Saint Therese of Lisieux: A Gateway

The nuns follow in procession as the Blessed Sacrament is brought to a sick nun in the Lisieux Carmel.

How the influenza pandemic disrupted the community life of the Lisieux Carmel

We adjourned on Sunday, January 2, 1892, when, five days after the epidemic reached the Carmel, Sister Saint-Joseph of Jesus died.  I want to look for a moment at how dramatically life at Carmel had changed between Tuesday, December 28, 1891, when the first nuns got sick, and Saturday, January 2, when Sister Saint-Joseph, the first fatality, died.  The monastery’s chronicle reads, in part:

“The influenza epidemic raged in our region with force.  On December 28, Holy Innocents, several of our sisters had to take to their beds.  When we saw our good Sister St. Joseph, eighty-three, seized by this terrible sickness, we had no doubt that the Lord would find her ripe for heaven.  We then mourned the departure of Mother Subprioress, Sister  Febronie of the Holy Childhood, and Sister Madeleine: three coffins in eight days!  . . . . Our Reverend Mother was very sick, all our sisters confined to bed; never in the annals of our Carmel had we seen the like.  At the burial of our two Sisters, hardly six or seven were present, and then at the cost of a great effort on their part!  Only the three youngest of the entire Community were not stricken by this epidemic . . . . What Community life! no more office in choir, no prayer, no reading in the refectory, no bells rung for religious exercises.  Death was hanging over us! . . .”  (Foundation III, p. 206).  The three youngest were:  Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart, infirmarian, Therese, sacristan, and Marthe, cook. 

cited in Letters of Saint Therese of Llisieux, Volume II, 1890-1896, tr. John Clarke, O.C.D.  (Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, 1988, p. 747, footnote 1). 

In fact, there were three coffins in six days.  By Sunday, December 31, half the community was sick in bed, and most of the others followed.  It seems that Mass continued to be offered, but Therese and her sister Marie, the only choir sisters who were not sick in bed, could not continue to chant the Divine Office.  For the first time, the community’s life was completely suspended, even more so than during the War of 1870 when many sisters returned to their families or sought refuge in other Carmels until they could safely return.  Just as with us in 2020, the lives of the individual nuns and of the community were disrupted very suddenly.

All the nuns in positions of leadership were too sick to function.  The prioress was confined to bed; the subprioress died; the other councilors were sick.  Everything fell on the three youngest sisters, who cared for the sick, washed the dead and prepared them for burial, and communicated with the doctor, the chaplain, and the outside world.  Such communications were more frequent when three funerals had to be arranged and when, while the epidemic raged in Lisieux, the requests for prayers must have multiplied.  Sister Stanislas, the first sacristan, was among the stricken, and Therese had to prepare the sacred vessels, open the grilles for Mass, and arrange the funerals. 

After we have examined all the events of the pandemic at Carmel, we shall return to the question of how Therese reacted to this disruption and what we can learn from her. Meanwhile, we will look at the three Carmelites who died in the first week of January 1892.

“The good old Sisters”

The marvelously informative Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux, which I recommend highly, offers a section about the Carmelites who lived with Therese.   The section divides the nuns into different groups.  One such group is “the good old Sisters.”  The Carmelites tell us that these elders were very helpful in integrating young women into the community, acting

“a bit like good grandmothers, acting as a buffer between the demands of the experienced sisters who keep the community running smoothly and even the management of the community. Having a little more time to themselves, whether because of infirmities or something else, they take care of the young in their own way, available for a smile, a kind word, for comfort.” 

The members of this group were Mother Genevieve of St. Teresa, Sister Saint-Joseph of Jesus, Sister Febronie of the Holy Childhood, and Sister Madeleine of the Blessed Sacrament.   On December 4, 1891, all of them were living.  By January 7, 1892, all four were dead.  Thus, the pandemic not only killed three of the 25 nuns—one of almost every eight women in the community—but also, together with the death in December of the founder, Mother Genevieve, stripped away an entire layer of the community: its wisdom figures, including the only two living connections with its foundation in 1838.  Except for Mother Genevieve, we will hear little of them later on.  But, for her first three years and nine months in Carmel, Therese had lived with all of them.  Their lives, as well as their deaths, affected her and the whole community, so I want to examine them.  Part 4 of this series will consider the life and death of Sister Saint-Joseph of Jesus, the first postulant of the Lisieux Carmel.

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The extract from the monastery's chronicle above, which depicts what life was like in the Lisieux Carmel during the outbreak, is only one of many gems in the second volume of Therese's letters. This book is one of the very best ways to get to know Therese, the people with whom she lived, and the world in which she lived.  Although the volume is not brief, it's easy, if you like, to begin only with Therese's letters and to skip over those written by others until they come to interest you.  The introductions to each section, referring you to the relevant passages in Story of a Soul, and the notes make the book much more readable. Although Story of a Soul has the grace of emotion recollected in tranquility, the letters are immediate and spontaneous.