Centenary Therese Study Guides

Introduction

At the October 1995 meeting of the national O.Carm and OCD coordinators for the Centenary of the Death of St. Therese in Darien, Illinois, I agreed to compile some discussion questions on St. Therese's life and message for distribution to Carmelites across the country. Here they are.

There are five sets of reflections and questions. They are meant to be very general, and they are meant for you to adapt them to your own situation. They could be used in a community setting at intervals during the Centenary, or they could be helpful for individual study and meditation.

I have translated and edited the French texts. The references to St. Therese's works are all taken from the Institute of Carmelite Studies Publications.

If these reflections and questions were to be used in your community, ideally only one topic should be taken up at each session. It would also be better if each participants were given a copy of the reflection and questions beforehand, with time to prepare the background reading. And it would help if the reflection was read out loud at the beginning of the meeting.

"Bloom Where You're Planted"

-Set #1-

Reflection

We often hear it said that in order to become a saint one has to be born in the right place: in a good home, in a morally healthy climate, and be well nourished psychologically and spiritually. Each species of flower seeks its own special environment: its soil, its degree of humidity, its light. Heredity can help or play tricks, we willingly say.

It would indeed seem that a good home is an advantage to sanctity and that a wounded home in a hindrance. Therese's story shows that this is not all so certain, that it is not the determining factor. One does not need a privileged genealogy to become a saint. Such determinism is certainly valid in the animal or plant kingdom, but not for the free human person. Grace can adapt to birds wounded in the earliest stages of life.

From this point of view, what was Therese's situation? In spite of appearances, she grew up in a garden which was far from being always and everywhere sunny. Psychoanalysts today would probably peer over her case for a long time. If her father and mother were examined by a team of psychiatrists today, they probably wouldn't leave the office unscathed . . . . Was this the ideal couple to bring a great saint into the world? I can hear science exclaiming, "God should have paid more attention, he should have programmed things better!"

Therese grew up in the soil where she was planted, just as it was. Later, she never criticized her childhood. She accepted everything as a gift from the hand of God, with the simplicity of a child.

There was, however, something unique at Les Buissonnets: It was a home where there was much love. In her notebooks, Therese is inexhaustible when she writes of the climate of closeness and warmth which she knew there.

One thing is certain about the Martin home: however limited, incomplete, and simplistic it was, the Martins really loved each other. That is where Therese learned--making of course a few corrections--how her Heavenly Father loved her, and with what ardor.

Love can get by with imperfect tools and immature psychological material. The verse "love bears all things" really is true. Love is sufficiently strong to get by on crutches, on the condition that it be an authentic love. Love creates its own special environment where it can develop.

Questions for Discussion

1. Just what did St. Therese learn about God from her family?

2. How can the example of St. Therese's home life help strengthen our families today?

3. Louis and Zelie Martin have been declared Venerable. In studying their lives, what progress do you see in their abandonment to the "little way of confidence" in God's merciful love?

4. If St. Therese were your community's vocation director, what advice might she give in dealing with the "wounded birds" who apply to religious life today?

"The Only Way Out"

-Set #2-

Reflection

What happened to Therese happens to innumerable people who are seeking God. We come up to a dead end. All of us who are called begin with a great ideal: that of holiness through works. In our eyes, loving God means wanting to do much for Him, devoting ourselves to the extreme to earn his love, killing ourselves in his service. We have the deep conviction that everything depends on us, that we have to make it to the end on our own. We are the ones who have to pray attentively for long hours, obey the law of evangelical perfection, and turn the right cheek when someone strikes us on the left. We are the ones who have to give our life without limit in a love of neighbor. In a word, we are the ones who have to see to it that we are "perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect." We, we, always we! 

It is impossible to escape from this dead end. Holiness through works is i-m-p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e. There are only two ways out. And both end up at another dead end. Either we constantly realize that we are not up to holiness and, despite our extreme efforts, we don't advance a single step. On the contrary, we stumble and fall day after day. Then there is only discouragement--"the heros are worn out"--and spiritual depression. We become bitter and give up. 

Or we insist on holding the banner high no matter what. We go along "as if." This is Phariseeism. The Pharisee is also a fervent observer of the law. But he hasn't succeeded very well at it. Cracks begin to grow between the outer appearance he shows off and his inner poverty as a sinner. As Jesus put it, he becomes a "whitewashed sepulcre," all polished on the outside, but teeming with rot within.

How do we escape from this dilemma? There is only one way out: the little way. We have to turn the hourglass upside-down, on its head: the sand has to flow in the other direction. It is not we who are doing much for God. It is God who is doing everything for us. It is not God who is happy to have us; quite the opposite, we have the happiness of having Him, Him. Then comes rest, boundless confidence, relaxation, and hope. Do we work less for this? No, we don't work less intensely, we just work in another way. We no longer work for God; we do the work of God. And that makes all the difference. 

