St. Thérèse de Lisieux: The Paradox of Greatness- Part II

We all want to be happy. No sane person can object to that but only a few could swallow Christ’s prescription for happiness – “Deny yourself”, “take up your cross”, “follow me.” Where to go, Lord? “To crucifixion.”  A total upside down of our concept of happiness.  St. Thérèse of Lisieux took these words to heart to the end.

Thérèse’s autobiography, “The Story of the Soul”, and her letters illustrate the Christian paradox of greatness. Thérèse’s spirituality is further explained in Bernard Bro’s book, “The Little Way”.

Read Part I

St. Thérèse- Her Thirst

Thérèse’s encounter on Christmas Eve 1886 which changed her life forever:

“My heart was torn with grief” looking at the image of Jesus hanging on the cross with blood gushing forth from his pierced hands, but the world was indifferent to this! “I resolved to continually remain at the foot of the Cross,” “From that day the cry of my dying savior – ‘I thirst’ – sounded incessantly in my heart.” Christ’s thirst was felt at the depths of her soul! “My one desire was to give my Beloved to drink. I felt myself consumed with the thirst for souls, and I longed at any cost to snatch sinners from the everlasting flames of hell.”

The Ultimate Search for Meaning

When we begin our spiritual journey, our minds may be hyped up with lofty idealism. “To be a martyr was the dream of my youth. And in the cloisters of Carmel, the dream grew with me.” She desired to become a missionary sent to the ends of the earth. Upon reading the lives of martyrs, she envied their suffering; to be tortured, to be crucified, to be skinned alive like St. Bartholomew, to plunge into boiling water like St. John, to be fed to wild animals like St. Ignatius of Antioch; like St. Joan of Arc, praising Jesus at the stake or like St. Agnes and St. Cecilia who gladly offered their neck to the executioner – “I long to undergo them all.”

Later St. Thérèse saw further:

“But even then, I realized that my dream was absurd, because I couldn’t limit my desires to a specific kind of martyrdom…” Then she stumbled onto something that blew her mind. It was St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (Chapter 13). “At last I had found peace…I realized that love covered every type of vocation, that Love was everything, that it embraced all times and places…” Eureka! St. Paul’s words intoxicated her, “Then, in the excess of my delirious joy, I exclaimed: Love is my vocation!”

The Only Step for Small Children

A lot of spiritual masters talk about stages of the spiritual journey. The two great Doctors of the Church – St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila provided us some stages as a map of this journey.  St. Thérèse was struggling with these stages, and often thought,

“I’m almost there”; but later realized, “I shall never get there.” “I cannot even get to the first level.” In her childlike trust, Thérèse took her own simple path that was the only realistic path to her. Thus, brought her to a decisive discovery, and hit bull’s eye the heart of the matter – Total Self-abandonment to God. It is the only step – first and final – Nothing in-between! “From the top of the ladder, God looks lovingly at your fruitless efforts.” “God Himself will come down, and, taking you in His Arms, will carry you to His Kingdom…”

Take note; this is not a one-night-stand decision, but a moment-to-moment act of will, to entrust everything to God’s Mercy.

Be Prodigal On Your Merits

Merits accumulated in my spiritual bank: daily mass, rosary, confession, outreach activities, and a series of spiritual programs. St. Thérèse’s words on this:

Were I to live to be eighty, I should always be [spiritually] poor, because I cannot economize. All my [spiritual] earnings are spent immediately on the ransom of souls.

She’s like saying I used to be a one- day millionaire for God – squander all my spiritual treasures for the atonement of souls. I empty my purse. Zero in my spiritual bank account to the point of bankruptcy! St. Thérèse added that if she waits for these spiritual coins [merits] at the hour of death and God spotted our soul laden with these merits – we will be sent to the place of expiation (purgatory). Eventually, it’s not a question of a surplus of merits, but of deficiency of love in not utilizing those merits for those who need in the Mystical Body.

The Paradox of Justice and Mercy

Therese was quite aware of the fear that most Christians had about God’s judgment. Imagine when you die and you stand before God on His judgment seat. A nun expressed this fear. She answered,

“There is but one means of compelling God not to judge us at all, and it is – to appear before him empty-handed.” “What do you mean?” Asked the nun. “It’s very simple,” Therese replied, “Make no reservations, give [any spiritual merits] whatever you get as soon as you get it.” But,” objected the nun, “if God doesn’t judge our good actions, he will certainly judge our bad ones.” Therese replied, “Our Lord is very justice; if he doesn’t judge our good actions, he will not judge our bad ones.”[1]

With one stroke, Thérèse solved the age-old dichotomy of the seemingly irreconcilable Divine Images – Justice and Mercy that took volumes of writings for Christian thinkers to make sense as “both/and” dichotomy rather than “either/or” dilemma.

