Memorial of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church
St. Thérèse of Lisieux, also called St. Teresa of the Child Jesus or the Little Flower, original name Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin, (born January 2, 1873, Alençon, France—died September 30, 1897, Lisieux; canonized May 17, 1925; feast day October 1), Carmelite nun whose service to her Roman Catholic order, although outwardly unremarkable, was later recognized for its exemplary spiritual accomplishments. She was named a doctor of the church by Pope John Paul II in 1997.
She lived for a short time, only 24 years old, and her stay on earth was marked by great suffering. Apart from tuberculosis, initially disregarded by the sisters who lived with her, she experienced great spiritual darkness. And yet her "Little Way" became the path of God's trust and childhood. She trusted Jesus to such an extent that she accepted her sufferings with joy, offering them for sinners. “Although I have no sense of living faith, I try to live by it. At every new opportunity to fight, I run to my Jesus and tell Him that I am ready to shed my last drop of blood to testify to the existence of heaven. I tell him that I am glad that I am deprived of the possibility of enjoying heaven on earth, if only He will open this heaven for eternity to poor sinners”- we read in her writings. She missed death, but not because she wanted to run away from life. She just wanted to meet Jesus as soon as possible.
Although she was a simple girl who did not know any "serious" theology, Saint John Paul II gave Saint Teresa of Lisieux the title of doctor of the Church. The Pope emphasized that thanks to the Holy Spirit she had acquired a deep knowledge of revelation for herself and for others. Moreover, he said that in her writings we find "the very essence of the message of revelation", framed "within the framework of an original and innovative vision"!
About Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, and the genius of her person.
How to live in the embrace of the 21st century? I want to share something very personal, one of the most important discoveries in my life and thinking. It is about Saint Teresa of Lisieux, the genius of her person. The light that shines from her is the light "from the Baby Jesus". Just not only in time for Christmas ... But for life. Because it can be a way of life, the future of the Church, her theology ... I'll try to explain it. One by one.
Little Thérèse, Great Theology
What theology for the new millennium? The patron saint of my answer, the patroness of the theology that gives hope, is Saint Thérèse of Lisieux - her personality, work, thought. Theology must stay close to the saints, otherwise it risks drying... And Thérèse was given one of the deepest understandings of the mystery of the Incarnation in the history of Christianity - a kind of "Christmas grace". But also, in the life and writings of Thérèse, the shadow of the cross constantly falls on the centrally located manger. Which shadow - thanks to Easter - becomes bright. It is precisely this way of experiencing the "grace of Christmas", Incarnation (Incarnation = to make into flesh) that makes Thérèse characterized by a thoroughly contemporary spirituality: love of the Earth, human planet, poor human destiny, love for lost acts that mean little or nothing; absolute honesty, passion and total love. An outstanding French writer, Jean Guitton penetratingly traces her modernity, writes: She is contemporary like us - "to the sense of the fear of existence, to the experience of radical, all-encompassing doubt, to (...) the taste of nothingness that Thérèse felt in the last years of her life, in dying more cruel than death itself”.
For this, it is necessary the dream of her life:"to be love in the heart of the Church" - love as the absolute center, a sign of identity; the "ecclesiality" of religious experience and living as the air which presence is necessary for the human breath to seek God. This is "the grace of Christmas". By choosing God unequivocally, choose - thus, and even more so - man. Christology from the Child Jesus for the time of late modernity - a project of theology of the future. Who knows if this is not the best suggestion for many of us ...
Little Way, Big Love
“God loves us so much and He is sorry that He must leave us on earth to fulfill our trial time, so we should not cause Him additional pain by constantly complaining that we feel very bad; you have to give the impression that you don't see it!”. The author of these unusual, even shocking words is she, a doctor of the Church, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux - from the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. Let's admit that what is most intriguing about the above statement is a radical change of perspective in the approach to suffering, which results in this provocative advice: "you have to give the impression that you do not see it." But whoever truly loved knows perfectly well what we are talking about here: suffer as quietly as possible so that my pain does not hurt someone I love and who loves me. If it has to hurt, let it hurt only me, not him/her ...
This is the starting point of the "Christology of the Child Jesus": love, its "ruthlessness", its radicalism. Theology as a "Teaching of faith" (one of the definitions of theology) is inseparably connected with love. After all, Christian faith is faith in God-Love. And if theology and holiness have a lot to offer each other, if theology in the lives of the saints receives the necessary component of experience for its own identity, we are, in the case of "Christology of the Child Jesus", at the hottest point. “To love Jesus and teach others to love Him” was Thérèse's only desire. The love of Christ was for her the key that she applied to all reality, to all the mysteries of life. Mostly in the face of pain and darkness.
The theological core of her "Little Way" is thoroughly Christocentric, and its foundation - strictly Incarnation - the Baby Jesus is everything to her.
The "Little Way" leads from the "Grace of Christmas" to the "Grace of Crucifixion". The Crib and the Cross are the "corner pillars" of the genius of her Christology, in which she discovered a way of life and - as a prophetess - a way of living for her contemporaries and those who will come after them, all participants of the dramas of modernity and postmodernity. She spoke about it directly, She, a participant of the "night of darkness", spiritual, mental and physical torments, tried by God like gold in a crucible, "sitting at the table of sinners" like God in Jesus, longing more for earth than heaven and wanting to bring heaven to the earth - in this way in solidarity with the Sisters and Brothers like God in the Baby Jesus ...
