St Therese doing dishes, an icon by Brother Mickey McGrath, OSFS

On December 14, 1927, the Congregation of Rites proclaimed a decree by Pope Pius XI that declared St. Therese of Lisieux, canonized less than three years before, patron of all missionaries, both men and women, the equal of St. Francis Xavier, who had held the title of Patron of Missions alone.  The Congregation of Rites and the Propagation of the Faith opposed making St. Therese patron of missions, but Pope Pius XI insisted on it.  

The letter written in 2007 for the 80th anniversary of the proclamation of St. Therese as patron of missions by Dámaso Zuazua, O.C.D., then General Secretary of the Missions of the Discalced Carmelite Order, has many valuable insights into the history and significance of Pius XI's conferring this title on Therese, who had already, in 1921, been named patron of the Carmelite missions.  I recommend reading it.

Therese really believed that her fidelity to the smallest demands of her everyday life made a difference to the eternal salvation of souls.  In 1910 her young novice, Sister Marie of the Trinity, testified about this attitude:

Her love for God  gave her  a burning zeal for the salvation of souls, especially those of priests; she offered all her sacrifices for their sanctification, and urged me to do likewise.  She called sinners "her children" and took her role as their "mother" very seriously.  She was passionately fond of them, and worked for them with untiring fervor.

One washing-day, I was sauntering along to the laundry, looking at the flowers in the garden as I went, when along came Sister Therese at a brisk pace, and overtook me.  "Is that how one hurries with children to feed and work to do so they can live?" she said, and then, dragging me with her, "Come on, let's hurry; if we amuse ourselves here, our children will die of hunger."  

St. Therese of Lisieux by those who knew her, tr. Christopher O'Mahony, O.C.D.  Dublin: Veritas Press, 1975, p. 237.  (If you want to see what Therese's lived holiness looked like from the outside, this book, consisting of the testimony of witnesses at the first diocesan inquiry 13 years after she died, is invaluable).    

In this encounter Therese showed her solidarity with the poor and with the working mothers of the world (a solidarity prefigured by her parents, Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin, who went daily to the 5:30 a.m. Mass because it was the Mass of the poor and the only one the workers could attend). She truly believed that if she were not generous in carrying out her duties, her "children" would go without.  The other nuns remarked that when she arrived at the laundry (one of the hardest physical tasks the nuns had to do), she chose the least comfortable place: near the hot water in summer, near the cold rinsing tub in winter, and she worked energetically at every moment.  In a small contemplative community,  she avoided the temptation to become closed in on herself.  She modeled what Pope Francis asked for many years later when speaking to women religious from 75 countries:

 Chastity for the Kingdom of Heaven shows how affection has its place in mature freedom and becomes a sign of the future world, to make God’s primacy shine forever. But, please, [make it] a ‘fertile’ chastity, which generates spiritual children in the Church.

The consecrated are mothers: they must be mothers and not ‘spinsters’!

Forgive me if I talk like this but this maternity of consecrated life, this fruitfulness is important! May this joy of spiritual fruitfulness animate your existence. Be mothers, like the images of the Mother Mary and the Mother Church. You cannot understand Mary without her motherhood; you cannot understand the Church without her motherhood, and you are icons of Mary and of the Church.”

 "Pope Francis to nuns:  Don't be old maids," by Melnda Henneberger, May 8, 2013. 

Celine tells us that Therese had observed in Carmel some nuns who had yielded to the temptation to be spinsters:

. . . . in a letter dated 15 September 1972, Fr. Louis Augros, the first superior of the famous “Mission of  France," recalls that Celine, the sister of Therese, confided in him that when she entered the Carmel and realized all the faults of the community, she reproved Therese for not telling her about them before, and that, smiling, Therese answered her like this:

“I hadn’t wanted to tell you anything ahead of time, but now you see for yourself that you’ve landed in the middle of quite a crew of old maids, and you can see what you shouldn’t become!”

 What would our lives be like if we lived them every day in full solidarity with the poor and with the gospel mission of Jesus?  This is why I chose the icon of "Therese doing dishes" to illustrate this article.  I believe that those who say Therese's way of confidence and love, often called the "little way," is nothing more than offering every little thing to God have not yet seen the whole picture.  That is, in her poem, "Why I Love You, O Mary," Therese wrote "To love is to give everything," but followed that line immediately with this explanation: "It's to give oneself." Therese's God is not an insatiable idol greedy for more sacrifices; instead, her Creator thirsts to be loved by the creature.  Offering what I'm doing at the moment is only the expression of the prior gift of myself.  To give the whole person to God, as Therese did, transcends offering all one's tasks.  Yet the energy and eagerness Therese put into all her occupations illuminates for us how she consecrated her whole self to the mission of the Church.  It is also interesting that, even with her "passionate fondness for souls," she was considered of little practical use by some of  her community; she wasn't good at manual work and was an assistant in all her jobs.  Her failures in this regard did not disturb her or prevent her mission from being fulfilled.