Questions for Discussion

"She is a Ravishing Miniature of the Blessed Virgin Mary"

(Abbehodierne, confessor to the Carmel of Lisieux after Therese's death, in an 1899 letter to Mother Marie de Gonzague.) 

-Set #3-

Reflection

We can meditate on and tell others about Therese's spirituality of the Blessed Virgin Mary. For the spirit of Carmel in which Therese blossomed, by its nature, dissipates all exaggerated devotion and excess. 

In general but not always, this simplification is special to religious devotions, and particularly to Marian devotion. Our Lady is "non-complicating." She simplifies and makes difficult things easy.... She teaches us to conquer ourselves less by heroic strength than by grace, in both senses of the word: by gift and by a kind of elegance and astuteness in untyping Gordian knots, in softening hard hearts, with a smile. A smile, in short, is the symbol of grace making things easy. 

Therese's life, like Our Lady's, took place under ordinary conditions, and it seemed effortless and was without any show. As much as we can conjecture, Therese personality resembled Our Lady's: her temperament, her nature was more like what we can guess of Our Lady than the temperament and nature of Saint Teresa of Avila. To a rare degree among the saints, Therese resembled Mary, as we know her through St. Luke. Both have something direct, clear, and fresh about them. They were straightforward and uncomplicated. They were both wise because they were very focused. At times they would be exultant, then they would quickly come back to recollection in silence. They loved to obey signs without however seeking them out. We could find other traits in common....

Questions for Discussion

1. Do you agree with this statement by Jean Guitton? 

2. What fresh insights can St. Therese give us into Our Lady? 

3. What fresh insights can Our Lady give us into St. Therese? 

4. How can Therese help us to simplify--and deepen--our devotion to Mary? 

5. The statue of Our Lady of the Smile accompanied Therese from Les Buissonnets to the ante-chamber of her cell in Carmel to the infirmary where she died. What would the pose of this statue have taught Therese about Mary? About God Himself?

"He Has to Look Away"

-Set #4-

Reflection

"It is already hard enough for God, who loves us so much, to have to leave us on earth to carry out our time of trial without us constantly going to tell him how bad off we are; we shouldn't seem to take any notice of it!" (Sr. Genevieve, Conseils et Souvenirs, p. 58) 

This saying by Saint Therese stands out from the idea we usually have of suffering. In Western theology, the vocabulary of suffering has become so widespread that it seems as if God, without being pleased that man is suffering, does desire suffering in itself. For example, Pascal said that sickness is the natural state of the Christian, who ought to be astonished when he is in good health. What a horrible idea! 

The thought of Saint Therese that we just quoted implies a new sensitivity toward suffering. She hardly wanted a life of ease. We know that she chose her part of austerity and effort in religion and that she was so devoted to the Crucified Face of the Lord that she even took that name. We can even say that her short life was a series of trials, of which the saddest was her father's paralysis, before her own tuberculosis. But she does not give a value of salvation to suffering in itself, as Christians often do. Suffering, for Therese, is a means to an end. This reminds us of the profound idea in the Letter to the Philippians and the Letter to the Hebrews that the sufferings of Christ are a consequence of his obedience to his Father. They are not imposed on him because of any value of suffering in itself. Since the Fall, suffering is, I say, a short cut to take us to our goal. God sees it and wants it, and He sees it and wants it as a remedy or as a surgical operation. Yet this violent means is so momentary, and even so minuscule when compared to what we obtain from it and which is of a whole other order: eternal, blissful, immutable. So we understand how Celine condensed her sister's thoughts on evil in this bold image: God suffers from our suffering. He sends it to us, but he has to look away. 

Questions for Discussion

1. Give some specific examples of St. Therese minimizing her spiritual and physical sufferings.

2. How can Therese sense of balance and sense of humor help those of us who take ourselves too seriously?

3. How can St. Therese free acceptance of suffering help us to accept our sufferings?

The Centenary of the Act of Oblation by St. Therese

 -Set #5- 

Reflection

We are fast the first centenary of the death of one of the greatest Saints of modern times. Her name was Mary Frances Therese Martin, better known to us now as "The Little Flower" or 'St Therese of the Child Jesus'. She died at the Carmelite Convent of Lisieux on 30th September, 1897, uttering the words "My God, I love you" - words which summed up the thrust and consuming force of her short but intense life.

If we go back a hundred years - to 1895 - we find St. Therese at the height of her spiritual life, having reached a period of full maturity, before a final stage of suffering and purification that would make her the Saint she is.

It is true to say that in the lives of all the great friends of Christ, there comes a time when they are urged to give God everything He asks, without holding anything back. Their own generous lives and God's providential ways bring about this moment of grace. This hour struck for Therese in the month of June, 1 1895.