The God-Child is the heart of her spirituality. The phenomenon of the Incarnation is, in her spiritual and theological optics, the greatest sign of Divine Omnipotence: God is so strong, that in his omnipotent freedom he can humble himself to become a child who "grows up" to die on the cross. Cardinal Schönborn will say: "God is so strong that he can become as small as a child." This is the most important argument of the "Christology of the Child Jesus" in the dark matters of life: God is all-powerful to lighten up every night. The Great/Easter Night became the fulfillment of this.
God as a mortal Child
"God is so much life (love) that he can afford to be dead," writes Hans Urs von Balthasar, the greatest theologian of the 20th century. The Mortal Child is proof that the world has not escaped from Almighty love. This is the foundation of Thérèse's faith and thinking, her theology. These intuitions are not the chatter of an immature girl - they are the fruit of the life and faith of a terribly suffering woman. Thérèse, both existentially and theologically, passes smoothly from the manger to the cross. This smooth transition takes place in her head, in her heart and, above all, in her life. From the manger to the cross, from the cross to the manger - with unwavering trust in the truth of Easter. Cardinal Schönborn said: "in her strong and correct theological instinct, the Incarnation merges with the cross: these two peaks of God's self-emptying, which many theologians would like to oppose each other, Thérèse sees in a shared vision of saving love."
This kind of understanding of life, this Christological synthesis, derived from Incarnation and focused solely on Love - the only light capable of dispelling existential darkness - is impossible without the grace of holiness. Because "holiness is (...) the only adventure that exists. Who understood this, got to the heart of the Catholic faith "- perhaps Georges Bernanos never wrote down words more than those hitting the center of the target ... It was on the paths of a passionate desire for holiness and gradual growing into it that Thérèse discovered that all paths of love lead through suffering, that Bethlehem and Jerusalem are adjacent to each other, that the dusk of the Birth grotto on the eastern icons resembles the darkness of the tomb.
From the depths of this mystery emerges the extraordinary, "holy" wisdom of Teresa, doctor of the Church. She teaches that in order to understand the supernatural purposefulness of suffering, it must be reduced to God's measure - no other measure will suffice. Neither "tears of the valley" nor "rose rain" - life is neither one nor the other; God knows what life is and who I am. Jean Guitton calls the boldness of her imagination "truly Virgilian": "God suffers because of our sufferings, He makes it known to us." God didn't create pain and he doesn't want it. Pain is the work of sin. But God dealt with it through Mercy; thanks to this Almighty Love, he became a child who would die and rise again. And in this way, he will save all his children.
Whoever has Jesus has everything
Saint John Paul II begins his first Encyclical (REDEMPTOR HOMINIS) with the sentence: " HE REDEEMER OF MAN, Jesus Christ, is the center of the universe and of history." In “Tertio Millennio Adveniente” we read that the Church "believes that the key, center and goal of all human history is in her Lord and Teacher." This is the great Christocentric vision of all that is. The essence of the matter, however, does not lie in "metavisions", but in the essence of life, in relations. Christianity is not primary to mankind - it is primary to man. More precisely: that is why it is for humanity, that it is for human beings.
Christianity is grounded, putting concrete firmly over abstraction. Joachim Gnilka, a biblical scholar from Munich, writes: "The specificity of the Gospels lies in the fact that they do not intend only to remind historical facts, but in the first place they want to bring the reader closer to the living Christ - so that he/she would realize: I am not dealing here with the past, historical dead matter, but I meet the one whom I know through faith that he lives, speaks to my life and that he is present and active in the community of believers. He speaks to my life. Thérèse will say: "Whoever has Jesus, has everything".
She is convinced that the path of the Child leads to the very heart of these issues. And that it is possible to discover and pass through only in one's own childhood. "See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are"(cf. 1 Jn 3: 1). Being a child is, moreover, a "point" and a privileged state in the "matter of darkness", because only in the mouth of a child do the words "Abba, Father" (cf. Gal 4: 7) truly sound real (that is, "effective", because it brings security) and becomes the trusting relationship expressed in this word.
Little Thérèse is a spiritual giant. Spitting blood and experiencing extreme, Godless emptiness, in solidarity with the Crucified ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me ...") and contemporaries, she remains faithful to her deepest desire: “in the heart of the Church I will be love”. He writes: "Now I want nothing more than to LOVE Jesus madly ... I am attracted only to LOVE ... I no longer want suffering or death, and yet I still love both! For a long time, it was what I wanted ... But now I am driven solely by dedication to God. I have no other compass!”.
Love without reservations, conditions, exclusions
In the field of interpersonal relationships, this model of thinking and living - the Christology of the Infant Jesus - can be identified without fail by the compassionate and active love embracing absolutely everyone and everything, knowing no exclusions. Each and every one feel loved and accepted here without any reservations. God is Father and people are Children - Sisters and Brothers. To think and live like this is to be from Thérèse. And from the Baby Jesus. This is the project of the theology of the future. And hope for our world.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george