Therese’s Copernican Revolution

After having been seriously warned by God of the importance of St. Thérèse, right after her death and for various decades, to the point that one of the Popes said that she is “the greatest saint of modern times”, interest tended to fade until a point was reached where Thérèse is back in the normal ranks of the saints.

In itself it would be a deep loss for the Church to lose sight of the paramount importance of Therese for the institution itself. Some will argue by saying that St. Faustina’s message is the same as Therese’s. Others will argue that the fact that Pope John-Paul II declared her a “Doctor of the Church” goes against what I am saying. These two arguments may seem strong but when you look at the reality, on a daily basis, Therese is not being understood as God wanted her to be understood during the decades following her death. Others might argue by saying: “has she ever really been understood even in the past?”, or “weren’t we loyal to the gentle Little Flower of Lisieux and still haven’t reached the core of her teaching and the meaning of her mission in the Church?”. When Mgr. Guy Gaucher OCD was interviewed in 1992 – the year of the publication of all her works in one volume – and after her Doctorate in 1997 – he declared: “everything is starting now”! Here he meant that the adventure of knowing the real Therese was just starting! A hundred years after her death!

Therese is just not any saint. She is unique in the history of the Church; she is well above other saints. I can hear people already being upset when they read this. But this statement is not said lightly. In the history of the Church, in the two thousand years of our trying to understand the Gospel and trying to live it, Therese is unique. In the two thousand years of spiritual masters in the Church, Therese is different, but not slightly different, she is “revolutionarily” different and well above the crowd of the Masters of Spiritual Life. However, instead of arguing, it is better to try to understand why such statements are being made. I do not claim that this article will give all the reasons, but some of them are set out below:

1. Her extremely deep and developed relationship with Our Lady which is totally overlooked. We fix on stereotypes, quoting some of her writings and neglecting the main body of her writings. We don’t really see who she is in relation to Our Lady.
2. Her capacity to embody the deepest teaching in Spiritual Life we have today, ie. as expounded by St. John of the Cross.
3. The practical discernment she offers on living St. John of the Cross’ teaching, without any extraordinary manifestations… what she calls “the common way” (la voie commune). This way still embodies a deep mystical/spiritual life which reaches the summits of spiritual life.
4. Her practical spirit, which reveals how to love Jesus on a daily basis, using all the events of the day to love Him, and the notion of martyrdom by pinpricks.
5. Her first trial (1889-1892) and its significant import.
6. Her Act of oblation which sheds an incredible light on the Spiritual Life, on prayer, and on contemplative prayer, and also on how we manage our relationship with God.
7. Her hope and conviction that God wants to give her all that she has read about in St. John of the Cross.
8. Her “Little Way” so often misunderstood.
9. Her final trial (1896-1897) and its profound meaning… the list is long and in all these fields and topics, she offered incredible new lights.
10. Her way of praying for others, and realising to its fullness the baptismal priesthood, reaches incredible depths and shows forth many lights.
11. The radically different face of God she shows us. Her experience and knowledge of God is of another league. The same applies to her understanding of the Gospel and the Scriptures.
12. The way she deals with God directly: a mix of incredible audacity, deep understanding of who God really is, how He thinks, how He sees us, etc. How she deals with Him in a daily and practical way.
13. Of course, and the most important point is the way she loved Jesus. This it must be said includes all the above.

Therese’s Copernican Revolution

There is yet one more important revolutionary insight she offers about our relationship with the Lord, that is, our relationship with the Holy Spirit. On the one hand this can sometimes be overlooked, while on the other hand it can free, or unblock, many people on their spiritual journey. The insight I am referring to combines all the elements above. In order, then, to explain her insight, I think we can summarise it under three aspects which should be combined and blended spiritually:

1- Who we are, our weaknesses, our past sins, the deep stains of sin in us, the bad habits, our faults.…

2- Who God is, His true face or identity – here Therese is simply mind-blowing – how He looks at us; what He expects from us; what He would like to do in us; His incredible desire to give Himself to us.

3- The conditions needed for us to love God. They are not what we think, for example, when we feel we need to please Him by doing good deeds. What to do with our weaknesses, how to deal with our sins (after having sinned), how to love God, how to become holy despite or because of our weaknesses… how to open our being – regardless of our state (sins, faults, etc) – to God’s unconditional Love.

Therese enters the Carmelite monastery of Lisieux at the age of fifteen years. At the age of seventeen she reads St. John of the Cross, the Spiritual Canticle and the Living Flame, and asks God to realise is her all that she has read. She undergoes a deep purification, through difficult, increasingly purifying trials, from 1889 to 1892. As a result of God’s action in her, she learns from within about her own nothingness. After this spiritual winter, from 1893 onward, she enters a new spring phase where the love of God is guiding her.

The sequence of events that follow amply reveals how this new phase unfolds.

