St. Therese and the Eucharist
in the Carmel of Lisieux
At 14, St. Therese sent her gold bracelet to be melted down to form part of this monstrance for the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Montmartre in Paris.
In her account of the influenza epidemic that visited the Carmel in 1891-1892, what Therese remembers most vividly is “the ‘unspeakable privilege” of being allowed to receive the Eucharist daily. To understand it better, we will look at Therese’s lifelong hunger for the Eucharist and at little-known details of her experience of receiving the Eucharist in Carmel.
Therese’s experience of the Eucharist in childhood
Therese was born into a family with a fervent Eucharistic spirituality. Her parents attended Mass every day, and, as soon as the children were old enough, they accompanied Louis and Zelie. In 1910 her sister Marie testified:
My parents received communion frequently, more than once a week, which was rather exceptional at that time. At Lisieux, my father received communion four or five times a week.[1]
Sketch of Therese throwing petals in a Eucharistic procession from Thérèse, d. Lisieux. (1911). Soeur Thérèse de l'Enfant Jésus et de la sainte face: religieuse carmélite, morte en odeur de sainteté au Carmel de Lisieux le 30 septembre, 1897, à l'âge de 24 ans. Paris: Libraire S.-Paul.
Therese was eleven when she made her First Communion. Before that, her experience of the Eucharist consisted largely of gazing at the host at Benediction, praying in the presence of the tabernacle, and longing to receive the Eucharist. She took part in Eucharistic processions (and she was elated if one of the petals she tossed up touched the monstrance) and visited the Blessed Sacrament every day. Until she started school (about three months before her ninth birthday), she made these visits with her father, who was retired from business. The two went for a walk almost every afternoon, and they never came home without visiting one of the town’s churches or chapels to pray before the Blessed Sacrament.[2] This was how Therese first visited the Carmelite chapel.[3]
Therese wanted to receive the Eucharist
while she was very young
From the age of at least seven she had a great desire to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. This desire deepened in the months leading up to May 1880, when Celine, then eleven, made her first communion.[4] Every evening Pauline gave Celine a lesson to prepare her. Whenever she was allowed to stay, Therese listened, saying that four years was not too long to prepare for her own first communion.[5] Celine reports that on the day of her own first communion “Therese looked at me with a kind of holy respect, and hardly dared to touch me.”[6] Therese remembered the day of Celine’s first communion as “one of the most beautiful” days of her life.[7]
Celine at 12 and Therese at 8, October 1881, courtesy of the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux
In 1910 Leonie testified:
There was a rule at that time that one had to be ten before the preceding January 1 before one could be admitted to first communion. Therese was born on 2 January, so she was put back a whole year.
Every year her longings were renewed, as first communion time came round. I remember a very touching little incident, Therese was, I think, going on nine at the time. Walking along the street with her sisters one day, she saw the bishop on his way to the station, and she said to us: “Shall I go and ask his Lordship if I can make my first communion next year? It’s hard being put back a year just because I was born on 2 January.” I was very well aware of the anguish this caused her. . . . I am not afraid to say that the Servant of God was perfectly capable of making her first communion even well before she was seven . . .[8]
At Christmastime, too, Therese’s longing to receive intensified. Marie testified:
At Christmas time, when she saw us go off to midnight Mass whilst she had to remain at home because she was too young, she said to me, “If you will take me with you, I, too, will go to communion. I could slip in among the others, and no one will take any notice.” She was very sad when I told her that it was impossible.[9]
Therese’s First Communion
and her frequent reception of the Eucharist as a laywoman
The grille where St. Therese received her First Communion at the Benedictine Abbey in 1884. Used with permission of The Far East.
