Pope Francis writes that justice and mercy “are not two contradictory realities, but two dimensions of a single reality that unfolds progressively until it culminates in the fullness of love. . . ."

For a full understanding of the Pope's thought, I urge you to read this whole section, paragraphs 20 and 21.  He continues:

Faced with a vision of justice as the mere observance of the law that judges people simply by dividing them into two groups – the just and sinners – Jesus is bent on revealing the great gift of mercy that searches out sinners and offers them pardon and salvation. . . . Jesus . . . goes beyond the law; the company he keeps with those the law considers sinners makes us realize the depth of his mercy.

[St. Paul realizes that] salvation comes not through the observance of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ, who in his death and resurrection brings salvation together with a mercy that justifies. God’s justice now becomes the liberating force for those oppressed by slavery to sin and its consequences. God’s justice is his mercy (cf. Ps 51:11-16) . . . .

Mercy is not opposed to justice but rather expresses God’s way of reaching out to the sinner, offering him a new chance to look at himself, convert, and believe. Saint Augustine . . . says: “It is easier for God to hold back anger than mercy”.[13] And so it is. God’s anger lasts but a moment, his mercy forever.

. . . God does not deny justice. He rather envelops it and surpasses it with an even greater event in which we experience love as the foundation of true justice. . . . God’s justice is his mercy given to everyone as a grace that flows from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Compare the Pope’s words with these two paragraphs from St. Therese:

Writing in January 1896, within a week or two of her twenty-third birthday:

“His Justice seems to me clothed in love.”

O my dear Mother! after so many graces can I not sing with the Psalmist: “How GOOD is the Lord, his MERCY endures forever!” It seems to me that if all creatures had received the same graces I received, God would be feared by none but would be loved to the point of folly; and through love, not through fear, no one would ever consent to cause Him any pain. I understand, however, that all souls cannot be the same, that it is necessary there be different types in order to honor each of God’s perfections in a particular way. To me He has granted His infinite Mercy, and through it I contemplate and adore the other divine perfections! All of these perfections appear to be resplendent with love; even His Justice (and perhaps this even more so than the others) seems to me clothed in love. What a sweet joy it is to think that God is Just, i.e., that He takes into account our weakness, that He is perfectly aware of our fragile nature. What should I fear then? Ah! must not the infinitely just God, who deigns  to pardon the faults of the prodigal son with so much kindness, be just also toward me who “am with Him always”? 

Story of a Soul, tr. John Clarke, O.C.D.  Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, 1976.

How significant it is that Therese wrote these words immediately before she tells about her “Offering of myself as a victim of Holocaust to God’s Merciful Love.”

“I expect as much from God’s justice as from His mercy.”

Sixteen months later, in May 1897, writing to her priest-brother, Fr. Adolphe Roulland, who, as a missionary in China, was exposed to the possibility of sudden death and wondered if he would go to Purgatory:

I do not understand, Brother, how you seem to doubt your im­mediate entrance into heaven if the infidels were to take your life. I know one must be very pure to appear before the God of all Holiness, but I know, too, that the Lord is infinitely just; and it is this justice which frightens so many souls that is the object of my joy and confidence. To be just is not only to exercise severity in order to punish the guilty; it is also to recognize right intentions and to reward virtue. I expect as much from God's justice as from His mer­cy. It is because He is just that "He is compassionate and filled with gentleness, slow to punish, and abundant in mercy, for He knows our frailty, He remembers we are only dust. As a father has tenderness for his children, so the Lord has compassion on us!! Oh, Brother, when hearing these beautiful and consoling words of the Prophet-King, how can we doubt that God will open the doors of His kingdom to His children . . . “

Letters of St.  Therese of Lisieux, Vol. II: 1890-1897.  Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, 1988, p. 1093.

Time of Personal Prayer

Pray as the Holy Spirit leads you.  Choose one of  the paragraphs above and pray over it, pausing whenever your heart feels moved.

The Prayer of Pope Francis for the Jubilee 

Click here to read the Prayer of Pope Francis.