Two more points:

• A close reading of Therese's writings will show that, as she grew in solidarity with "sinners," she moved from the role of their mother to that of their sister.  See Jones, M. (2006).  From mother to sister: The development in the understanding of mission in the life and writings of St Thérèse of Lisieux and its contemporary relevance (Master's thesis).  University of Notre Dame Australia.
• For a unique contemporary interpretation of Therese's mission, please see "The Mission of Therese of Lisieux: Saigon and Beyond," by Constance FitzGerald, O.C.D.  This article appeared in the Summer 1997 Article of The Way Supplement, pp. 28-37, and is copyright The Way, Heythrop College, Kensington Square, London, W85HQ England.  

More on the Web about Therese's mission:

• The "mission" page of the site of the Shrine at Lisieux
• The "Therese's mission today" page of "Saint Therese of Lisieux: A Gateway"

[T]his French Carmelite nun who gloried in spiritual childhood, and who never published a word in her lifetime, never watched TV, and as far as we know never blogged, has great deal to teach us American adults in a media-saturated culture.

If you missed the article "Jesus, Therese, and Our Little Way," written by Jesuit James Martin for St.  Therese's feast, please enjoy it now.

As a gift for the feast of St. Therese of Lisieux I publish below an excerpt from my conference "A Map of Therese's Way":

During Thérèse’s illness Céline asked her

“Do you believe I can still hope to be with you in heaven?  This seems impossible to me.  It’s like e, xpecting a cripple with one arm to climb to the top of a greased pole to fetch an object.” 

Thérèse answered,

“Yes, but if there’s a giant who picks up the little cripple in his arms, raises him high, and gives him the object desired! This is exactly what God will do for you, but you must not be preoccupied about the matter; you must say to God, ‘I know very well that I’ll never be worthy of what I hope for, but I hold out my hand to You like a beggar, and I’m sure You will answer me fully, for You are so good!”[vi]

Thérèse’s littleness is not immaturity, but a complete detachment from self.  She outlines for us a program of searching interior asceticism.  She asks us to give up attachment to consolation in prayer, to beautiful thoughts, to complicated methods in the spiritual life, to all spiritual beauty-culture and all thought of ourselves as virtuous people. 

“You are very little; remember that and, when one is very little, one doesn’t have beautiful thoughts.”[vii] 

“For simple souls there must be no complicated ways.”[viii] 

“O Mother!  I am too little to have any vanity now, I am too little to compose beautiful sentences in order to have you believe that I have a lot of humility.  I prefer to agree very simply that the Almighty has done great things in the soul of His divine Mother’s child, and the greatest thing is to have shown her her littleness, her impotence.”[ix]

To be little does not mean to have little hope, or little desire, or little love; it means to have no conceit, no attachment to self, but great love and great confidence in the power of God.  “We can never expect too much of God, Who is at the same time merciful and almighty, and we shall receive from Him precisely as much as we confidently expect of Him.”  Thérèse’s “littleness” is an experiential knowledge of the wholly gratuitous action of grace.  What could be our frustration becomes our cause for joy.  A child cannot take care of herself, cannot earn her living, so no one expects the child to do so.  In the same way, if we acknowledge our littleness, God will accept full responsibility for us, but, if we try to go it alone, God may leave us to do so until we turn to God.

Thérèse said her way was related to the doctrine St. John of the Cross set forth in his The Ascent of Mount Carmel: “To come to possess all, desire the possession of nothing.  To desire to be all, desire the possession of nothing.”  At seventeen Thérèse wrote to her cousin, Marie Guérin:

Marie, if you are nothing, you must not forget that Jesus is All, so you must lose your little nothingness in His infinite All and think only of this uniquely lovable All. . . . You are mistaken, my darling, if you believe that your little Thérèse walks always with fervor on the road of virtue.  She is weak and very weak, and every day she experiences has a new experience of this weakness, but, Marie, Jesus is pleased to teach her, as He did St. Paul, the science of rejoicing in her infirmities  This is a great grace, and I beg Jesus to teach it to you, for peace and quiet of heart are to be found there only.  When we see ourselves as so miserable, then we no longer wish to consider ourselves, and we look only on the unique Beloved! . . .