When she started school at the Benedictine Abbey, Therese sacrificed her 15 minutes of recreation time every afternoon at one o’clock to pray before the tabernacle in the chapel.[10] The care with which Therese prepared for her First Communion at the Abbey, and her description “Ah! How sweet was that first kiss of Jesus!”[11] are well known. Afterward, her longing to receive again increased: “After her first communion, she lived only for the moment when she could receive our Lord a second time.”[12] “She would count down the days until her next Communions, finding they were too wide apart.”[13]
During Therese’s lifetime, before the decree of Pope St. Pius X on frequent communion, confessors regulated the frequency with which their lay penitents received communion. After she left school, Therese was permitted to receive Communion four or five times a week. At age twenty-two, she writes of how her audacity had grown since then. Speaking of the spring of 1887, when she was fourteen, she writes:
Therese at 13, in February 1886. Courtesy of the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux
He gave Himself to me in Holy Communion more frequently than I would have dared hope. I’d taken as a rule of conduct to receive, without missing a single one, the Communions my confessor permitted, allowing him to regulate the number and not asking. At this time in my life, I didn’t have the boldness I now have, for I’m very sure a soul must tell her confessor the attraction she feels to receive her God. It is not to remain in a golden ciborium that He comes to us each day from Heaven; it’s to find another Heaven, infinitely more dear to Him than the first: the Heaven of our soul, made to His image, the living temple of the adorable Trinity![14]
At the Lisieux Carmel:
no daily Communion under Mother Marie de Gonzague
Against the background of all these Eucharistic graces, and of the consolations she speaks of receiving in 1887, it must have been a shock to Therese when, on entering the religious life, she found herself not only suddenly plunged into dryness but also permanently denied frequent communion. Mother Marie de Gonzague was responsible for this deprivation. In 1888, when Therese entered, it was customary for the prioress, not the confessor, to decide how often each nun might receive communion. Mother Gonzague sometimes abused her authority in the matter of Holy Communion. In a document signed by five other nuns, Therese's sister Pauline, now Sister Agnes of Jesus, wrote:
What is much more dreadful is the way in which the Holy Eucharist was sometimes dispensed! Mother Marie de Gonzague once promised Communion as a reward to the Sister who would catch a rat! It would also be taken away for a trifle. How shameful this is to reveal![15]
“Receive communion often, very often;”
Therese prays to St. Joseph for that grace
Therese, 16, in January 1889, courtesy of the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of LisieuxMother Gonzague was “afraid of daily communion.”[16] Therese, however, continued to believe that Jesus intended to give Himself to us in the Eucharist every day. In May 1889, when Therese was a 16-year-old novice, she wrote to her cousin, Marie Guerin, who planned to deprive herself of communion because of scruples about her reaction to the nude statues she saw at the exposition in Paris:
Dear little sister, receive Communion often, very often. . . . That is the only remedy if you want to be healed.[17]
Despite Therese’s heroic obedience, at least four witnesses attest that she continued fervently in this belief. Not being allowed to receive Jesus every day was an acute personal deprivation to her. Her sister Marie called it “her main source of suffering in Carmel.”[18] Characteristically, to bring about a change in the custom, she turned to her usual weapon: prayer. Several witnesses testify that she prayed to St. Joseph for this favor. Sister Genevieve of St. Teresa:
In Carmel she prayed to Saint Joseph a lot to obtain for her the freedom to receive communion more frequently. Pope Leo XIII’s decree transferring the regulation of this frequency from superiors to confessors filled her with joy. She was always grateful to St. Joseph for this, for it was to him that she gave the credit for this decision.[19]
Sister Agnes of Jesus adds that Therese prayed specifically that the authority to regulate the communions of religious might be assigned to the confessor (as it customarily was for lay persons):
As a Carmelite, she turned to Saint Joseph to obtain the favour of daily Communion and the freedom of the confessor in this respect.[20]
Therese triumphant: the 1891 Decree transfers to confessors
the authority to regulate the nuns’ Communions
Her prayer was answered when Pope Leo XIII issued what came to be called the “1891 Decree.” Characteristically, Therese interpreted it as an intensely personal favor; Celine wrote that the decree “seemed to Therese a response to her ardent pleas.”[21] Mother Agnes said the granting of this prayer “considerably increased her faith in St. Joseph.”[22]
Actually dated December 17, 1890, the decree reserved to the confessor of a religious community the sole authority to regulate the frequency of the nuns’ communions. The religious need only notify their prioress when the confessor had given them permission to receive, but the prioress had no authority to refuse. According to Sister Agnes of Jesus, Therese was elated
Holy communion was her greatest desire and happiness. When the 1891 Decree came out, she hoped that confessors would at last be free to allow those whom they thought fit for it to receive holy communion daily. This was what the pope wanted, and she was delighted. She sounded triumphant: “It’s not right for the frequency of holy communion to be regulated by the Mother Prioress; that is something that has always shocked me.”[23]
Mother Gonzague obstinate, Fr. Youf afraid:
daily Communion did not become the practice at Lisieux Carmel
Sadly, after nearly three years of deprivation, Therese was to suffer another cruel disappointment. Pauline recounts what happened at the Lisieux Carmel:
