Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face (1873–1897), a nineteenth-century Carmelite nun, was canonised in Rome on May 17, 1925. A century later, the Church joyfully commemorates the canonisation of this heroic figure of faith. At age fifteen, she joined the Carmel at Lisieux. She practiced evangelical simplicity and heroic confidence in God, in a way that fosters the ‘confidence’ lost in the primal divine-to-human relationship in Eden. (Gen 3) Every spirituality culminates in a lived relationship of love. Thérèse enunciates a spirituality for our modern age, through small ways of making love tangible.  Pope Pius X famously described Thérèse of Lisieux as ‘the greatest saint of modern times,’¹ for her ‘little way’ of confidence and her absolute self-surrender as a holocaust of divine love. Her novel witness is the antidote to the modern EGO-centrism – Edging God Out, through unsustainable self-reliance and idolisation, even in the most noble pursuit of goodness. For Jean Guitton, Thérèse’s intuition reaches the very heights of religious originality, to place her alongside Saints Paul, Augustine, Francis… ‘When one knows how to read her.’²

Her autobiography, the ‘Story of a Soul’ remains a classic testament to a genuine, honest struggle in the spiritual journey, juxtaposed with the self-sufficiency, sinful pride and perhaps the self-medication tendencies that characterise every failed relationship since the foundation of the world. Thérèse understood her mission to the world, in the Spirit of the incarnate Son, as being to restore complete confidence in God, who seeks us out in our helplessness. Even in her spiritual dryness, sleeping at prayers, uneasiness and desolation… In such a state, she says, ‘Let us love our littleness, let us love to feel nothing, then shall we be poor in spirit.’³ Jesus seeks us out, however far we may be, […] ‘He will transform us in flames of love.’  In her letter to Sr Marie of the Sacred Heart, she recalls the words from Fr Père Pichon, SJ’s conference. ‘what pleases Jesus is that he sees me loving my littleness and my poverty, the blind hope that I have in his mercy.’⁴ In her estimation, ‘it is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to love.’⁵ (Sept 17, 1896) This was the game changer: ‘It is Your arms, Jesus, which are the elevator to carry me to heaven.’⁶ Therefore, through God’s justice and mercy, Jesus wishes to grant us here on earth the same graces that are present in heaven, and given freely. This offers a sublime insight into the teachings of St. Paul and a fresh understanding of how this is tenable, without undermining the places of works or grace. However, it is one that expunges the modernist idea of ‘cheap grace’ as expressed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. ‘Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, […] grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate’⁷. For God comes to meet us where we are but loves us too much to leave us there. This is the sort of confidence that she intends for her followers.

Thérèse remains one of the church’s most appealing saints and the youngest doctor of the Church. As a Doctor of the Church, she teaches that the smallest act of love is great in the eyes of God, which may be the single reason so many people find her attractive. Her teachings invariably affirm the importance of a Carmelite’s attempt at authentic living. This attempt, in its concreteness, highlights our Christian struggle to retain our saltiness and relevance in the search for meaning. It’s akin to the efforts of Jesus’ close friends and disciples. (see Matthew 5:13-14). This resonates with the sentiments of Jeanne Marguerite, OCD, that ‘the zeal of a Carmelite embraces the whole world.’ Thérèse’s mission to the world expresses such great confidence in God. As a prophetic witness to spiritual intimacy, she said:

I feel that my mission is about to begin, my mission of making others love God as I love him. My mission of teaching my little way to souls. If God answers my request, my heaven will be spent on earth up until the end of the world. Yes! I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth.⁸

This spiritual awakening incites a renewed confidence in establishing a loving relationship with God, which dispels every fear. This becomes leverage for understanding the unique and simple ways our Lord desires to journey with us. This single witness changed forever the course or approach to Christian Spirituality in the light of Carmel’s living patrimony.

Surveys of Western spirituality invariably give great prominence to the Carmelite tradition. Carmelite spirituality seeks nothing more nor less than to ‘stand before the face of the living God’ and prophesy with Elijah, to ‘hear the word of God and keep it’ with Mary, to grow in friendship with God through unceasing prayer with Teresa, and like John of the Cross ‘become by participation what Christ is by nature,’⁹ thereby to be made, like Thérèse of Lisieux, into instruments of God’s transforming merciful love in the church and society.

The prophetic witness of St. Thérèse embodies the Gospel value of childlike trust and heroic faith, which is the grand doorway to spiritual maturation. This engenders the most profound communications of the secrets of God’s grace. This is the novelty in Christian spirituality that taught the world the simple way of childhood that the Gospels trace. To a generation that is unresponsive to the divine promptings and invitation to make tangible their love for God, Christ rather, delights in the littleness of the simple and unassuming; ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’ (Matthew 11: 25-27)

So, to be a Carmelite today is to immerse oneself in the search for the truth, not just at the intellectual level, but that which instills confidence in the heart. Interestingly, Thérèse continues to speak to the hearts of those who may know little of religious consecration, but are somehow searching for meaning in life, yearning for a deep truthful encounter with their essence, in the face of growing religious mediocrity. Thus, every successful Carmelite fulfills a twofold need, ushering in a new expression of allegiance to Jesus, and a loving presence at the service of the church (an ancient but ever-new face of Christian Spirituality).

‘Give me a lever and a fulcrum, and I will lift the world.’10
St Thérèse of Lisieux

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1. Pierre Descouvemont, (1996). Thérèse and Lisieux (Dublin, Ireland: Veritas Publications), p. 5. ↩︎
2. Jean Guitton, (1997). The Spiritual Genius of St. Thérèse of Lisieux (Great Britain: Burns & Oates), p. 7. ↩︎
3. Thérèse of Lisieux (1988). General Correspondence, Vol 2. Trans. by John Clarke, OCD. (Washington: Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, Inc), p. 999. ↩︎
4. Ibid. ↩︎
5. Ibid., p. 1000. ↩︎
6. Thérèse of Lisieux. Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Trans. by John Clarke, 3rd ed. (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996), p. 208. ↩︎
7. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 44-45. ↩︎
8. Thérèse of Lisieux. Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, trans. by John Clarke, 3rd ed. (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996), p. 263. ↩︎
9. Steven Payne. The Carmelite Tradition, ed. by Phyllis Zagano, (Minnesota: Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 2011), p. xii. ↩︎