On 9^th Jun 1895 she receives a very powerful grace showing her to what extent God’s desire to love us goes, in order to give us his love: the Holy Spirit (she names Him: the Merciful Love of God). She understands that her lack of holiness, in that all her righteous deeds have stains on them, so they would fail to please God anyway, is not the obstacle to God’s outpouring of Love, but that the contrary is true – this is a huge discovery where the dynamics of our relationship with God are turned upside down. She then feels invited to offer herself totally, unconditionally (as a holocaust offering) to God’s merciful love. From that moment onward until her death she is on fire in a completely new way. In April 1896 she is introduced by God to the “land of the shadow of death” (Is. 9:2), to sit “at the table of the sinners,” just like Jesus who wanted to sit and eat with sinners (Mt. 9:11), and she prays with her brothers and sister sinners to be forgiven and set free. The inner Fire is still there but not felt anymore, as will become clear from Letter 197 (see below). In September 1896 she experiences an important retreat. She gives a written account of this retreat to her sister Marie who lives with her in the Monastery. Her account is a prolongation of the new dynamics decisively triggered by the Act of Oblation. In fact, she offers more details and development of the Act. This text is called today the Manuscript B. In reply to the account of her retreat, her sister Marie objects to her saying that she is much weaker than Therese, not on fire like her, that she doesn’t feel any passion of love like her, and more importantly and as a consequence Marie feels she cannot offer herself to God’s love, that she is unworthy, etc. In a word she says: “I am not like you,” to which Therese replies with a fiery letter, Letter 197, see below. In this letter, Therese develops what can be already perceived during her first trial (1889-1992) and which was hugely reinforced on 9^th June 1895. The doctrine she offers – we must call it a “doctrine” – is here revolutionary, almost unheard of in the history of the Church. It is an illustration and development of something we read in St. Paul, but which we fail to really grasp to the core. St. Paul writes: “He [the Lord] said to me: ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” (2 Cor. 12:9) We think of perfection in a certain way, as if it were an eradication of all weaknesses, of being strong when faced with trials and temptations, of having overcame all possibility of falling, only to discover that God’s understanding of the perfection of love, is something completely different. It is rather the case that the more we rely on His Love the more His love is active in us. Our weakness is not an obstacle, if we learn to offer it to God’s love. Our perfection is, in all truth, God’s love in us.

But first let us read this letter.

Letter 197

From Thérèse to Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart

J.M.J.T. Jesus

September 17, 1896

Dear Sister, I am not embarrassed in answering you… How can you ask me if it is possible for you to love God as I love Him?…If you had understood the story of my little bird, you would not have asked me this question. My desires of martyrdom are nothing; they are not what give me the unlimited confidence that I feel in my heart. They are, to tell the truth, the spiritual riches that render one unjust, when one rests in them with complacence and when one believes they are something great. … These desires are a consolation that Jesus grants at times to weak souls like mine (and these souls are numerous), but when He does not give this consolation, it is a grace of privilege. Recall those words of Father: “The martyrs suffered with joy, and the King of Martyrs suffered with sadness.” Yes, Jesus said: “Father, let this chalice pass away from me.” Dear Sister, how can you say after this that my desires are the sign of my love?… Ah! I really feel that it is not this at all that pleases God in my little soul; what pleases Him is that He sees me loving my littleness and my poverty, the blind hope that I have in His mercy…. That is my only treasure, dear Godmother, why would this treasure not be yours?…Are you not ready to suffer all that God will desire? I really know that you are ready; therefore, if you want to feel joy, to have an attraction for suffering, it is your consolation that you are seeking, since when we love a thing the pain disappears. I assure you, if we were to go to martyrdom together in the dispositions we are in now, you would have great merit, and I would have none at all, unless Jesus was pleased to change my dispositions. Oh, dear Sister, I beg you, understand your little girl, understand that to love Jesus, to be His victim of love, the weaker one is, without desires or virtues, the more suited one is for the workings of this consuming and transforming Love. …The desire alone to be a victim suffices, but we must consent to remain always poor and without strength, and this is the difficulty, for: “The truly poor in spirit, where do we find him? You must look for him from afar,” said the psalmist. … He does not say that you must look for him among great souls, but “from afar,” that is to say in lowliness, in nothingness…. Ah! let us remain then very far from all that sparkles, let us love our littleness, let us love to feel nothing, then we shall be poor in spirit, and Jesus will come to look for us, and however far we may be, He will transform us in flames of love….Oh! how I would like to be able to make you understand what I feel!… It is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to Love…. Does not fear lead to Justice (1)?… Since we see the way, let us run together. Yes, I feel it, Jesus wills to give us the same graces, He wills to give us His heaven gratuitously. “Oh, dear little Sister, if you do not understand me, it is because you are too great a soul.. .or rather it is because I am explaining myself poorly, for I am sure that God would not give you the desire to be POSSESSED by Him, by His Merciful Love if He were not reserving this favour for you.. .or rather He has already given it to you, since you have given yourself to Him, since you desire to be consumed by Him, and since God never gives desires that He can­not realize. …Nine o’clock is ringing, and I am obliged to leave you.’ Ah, how I would like to tell you things, but Jesus is going to make you feel all that I cannot write…. I love you with all the tenderness of my GRATEFUL little childlike heart.