When the Decrees of 1891 withdrew from Mother Superiors the right to regulate Communions in their communities, Mother Marie de Gonzague accepted the directives with respect and submission to the Church. Soon, however, when the confessor saw fit to allow some of the Sisters daily Communion and not others, her jealousy resurfaced. Father Youf was afraid, and the number of Communions once again became the same for all the nuns.[24]
Fr. Louis-Auguste Youf, chaplain to the Carmelites of Lisieux through Therese's whole religious life, courtesy of the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of LisieuxFather Louis-Auguste Youf (1842-1897) was the community’s chaplain and confessor throughout Therese’s religious life. He was in poor health; Sister Marie of the Trinity said that he “suffered from cerebral anemia and could not bear to be asked for spiritual direction outside of confession.”[25] He could not hold out against the fiery opposition of Mother Gonzague to daily communion. Yet he felt keenly his inability to give this privilege to Therese. Sister Agnes of Jesus:
Father Youf, our chaplain, spoke to me admiringly of her [Sister Therese] very often. “And to think,” he said to me one day, “I am not at liberty to allow such a perfect nun daily Communion!”[26]
How ironic that, although Therese’s prayer was answered for many other religious communities all over the world, she herself enjoyed the consolation of the daily Eucharist only for a couple of months during and after the influenza outbreak in Carmel. Although, for almost the whole nine and a half years of her religious life, she had to go without the grace she so much desired, that did not prevent God from answering her prayer “to unite me so closely to Him that He live and act in me.”[27] What hope that gives to all of us who, for whatever reason, cannot receive Jesus in the Eucharist frequently.
The influenza pandemic:“the unspeakable consolation of receiving Holy Communion every day”
It was, then, against the background of being forced to go without daily Eucharist for almost four years, from the ages of 15 to 19, that Therese finally received this joyful privilege during the outbreak of influenza. What a paradox: the pandemic of 2020 has deprived us of the Eucharist, but the pandemic of the 1890s allowed Therese, who was constantly deprived of it, at last to receive Jesus every day. While the life of the Carmel was disrupted and Mother Gonzague confined to bed in the infirmary, Fr. Youf was free to follow his inclinations. Mother Marie of the Angels noted:
[SisterTherese] found him [Jesus] in the Eucharist where he never left her, so to receive communion every day was her dream; Father Youf, who had so much esteem for this privileged soul, granted her this favor for several months.[28]
In these notes Mother Marie tactfully does not state that Fr. Youf was free to grant this privilege only because of the pandemic, but she signed the document in which Mother Agnes detailed those circumstances. Therese mentions no human agent, attributing everything to Jesus:
All through the time the community was undergoing this trial, I had the unspeakable consolation of receiving Holy Communion every day. Ah! this was [15] sweet indeed! Jesus spoiled me for a long time, much longer than He did His faithful spouses, for He permitted me to receive Him while the rest didn’t have this same happiness.[29]
This exceptional permission did not pass without remark. Sister Agnes of Jesus, preparing to testify at the second Process, remembered that “a sister” said to Therese: “Why do you receive communion every day? We don't see how you deserve it any more than the others.” Therese did not answer.[30]
Therese as sacristan:
“I was very fortunate, too, to touch the sacred vessels . . ."
Therese as sacristan, from Thérèse, d. Lisieux., Taylor, T. Nimmo. (1914). Soeur Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower of Jesus: a new and complete translation of L'historie d'une ame. New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons.
Another grace associated with the Eucharist came to Therese because of the epidemic. When it broke out, she was assigned as aide to the sacristan. We can deduce that, in that office, she never touched the Mass vessels without explicit authorization, for Mother Marie of the Angels wrote:
After she left the novitiate, I had her for some time as my aide in the sacristy. In this office I could still admire how great her humility, her deference, her obedience were; she would never have offered herself for anything that could have put her forward, keeping herself very little and never touching the sacred vessels without my permission. [my translation][31]
But during the epidemic, the full responsibility fell on Therese, for her supervisor, then Sister Stanislaus of the Sacred Hearts, was very ill:
I was very fortunate, too, to touch the sacred vessels and to prepare the little linen cloths destined to come in contact with Jesus. I felt that I should be very fervent and recalled frequently these words spoken to a holy deacon: “You are to be holy, you [20] who carry the vessels of the Lord.”[32]
Therese went to great lengths
to receive Holy Communion in Carmel
Although the privilege of daily Communion was withdrawn from Therese several months after the influenza epidemic and never granted again, she exerted herself to receive it on every possible occasion. Even after she became ill, she dragged herself to the choir for Mass every communion morning:
Sister Therese of St. Augustine:
All the sisters who lived with her knew that, during the last years of her life, when her health was already broken, she used to get up for morning Mass after sleepless nights in pain, even during the worst cold of winter.[33]
Sister Marie of the Trinity reported that Therese would suffer anything rather than miss a communion. One communion day, Therese was very sick and had been told to take some medicine, which would have meant she would have to miss her communion.