Dear little Marie, as for myself, I know no other means of reaching perfection but (love).[xii]

The teenaged Thérèse turned away from the classical ideal of sanctity: that a saint must be perfect, a brave, vigorous person who “walks always with fervor on the road of virtue.”  The ideal of sanctity set before her at Lisieux Carmel included physical mortification, anxious attention to one’s state of soul, and collecting “good deeds” to enrich one’s reward in heaven.  Thérèse said firmly that these methods were not for her or for “little souls.”  And the life Thérèse led was not what most of the people around her expected of a saint.  Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart, a nun from Saigon who lived with Thérèse for seven years before returning to Vietnam, was often asked about Thérèse after she became famous.  She invariably answered:  “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.”[xiii] 

Most of the nuns who lived with Thérèse did not venerate her during her lifetime.  She was misunderstood and rejected just as we are.  Pauline said that Thérèse “often had to suffer from people’s dislike of her, from clashes of temperament or of mood, and, indeed, from spite and jealousy on the part of certain sisters . . .”[xiv] 

Sister Marie-Madeleine, the novice who used to run away and hide when it was time for her to see Thérèse for spiritual direction, testified: 

“She was unknown and even misunderstood in the convent.  About half the sisters said she was a good little nun, a gentle person, but that she had never had to suffer and that her life had been rather insignificant.  The others . . . had a more unfavorable view of her . . . they said she had been spoiled by her sisters.”[xv] 

Sister Vincent de Paul once said: 

“I cannot understand why they talk about Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus as if she were a saint.  She does nothing extraordinary; we do not see her practicing virtue; it cannot even be said that she is a really good nun.”[xvi] 

“She does nothing extraordinary.  We do not see her practicing virtue.” This testimony speaks volumes about the way of confidence and love.  In place of extraordinary deeds, Thérèse proposes a way of deep interior detachment, a childlike and spousal intimacy with God, and a life of hidden love.

 “I am not always faithful, but I never get discouraged.”

Like us, Thérèse was not perfect.  Unlike many of us, she never lost confidence that in the end she would be consumed by the fire of love:

After seven years in the religious life, I still am weak and imperfect.  I always feel, however, the same bold confidence of becoming a great saint because I don’t count on my merits since I have none, but I trust in Him who is Virtue and Holiness.  God alone, content with my weak efforts, will raise me to Himself and make me a saint, clothing me in His infinite merits.[xvii]

Some have interpreted Thérèse’s way to mean simply offering every little thing to God, a kind of constant “morning offering.”  But a focus on Therese's little acts distorts the way, as if, instead of concentrating on doing great things for God, we should worry about doing little things for God.  Thérèse does not allow us to become preoccupied with trivialities; she challenges us to let nothing escape us, to realize that the smallest happenings of our lives are all fuel for the fire of love which will transform us.  She turned away from focusing on any deeds of her own, big or small, and concentrated on trusting in the action of Jesus. 

“Let us not refuse Him the least sacrifice.  Everything is so big in religion . . . to pick up a pin can convert a soul.  What a mystery! . . . Ah!  It is Jesus alone who can give such a value to our actions; let us love Him with all our strength. . . .[xviii]

In the texts Thérèse wrote we find a radical doctrine with cosmic reverberations.  The “way of confidence and love” is not something we do.  The heart of the little way is to revision our relationship with God, to touch the heart of God, and, above all, to let the heart of God touch our own hearts

To Thérèse sanctity is not perfection; it is bearing with one’s imperfections. 

“If you want to bear in peace the trial of not pleasing yourself, you will give me a sweet home. . . . do not fear, the poorer you are the more Jesus will love you.”[xix] 

“How happy I am to see myself always imperfect and to have such need of God’s mercy at the moment of my death!”[xx] 

To Thérèse the holy person is not the perfect one, the superhero who has conquered weakness and limitation.  To Thérèse, holiness is not a victory, but a surrender.  It’s a loving acceptance of our own fragility, our weakness, our impotence, our inability to do any good on our own.  And this loving acceptance is an invitation to the creative action of love and mercy in our hearts.

 copyright 1988-2010 by Maureen O'Riordan.  All rights reserved.

[vi] Last Conversations of St. Therese of Lisieux, tr. John Clarke, O.C.D.  Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1977, , p. 221.

[vii] Ibid. , p. 218.

[viii] Story of a Soul (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1976), p. 254.

[ix] Ibid., p. 210.

[xii] Letters of Saint Thérèse, Volume I.  Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1982, p. 641.

[xiii] Letters of Saint Thérèse, Volume II.  Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1988, p. 1091.

[xiv] St. Thérèse of Lisieux by those who knew her.

[xv] St. Thérèse of Lisieux by those who knew her, p. 264.

[xvi] Last Conversations

[xvii] Story of a Soul, p. 72.

[xviii] Letters, Volume II, May 22, 1894, p. 855.

[xix] Letters, Volume II, December 24, 1896, p. 1038.

[xx] Last Conversations, July 15, 1897, p. 98.



October 13, 2009:  In honor of the visit of the relics of St. Therese of Lisieux to Great Britain and of "Little Way Week" (October 18-24 in Great Britain), I am posting an audio in two parts of my conference "A Map of St. Therese's Way of Confidence and Love" for personal use until October 24, 2009.  I invite visitors from around the world to join in solidarity with the Church in Great Britain in observing "Little Way Week," which begins on World Mission Sunday. 

The conference is copyright 2009 by Maureen O'Riordan and all rights are reserved; please do not download it or reproduce it, but feel free to listen to it here.  Each part is less than half an hour. 

 Part One