Saint Therese of Lisieux: A Gateway

Celine Martin dressed as a bride on February 5, 1895, the day she received the Carmelite habit. Photo credit: Peter and Liane Klostermann, who photographed this portrait from an exhibit at St. Jacques Church, Lisieux. With thanks to the Carmel of Lisieux.

Celine Martin entered the Lisieux Carmel on September 14, 1894, six weeks after the death of her father.  Her postulancy was not easy, for her health was frail; she had trouble adapting to the new diet and to the straw mattress; and her feet hurt during the long hours of standing in choir.  But she emerged victorious.1  Less than five months after she entered, the Community approved her to receive the habit. The "prise d'habit" marked the end of her postulancy and the beginning of her year as a Carmelite novice. This day was considered the young woman's wedding day.

At that time the candidate left the enclosure, dressed as a bride, and participated in the Mass in the public chapel, kneeling on a prie-dieu which was cushioned and draped in white, with a tall candlestick nearby on which to place her tall candle.2  Therese had been escorted down the aisle by her father; Celine was no doubt accompanied by her uncle and guardian, Isidore Guerin, who, like her father, was a most generous benefactor to the Carmel.  In Celine's memoir she writes:

. . .  Ah! it was a day without clouds! . . .  the snow covered the earth. I did not need like Therese to ask for it to receive it; I did not ask for flowers either and yet I got many white sprays. There was one more beautiful than any of the others, made up of flowers like lilies, it was sent to me by [Henri Maudelonde, who had asked Celine to marry him]. I was touched by this homage to my divine Spouse and I prayed a lot for the donor.

Oh! my Mother, how happy I was when I saw myself as the bride of Jesus! I could not believe my good fortune. Was it really I who, after having attended so many human marriages, finally had my turn! Yes, I was the bride, I, advancing to the altar in the white wedding dress, was alone, no mortal was by my side and my soul was singing a mysterious song to the virginal Bridegroom . . . 

excerpted from the "autobiographie de Celine" on the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.  Please read more of Celine's memories of that day.

Bishop Hugonin presided at the ceremony, as he had done for Therese, and dined afterward with the Guerin family.3  Father Alcide Ducellier, former vicar of St. Pierre's, preached the sermon. Therese had selected the text from the Song of Songs, 2:10-11: "The winter is past, the rains have ceased; arise, my beloved, and come."  The sermon included a magnificent eulogy for Louis Martin, who had died scarcely six months ago and whose Carmelite daughters had not been present at his funeral.  Therese prepared the outline for the sermon, emphasizing that, together with the gift of all his daughters, Louis offered himself to God. 

. . .  the memory of that venerable Patriarch, your beloved father, whom we remember on this solemn occasion.  [Evoking June 15, 1888, when Celine told her father that she wanted to become a Carmelite after his death]: . . . scarcely had you spoken - in words that he could not possibly have anticipated - than he took you in his arms and pressed you to his heart. “Who am I that God should shower me with such honour!” he exclaimed. “I am truly an exceedingly happy father.” And he asked you to go with him immediately and kneel before the tabernacle.

“Come, let us go together to thank God for all the special graces he has given our family.”  “God honours me by asking for all my children: I joyfully give them to him. If I possessed anything better, I would be eager to offer it to him”. Well! Even though he had nothing better to offer, and certainly nothing more dearly loved, he did have something more personal, which was himself. 

Excerpted from Fr. Ducellier's letter to Mother Agnes of Jesus and Sister Genevieve after February 24, 1895, on the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.  Happily, Fr. Ducellier sent the sermon to Pauline and Celine a little later, and it has come down to us verbatim.  I urge you to read Fr. Ducellier's sermon in full.  

 Marie Guerin, who had a very sweet voice, sang a song by A. Gerbier, Il est a moi.  (Three weeks later Therese would use the same melody for her extraordinary poem "To Live by Love").4  After the Mass, Celine went to the enclosure door.  On the other side the community waited to receive her. As she stepped into the enclosure, she was presented with a cross, which she kissed.  Then the community went before her as, on the arm of her prioress, her sister Pauline, Mother Agnes, she followed the procession into the choir.  She knelt by the grille.  On the other side the bishop and priests blessed the habit and asked the novice certain questions according to the manual.  She answered, and, after the prayers, followed her prioress into a little room that opened out of the nuns' choir, where she was helped out of her wedding dress and into the Carmelite habit.  She returned to the grille.  With more prayers, the priest blessed the white mantle, the scapular, the belt, and the long veil, and Celine put them on.  The priest blessed her, and the Clothing ceremony was complete.5

 The Martin sisters had lost their father, and then Celine had at last joined them; only Leonie, pursuing her vocation as a Visitation nun at Caen, was missing.  Celine's sister Pauline was her prioress, and we can imagine that it was a happy family day for them.  The whole day was a feast in the Carmel.  Trying to console Celine, who had been forced to change her religious name,  Marie of the Holy Face, to Genevieve of St. Teresa, Therese had said "We will both have the same patroness now."  With unconscious prescience, Celine answered:  "You will be my patroness."6

Therese's gift to Celine was a poem, "Song of Gratitude of Jesus' Fiancee."  The nuns usually sang at evening recreation to honor the bride of the day, and Therese wrote this poem to be sung to the melody "O saint Autel," which had been the processional hymn on her First Communion day.7   Therese's sixteenth poem, it is believed to introduce the second, "majestic" stage of her poetry.8 Undoubtedly written while Celine was still called "Marie of the Holy Face," it begins:

"You have hidden me forever in your Face!"  

Speaking for herself as well as for Celine, Therese writes of

"the inexpressible grace of having suffered . . .

that by the Cross we save sinners . . .

by the Cross my ennobled soul has seen a new horizon revealed." 

This "new horizon" will lead Therese to other "inexpressible graces" during this year of profound grace, 1895.

I urge you to read the poem (six stanzas of only four lines each) at the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.  Thanks to the generosity of the Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, the text of Therese's poems may be read there online.  For a deeper understanding of these poems (most written in 1895, 1896, and 1897, the years we will, please God, explore for the next three years in our series "125 years ago with St. Therese"), it is indispensable to consult The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux, tr. Donald Kinney, O.C.D. (Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, 1995).  The General Introduction by Jacques Longchampt and the introductions to each poem offer invaluable context for appreciating the poems.

 1.  Celine, Sister and Witness of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, by Stephane-Joseph Piat, O.F.M.  San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997, pp. 62-63.

2.  "Cérémonial à l'usage des religieuses carmélites déchaussées de l'Ordre de Notre-Dame du Mont-Carmel érigé en France selon la première règle.  Nouvelle édition.  Paris: Mersch, imprimeur 1888.  On the Web site of the archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.  Book nine, chapter five.

3.  Sainte Therese de Lisieux (1873-1897), by Guy Gaucher.  Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2010, p. 415, note 3.

4.  Gaucher, pp. 415-416.

5.  "Cérémonial," book nine, chapter five.

6.  Piat, p. 63

7.   The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux, tr. Donald Kinney, O.C.D. (Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, 1995), p. 85.

8.   Poetry, Kinney, p. 15.