Faced with this dilemma Sister Therese broke down and cried, but she pleaded her cause so ably with Mother Prioress that not only was she allowed to postpone the medicine until after Mass, but from that day on the custom of missing holy communion in such cases was abolished.[34]
This testimony is more remarkable because, as Therese herself says, after the grace of Christmas 1886 she cried “rarely and with great difficulty.”[35] Further, she was able to change a policy which till then had deprived the sick of communions they would otherwise have been granted.
Even in the last weeks in which she could walk, Therese exerted herself to get down to Mass. Sister Agnes of Jesus remembers a day in May 1897 when, after a painful vesicatory treatment, Therese had attended Mass and received Communion. Sister Agnes, upset by her little sister’s condition, followed Therese into her cell:
I shall always see her seated on her little bench, her back supported by a partition of rough boards. She was quite exhausted and was gazing at me with a sad but very gentle look! My tears redoubled, and, guessing how much I was causing her to suffer, I begged pardon on my knees. She said simply:
“This is not suffering too much to gain one Communion!”
To repeat the phrase is nothing; one had to hear her state it.[36]
Therese prophesied that the nuns would receive Holy Communion daily; the prophecy was fulfilled after her death
During her lifetime, Therese did not prevail against Mother Gonzague’s fierce and constant opposition to the practice of daily Communion. But, although she was little given to prophecy, she promised that the nuns would enjoy that privilege after her death. Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart:
Some time before her death, she told Mother Marie de Gonzague, who was afraid of daily Communion, “Mother, when I get to heaven, I will make you change your opinion.” And that is exactly what happened.[37]
Fr. Zacharie-Jules-Eugene Hodierne, chaplain of the Carmelites from October 1897 until 1900. Courtesy of the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.Sister Therese of St. Augustine recounts that Therese said to her sister Marie: “It won’t always be like that. The time may come when we will have Fr. Hodierne as chaplain, and he will give us holy communion every day.” Marie answered, “What makes you think Fr. Hodierne will be our chaplain? There’s nothing to indicate that he will.” Therese responded: “I suppose not, but I hope he will come, and we’ll be very pleased with him.”[38] In fact, Fr. Youf died a week after Therese. A week after that, on October 15, 1897, Fr. Hodierne was appointed chaplain. “For his very first instruction he took as his text the words “Come and eat my bread” (Prov. 9:5). It was an invitation to daily communion, and he made it without any of us telling him about this desire of ours.”[39]
We can imagine how Therese, who suffered more from being refused daily communion than from anything else, and who on most days heard the words of consecration without being able to receive, rejoiced at being able to procure this grace for her sisters.
* * *
In part 8, the final section of this series we will consider, among other things, how Therese rose to the occasion during the epidemic and how the diminished community faced its future.
[1] St. Therese of Lisieux by those who knew her, ed. and tr. Christopher O’Mahony, O.C.D. Dublin: Veritas Press, 1973, p. 84
[2] Ibid., p. 138.
[3] Story of a Soul, 3rd ed., ed. and tr. John Clarke, O.C.D. (Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, 1996), p. 36
[4] Sister Marie-Joseph of the Cross, O.S.B. (Marcelline Huse, the housemaid of Therese’s Guerin cousins) testified that she noticed how much Therese longed to receive when her sister Celine and her cousin Jeanne Guerin made their first communions, and how much she felt being unable to receive on Sundays and feasts when her family did so. St. Therese of Lisieux by those who knew her, op. cit., p. 185.
[5] Ibid., p. 39.
[6] Ibid., p. 96.
[7] Story of a Soul, op. cit., p. 57.
[8] St. Therese by those who knew her, op. cit., pp. 173-174.
[9] Ibid., p. 88.
[10] Ibid., p. 138.
[11] Story of a Soul, op. cit., p. 77.
[12] Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart, O.C.D. in St. Therese by those who knew her, op. cit., p. 91.
[13] Sister Agnes of Jesus, O.C.D. at the Apostolic Process, paragraph 422: http://www.archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/6-agnes-de-jesus, accessed 6/15/2020.