An Ardent Desire to Love

A conversation between three sisters of the Martin family on a Winter's evening in January of that same year (1895) resulted in Pauline (Mother Agnes), who was Prioress in the Lisieux Carmel at the time, asking her younger sister Therese to write her childhood memoirs. These pages turned out to be the first eight chapters of The Story of a Soul - the world famous Autobiography of the little Saint from Lisieux. 

She regarded this task of writing the story of her life as a portrayal of God's mercy towards her: 'It is with great happiness that I come to sing the mercies of the Lord' and in the very first paragraph she states she would simply 'be doing only one thing I shall begin to sing what I must sing eternally: The Mercies of the Lord" (Ps. 88:2). 

It is obvious then that in the course of that year of 1895 the thought of God's mercy and love was uppermost in her mind. As she recollected on what she had been spared from by a happy home, a God- fearing family and a vocation to Carmel, the experience of God's merciful love became an ever deeper and lived reality.

She understood that God grants different graces to different people, adding variety to variety in the company of his Saints. "To me" she confesses, 'he has granted his infinite Mercy", and through the eyes of mercy, she saw all the other qualities of the divine life resplendent with love. 

Then on 9th of June, she received a very special grace which helped her to understand how much Jesus wanted to be loved. Her heart burned with a more ardent love to answer his thirst for souls and to offer herself to him as a little victim.

A Holocaust Victim to Merciful Love

It turned out to be a decisive day in her spiritual growth to sanctity. It was the Feast of the Holy Trinity. The inspiration came to her during morning Mass. Immediately afterwards, she went with her sister Celine to the Prioress, Mother Agnes, and obtained permission to offer herself as a
victim to God's love. She then proceeded to write out a formula of offering and two days later, on Tuesday, 11th June, in front of a favourite Statue of Our Lady of the Smile, she pronounced it in her own name and in that of her sister Celine.

This prayer of sacrificial offering to merciful love contains the central message of the teaching of St Therese. It reveals her burning desire to love God, it shows us her unconditional hope in God's loving providence; it reveals her childlike simplicity, her humility of heart, her intense longing to do God's will and her love for souls and for the Church. 

The very first paragraph contains many of these aspects and unveils the motive force that impelled this heroically generous girl: 

"O My God! Most Blessed Trinity, I desire to Love You and make You Loved, to work tar the glory of Holy Church by saving souls on earth and liberating those suffering in purgatory I desire to accomplish Your will perfectly and to reach the degree of glory You have prepared for me in Your Kingdom I desire, in a word, to be a saint, but I feel my helplessness and I beg You, O my God! to be Yourself my Sanctity!' (Story of a Soul. The Autobiography of St Therese of Lisieux. Trans. by John Clarke, O.C.D. Washington. D.C. 1976, p. 276). 

This offering of herself to Merciful Love was the outcome of her "little way" of evangelical simplicity and confidence. While wanting to remain unnoticed and unacknowledged, like a child's toy that is tossed about at will or a grain of sand that is trampled on and forgotten, she still had aspirations rations towards greatness. She always wanted to be a saint (Story of a Soul, p. 207); she wanted to enter Carmel at the very early age of fifteen; while yet a child and offered the choice of dresses in a basket by her eldest sister, she unceremoniously took the whole basket saying: "I choose all!" In 1895 she meditated on this incident and saw it as symbolic of what we choose to accept or refuse from God. She considered it as indicative of her determination to accept all God asked of her: "I don't want to be a Saint by halves. I' m not afraid to suffer tar You, I
fear only one thing: to keep my own will, so take it, for 'I choose all that You will". (Ibid, p. 27). 

An Oblation Possible For All

The living out in daily life of this Oblation is what is important. It becomes an attitude of mind and heart, an implicit trust in God, a willingness to be sanctified by Jesus. Like Therese, we have to admit our weakness and accept the fact that, despite all our efforts and achievements, we too will go to heaven 'with empty hands,' receiving our eternal reward not as a right in justice but from pure mercy. 

Merciful love will gild with mercy those imperfections of daily life that spring more from frailty than from malice. There are certain failings which even the Saints cannot completely overcome in this life. Therese found the remedy in her surrender to God's merciful love: " since that happy day. on which she made her Oblation, she confesses "Love penetrates and surrounds me, at each moment this Merciful Love renews me, purifying my soul and leaving no trace of sin within it, and I need have no fear of purgatory" ( p. 181). 

We too can live our offering of ourselves to Merciful Love, provided it is not a passing gesture but a constant effort to see God's love at work in our lives. Like Therese we have to accept his holy will in all thing, do our duty from love of Him and trust in his goodness. 

Therese herself endeavoured to get her sisters in the convent and even the novices to make this Offering and to live it without fear: she did not consider it a private practice for herself alone. Indeed she wanted a legion of little souls to follow her example and her way of confidence. 