Thérèse of the Child Jesus rel. carm. ind.

(1) To strict justice such as it is portrayed for sinners, but no this Justice that Jesus will have toward those who love Him.

The usual understanding of Spiritual Life is that our sins displease God, therefore, we need to repent, refrain, confess, and change. We think we first need to be perfect in order to please God. All these dynamics, however, are measured by our way of “measuring” sin or “good deeds”. Significantly, we look at ourselves instead of looking at God. We think that we can please God. We don’t have any doubt about that, and we think it is through avoiding sin that we can please God. Of course, this is correct: under no circumstance should we sin. We clearly need to avoid sin. But the problem lies elsewhere: we think that this is what makes us please God and be accepted by Him. We think that we can please God, that it is in our power to do so. The point is that, yes, it is necessary to please God, but these dynamics are not enough. The core of Therese’s discovery on the 9^th June 1895, is that even our “good” acts have stains in them (see Act of Oblation). Even our righteous acts have stains on them. This means that we can’t, by our own efforts, please God – we need something else, we need another way. In fact, we need God to please God, because only God (in us) can please God. It is as if we are in a closed circuit. And we need to enter this circuit.

How does this work? First and foremost, one has to admit that this discovery is proper to an advanced stage in spiritual life. But Therese wasn’t shy about sharing it with everyone. In fact, from day one it shows the way to the beginner. She even called it “her own little way to God, direct and easy”, compared to the hard staircase of holiness. In fact, the hard staircase of holiness is an allusion to asceticism, to our own efforts made with the general help of the Grace of God. But, per se, there are no hard staircases which really lead to holiness. It is just an illusion that the majority of we humans have – we think that we can be good Christians by our own efforts, by our own codes of conduct and morals. But in fact, without the Holy Spirit (the Merciful Love of God) we can’t please God. We need to receive the Holy Spirit, allow Him to “grab” our inner being, as it is, transform it, elevate it and introduce it to God himself. We need the Holy Spirit to became capable of pleasing God.

The main objection seems to cling to us still: “I am weak, a wretch, I have greatly sinned, I keep falling, for me, it is impossible to please God” …. “I don’t feel God’s love”.… It would never occur to us – and this is Therese’s Revolution – that the weaker we are, the more we are adapted to God’s Love. God’s weight, God’s desire is to lower Himself more and more! God, says Therese, finds a greater satisfaction in lowering Himself more. Thus, our weakness is not an obstacle but an advantage, with the important conditions of accepting it, and offering it. We never think that God waits for us to offer our weakness, even our sin. We want to offer the good things in us to God. We don’t know that our being is combustible to God’s Love. Anything in us, if offered with trust and abandonment, is combustible for the Fire of God’s Love.

What is good in us is not enough in the eyes of God: all our righteous deeds have stains. This means we can’t please God with our righteousness. We need to offer to the Holy Spirit even what we thought in the past was “good”. He takes it, penetrates it, transforms it, elevates it and introduces it to God. He makes it pleasant to the eyes of God. Therefore, anything in us, good or less good or God forbid, bad, needs to be offered to God’s love. Anything and everything in us is really combustible to the Fire of God’s Love.

Remember, God is a real Fire, a Fire which doesn’t destroy, but gives divine life, makes us become alive, active, loving.

In this sense what was thought to be an obstacle – our weakness, sinfulness etc. – can be used as something combustible to God’s Fire of Love in us. Our “excuses” are now our assets. It depends on we ourselves to use them.

We hear Jesus saying: I came for the sinners so they can have divine life! I didn’t come to ask them to be holy and then I can receive them. I came to change them, I came to give them my Love, which can transform them, make them pleasant to me, so that I can introduce them in Me.

In sum, then, instead of looking at ourselves in the spiritual mirror to see how “good” or “bad” we are, it is better to look at Jesus, see in his heart his desires to give us his Fiery Love. After sinning, it is important to look at Jesus, not at ourselves, which, sadly, sometimes seems to reinforce the sin by yet another sin, which is to delay the reception of Jesus’ Merciful Love.

Lord Jesus, keep our eyes fixated on your Love, help us understand to which extent it is only your love which makes us pleasant to your eyes and introduces us deeply in you. Amen.

Lord Jesus help us see that the more we feel we are weak the more adapted we become to your love. Teach us O Lord to dwell in this spiritual poverty. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is Jesus’ Fiery Love.