[14] Story of a Soul, op. cit., pp. 104.
[15] Sister Agnes of Jesus, “In What Milieu Sister Therese Was Sanctified at the Lisieux Carmel,” Apostolic Process, http://archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/6-agnes-de-jesus, accessed 6/15/2020.
[16] Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart in St. Therese by those who knew her, op. cit., p. 96.
[17] LT 92, to Marie Guerin, May 30, 1889, from The Letters of St. Therese of Lisieux, Volume I, (Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Discalced Carmelite Friars, 1982), p. 569.
[18] St. Therese by those who knew her, op. cit., p. 96. See also, in the same work, Sister Marie of the Trinity: “She had a burning desire for holy communion; the inability to receive it daily was the greatest suffering she had to endure,” p. 233. Sister Agnes of Jesus, Sister Genevieve of St. Teresa (p. 154), Sister Therese of St. Augustine (p. 191), and Mother Marie of the Angels (Preparatory Notes for the Apostolic Process at http://archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/la-maîtresse-des-novices/marie-des-anges2/plusieurs-témoignages-de-marie-des-anges/notes-préparatoires , accessed 6/23/2020), also testified to Therese’s deep desire to receive communion daily.
[19] Sister Genevieve of St. Teresa in St Therese of Lisieux by those who knew her, op. cit., p. 140. See also, Sister Agnes of Jesus, Apostolic Process, http://archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/6-agnes-de-jesus, accessed 6/15/2020, and Mother Marie of the Angels, Preparatory Notes for the Apostolic Process, http://archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/la-maîtresse-des-novices/marie-des-anges2/plusieurs-témoignages-de-marie-des-anges/notes-préparatoires, accessed 6/15/2020.
[20] Sister Agnes of Jesus, Apostolic Process, http://archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/6-agnes-de-jesus, accessed 6/15/2020.
[21] Sister Genevieve of St. Teresa, Conseils et souvenirs, http://www.archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/la-famille/sr-genevi%C3%A8ve-c%C3%A9line/plusieurs-t%C3%A9moignages-de-sr-genevi%C3%A8ve-c%C3%A9line/conseils-et-souvenirs, accessed 6/18/2020.
[22] Sister Agnes of Jesus, Apostolic Process, http://www.archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/6-agnes-de-jesus, accessed 6/15/2020.
[23] Sister Agnes of Jesus, O.C.D. in St. Therese of Lisieux by those who knew her, op. cit., p. 39.
[24] Sister Agnes of Jesus, Apostolic Process, “The Milieu in which Sister Therese of the Child Jesus Sanctified Herself at the Carmel of Lisieux,” http://archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/6-agnes-de-jesus, accessed 6/15/2020.
[25] St. Therese of Lisieux by those who knew her, op. cit., p. 247.
[26] Sister Agnes of Jesus, Apostolic Process, http://archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/6-agnes-de-jesus at paragraph 519, accessed 6/15/2020.
[27] Story of a Soul, op. cit., p. 257.
[28] Mother Marie of the Angels, Preparatory Notes for the Apostolic Process, http://archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/la-maîtresse-des-novices/marie-des-anges2/plusieurs-témoignages-de-marie-des-anges/notes-préparatoires, accessed 6/15/2020.
[29] Story of a Soul, op. cit., p. 172.
[30] Sister Agnes of Jesus, NPPA (Preparatory Notes for the Apostolic Process) under the heading “Practice of humility.” Cited in Sainte Therese de Lisieux (1873-1897), by Guy Gaucher, O.C.D. (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2010) at page 352.
[31] Mother Marie of the Angels, NPPA, Preparatory Notes for the Apostolic Process, http://archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/la-ma%C3%AEtresse-des-novices/marie-des-anges2/plusieurs-t%C3%A9moignages-de-marie-des-anges/notes-pr%C3%A9paratoires, accessed 6/15/2020. Translation copyright Maureen O’Riordan 2020; all rights reserved.
[32] Story of a Soul, op. cit.., p. 172.
[33] St. Therese of Lisieux by those who knew her, op. cit., p. 191.
[34] Ibid., p. 233
[35] /Story of a Soul, op. cit., 97.
[36] St. Therese of Lisieux: Her Last Conversations, ed. and tr. John Clarke, O.C.D. (Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, Inc., 1977), p. 256.
[37] St. Therese by those who knew her, op. cit., p. 96.
[38] Ibid., pp. 191.
[39] Ibid., pp. 191-192.