Second Conversion: A Call to Seriousness

In our first conversion, we turned about-face, left our former life, and followed Christ. But as we walk daily, our search for intimacy with Christ waned that we tend to trivialize our daily sins: backbiting, personal grudge over other’s faults, brewing anger over little injustices in work and relationships, etc. St. Thérèse did not remedy this by moralizing, but in living out charity at all cost even to the point that it appears unreasonable to us because we bleed in the process.

Here is a call to seriousness where it is not enough to go to church, read the Bible, or say our devotions – but to deny one’s self daily, take up our cross and follow Christ. It’s not easy anymore for it requires us to burn our boats, destroy all bridges of escape, and face the battle squarely– eliminate the gap between what we believe and what we do. Truth must be lived. Period. No excuses, no compromise.

Without this second conversion, everything would be plain hypocrisy. This is the revolution: to bring out our martyrdom, our theology, our sacrifices, our renouncing of will, our poverty, our forgiving of enemies and praying for them – directing our fiercest battle of winning souls to the workplace, our family, our relationships, neighborhood, and to the church.

A Call to Greatness

“I’m too weak, and easily tempted.” We can run a litany of reasons in making excuses for being unqualified for holiness. Yet the longer the list of our incapacities, the more also we have reason to rely on God in everything. “Give me a lever and a fulcrum, and I will lift the world.”  St. Thérèse commented on these words of Archimedes, saying God is the fulcrum; our prayers inflamed with love are the lever. The saints are the ones lifting the world until now. Our heart is restless – God is our home. The means of reaching God is His Love in us. God gives God to us as the only means of reaching Him. The refusal to surrender to the means that God has offered us is a great tragedy.

Happiness is Repellent

St. Thérèse saw clearly that the Christian journey is the journey of the cross – “Because love lives only by sacrifice…and the more we would surrender ourselves to Love, the more we must surrender ourselves to suffering.” Her letter to Celine: ”We mustn’t imagine that we can love without suffering, without suffering a great deal…”  St. Thérèse made it clear that suffering means suffering – without false hope that we can be happy at the same time. “Jesus suffered sadly. Unless sadly, would the soul suffer at all? What a foolish illusion!”

Throughout her endeavors, Thérèse always articulated the essential dimension of the cross in living out God’s Beatitudes. But we always choose the palatable part and think it’s all right to accommodate the practical side of the Gospel and water down the cross. In the process, we may acquire virtues but lacking the joy of the Spirit because we still take the cross as an oppressive yoke. We don’t belong to God but to ourselves.

The Hardest Part – To Disarm

Is happiness possible in this world? The lives of saints unanimously sounded “Yes!” We want happiness but we run away from the cross.

The hardest part of the journey is not the cross – it is the disarming of ourselves. Here, we come to grip with a scandal that is obnoxious to us!

All the spiritual endeavors and virtues we practiced over the years ought to converge on this dimension of our struggle – the humility to allow ourselves to be grounded on zero level as nothing. For only on this wretched state when we have nothing to rely on, that we can allow God’s powerful invasion into our soul and inflame it with His Love.

Yet, it is only when we deeply grasp the craziness of God’s love on the cross, that we can respond with our crazy part by disarming ourselves from “self-worth” and “dignity” that we tenaciously cling to. Therese quoted Job (13:15): “Even if God would kill me, I will still trust Him.”

Finale

Most of us desire a “happy death!” St. Thérèse’s bloody endgame might shake our concept of what it means to die happily. Her intestines were ravaged with Gangrene. Many months of agony – hemorrhages, choking seizures, stomach pain, spitting of blood, and internal bleeding. “Oh, what a terrible illness!” Someone said, “How much you must have suffered!” “Yes,” Thérèse’s reply, “If I didn’t have faith, I should have killed myself without a moment’s hesitation.” Words like these would often bother those who encountered her on her death bed.

St. Thérèse did not only wrestle with physical suffering but also of the darkness of faith. “I shall stop writing now, or I might blaspheme.” No more spiritual consolations, no ecstasies, even holy communion was not allowed to her. She could cry out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” “I have seen a saint die,” quoted from Bernard Bro, “and it isn’t as you’d expect, it isn’t like what you read in books, I can tell you. You have to steel yourself to watch it. You see the soul’s armor cracking apart (Bernanos).” “I don’t believe in eternal life. Everything has vanished for me.” But Therese added, “All I have left is love.”

Thérèse was original in saying that in our quest, suffering is not external to happiness, but an essential component of it. “I have found happiness and joy on earth,” St. Thérèse said,

“but only in suffering – for I have suffered a great deal here below, and people should be made aware of this…” “I have had a perpetual desire for suffering. But it didn’t occur to me to take joy in this; that was a grace only accorded me later.”

The last words she uttered before she died: “Oh, I love him. My God, I love you.” Therese might be stripped off with everything – but Love stood to the end.

[1] This encounter of Therese with the nun is taken from “The Little Way” (The Spirituality of Thérèse of Lisieux) by Bernard Bro, OP. Published in 2016 by ST PAULS.