Neither need we fear that this offering will let us in for more suffering If you offered yourself to divine justice, remarks Therese, you might well fear future suffering, but merciful love will have compassion on your weakness and from it we should 'expect nothing but mercy.' 

The actual words of offering are contained in the final three paragraphs of the Act of Oblation. They are as follows: 

In order to live in one single act of perfect Love, I OFFER MYSELF AS A VICTIM OF HOLOCAUST TO YOUR MERCIFUL LOVE, asking You to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within You to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of Your Love, O my God!

May this martyrdom, after having prepared me to appear before You, finally cause me to die and may my soul take its flight without any delay into the eternal embrace of Your Merciful Love.

I want, O my Beloved, at each beat of my heart to renew this offering to You an infinite number of times, until the shadows having disappeared I may be able to tell You of my Love in an Eternal Face to Face!" (Story of a Soul, pp. 277).

Let us make these dispositions our own in preparation for the coming Centenary and experience the riches of God's merciful love, in our personal lives.

J.M.+J.T. 

Offering of Myself as a Victim of Holocaust to God's Merciful Love 

O My God! Most Blessed Trinity, I desire to Love You and make You Loved, to work for the glory of Holy Church by saving souls on earth and liberating those suffering in purgatory. I desire to accomplish Your will perfectly and to reach the degree of glory You have prepared for me in Your Kingdom. I desire, in a word, to be a saint, but I feel my helplessness and I beg You, O my God! to be Yourself my Sanctity!

Since You have loved me so much as to give me Your only Son as my Savior and my Spouse, the infinite treasures of His merits are mine. I offer them to You with gladness, begging You to look upon me only in the Face of Jesus and in His heart burning with Love.

I offer You, too, all the merits of the saints (in heaven and on earth), their acts of Love, and those of the holy angels. Finally, I offer You, O Blessed Trinity! the Love and merits of the Blessed Virgin, my dear Mother. It is to her I abandon my offering, begging her to present it to You. Her Divine Son, my Beloved Spouse, told us in the days of His mortal life: "Whatsoever you the Father in my name he will give it to your!" I am certain, then, that You will grant my desires; I know, O my God! that the more You want to give, the more You make us desire. I feel in my heart immense desires and it is with confidence that I ask You to come and take possession of my soul. Ah! I cannot receive Holy Communion as often as I desire, but, Lord, are You not all-powerful? Remain in me as in a tabernacle and never separate Yourself from Your little victim.

I want to console You for the ingratitude of the wicked, and I beg of You to take away my freedom to displease You. If through weakness I sometimes fall, may Your Divine Glance cleanse my soul immediately, consuming all my imperfections like the fire that transforms everything into itself. 

I thank You, O my God! for all the graces You have granted me, especially the grace of making me pass through the crucible of suffering. It is with joy I shell contemplate You on the Last Day carrying the sceptre of Your Cross since You deigned to give me a share in this very precious Cross, I hope in heaven to resemble You and to see shining in my glorified body the sacred stigmata of Your Passion.

After earth's Exile, I hope to go and enjoy You in the Fatherland, but I do not want to lay up merits for heaven. I want to work for Your Love alone with the one purpose of pleasing You, consoling Your Sacred Heart, and saving souls who will love You eternally.

In the evening of life, I shall appear before You with empty hands, for I do not ask You, Lord, to count my works. All our justice is stained in Your eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed in Your own Justice and to receive from Your Love the eternal possession of Yourself. I want no other Throne, no other Crown but You my Beloved!

Time is nothing in Your eyes, and a single day is like a thousand years. 

You can, then, in one instant prepare me to appear before You. In order to live in one single act of perfect Love, I OFFER MYSELF AS A VICTIM OF HOLOCAUST TO YOUR MERCIFUL LOVE, asking You to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within You to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of Your Love, O my God! May this martyrdom, after having prepared me to appear before You, finally cause me to die and may my soul take its flight without any delay into the eternal embrace of Your Merciful Love. I want, O my Beloved, at each beat of my heart to renew this offering to You an infinite number of times, until the shadows having disappeared I may be able to tell You of my Love in an Eternal Face to Face!

Questions for Discussion

1. What is your favorite image in this text? 

2. In this Oblation, what examples of St. Therese's great daring do you find? What examples of her simplicity? What examples of her genius?

3. How could a contemplative Carmelite live out the ideal of "working for the glory of Holy Church" expressed in this Oblation? 

4. How could a Carmelite immersed in the apostolate understand "appearing before God with empty hands"?

5. How would you explain this Oblation to a young person exploring a religious vocation?

6. Bishop Boyce says in his article that "the living out in daily life of this Oblation is what is important. It becomes at attitude of mind and heart, an implicit trust in God, a willingness to be sanctified by Jesus." In what concrete ways could you apply this to your life now?