A Missionary Spirituality of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus
It is a paradox that St. Thérèse, chosen to be co-patron of the missions along with St. Francis Xavier, never left her convent in Lisieux from the time she entered at the age of fifteen until the day she died, September 30, 1897. This twenty-four year old Carmelite nun hidden away in an obscure corner of France is placed beside the great Jesuit apostle of the Indies as the patron saint of the missions. What a contradiction when men in our day look for visible, tangible and measurable accomplishments. Yet, without seeking honor or notoriety she is acclaimed as the greatest saint of the twentieth century, and hardly a Catholic Church is found without a statue of her (at least that was true thirty years ago).All this fame came to her, not because she sought notoriety, but just the opposite. Paradoxically, she desired to be forgotten - as unnoticed as a grain of sand. Secondly, she was a woman of great desires, capable of great love. Thérèse knew that these desires were meant to be realized. She reasoned that God would not give her such great desires if He did not intend to fulfill them.
In one of the most lyrical and important sections of her autobiography she describes her insatiable desire to love Jesus as He had never been loved before. In order to please Jesus, and win salvation for many souls, she would be a warrior, priest, apostle, doctor of the Church and a martyr. She could not limit her vocation to just working in one mission station, but would "travel over the whole world to preach the gospel and plant His cross on infidel soil, but not for a few years only but from the beginning of creation until the consummation of the ages."
She wanted to be an "apostle of apostles," sharing in the apostolic labors of the missionaries, with her prayers and sacrifices. Not satisfied with sharing in their labors, successes and failures in this life alone, she promised to support them from heaven. Shortly before her death, she wrote one of the two missionary priests, whom she was given to share in their missionary work: "I will not be inactive in heaven, my desire is to continue working for the Church and souls. I ask this of the Good Lord and I am sure He will grant me this wish." Indeed, God has granted her wish, judging by the thousands of missionaries that have sought her help, and reaped a plentiful harvest of souls.
Her missionary spirit and role as "missionary supreme" needs to be emphasized more today than ever before. Our Lord's command, just before He ascended into heaven: "Go into the whole world and preach the Gospel to all men" (Mk 16:15) is being questioned. Karl Rahner's notion of "anonymous Christian," which plays down the whole idea of working strenuously for the conversion of pagans has infected even missionary Orders and Congregations in the Church. As a result, it is not considered of vital importance to expend so much time and zeal as in the past for the salvation of souls in the foreign missions. Pagans, according to the "anonymous Christian" interpretation of missiology, "already have grace but not . . .'the full Christian awareness.' Neither faith nor salvation depends on the help of the Church; God's salvific action precedes that of the Church; man is already saved." (see "Christ to the World" pg. 246, 1968). Then, why be concerned over the salvation of non-Christians as the Church has taught from its very beginnings? Why bother trying to convert them? St. Maximilian Kolbe, who promised to pray for the canonization of St. Thérèse if she would help him in his great missionary work in the Orient, gives the answer to that dangerous misconception: "The loss of a single soul is a great disaster."
The Saint clearly saw the distinction between the work of Christ in establishing the Church in the plan of salvation and the work that eventually procedes from that Church in which missionaries play a vital part in the salvation of souls. It is this distinction which the novel phrase "Anonymous Christian" tragically erases.
The following are some startling facts. Between 1921 and 1965, the years just before and immediately following her canonization saw the foundation of more than forty missionary congregations inspired to carry on Thérèse's mission of saving souls, especially souls that had never had the Gospel preached to them. Since then, due to a decline in missionary zeal, there have been less than eight such foundations.
Fortunately, the missionaries of the last century planted the seed of the Gospel well. What were mission countries then, today are countries that have their own seminaries sending missionaries to other countries. This is particularly true of Africa. The nineteenth century, when Thérèse lived her short life, saw great missionary expansion in every corner of the globe. Every major Catholic country had missionary societies forming thousands of religious and priest volunteers for the missions. When Thérèse's sister, Céline, showed her a missionary journal, Thérèse refused to read it. The temptation to change her mind was too great. She had already decided to enter the Carmelites. Through much prayer of discernment she realized that she could do more in saving souls and spreading the Gospel as a contemplative, drawing down many graces through a hidden life of prayer and sacrifice, than if she were to follow the dictates of her heart. How right she was!
We see from the early life of St. Thérèse right up to her last days a continuous awareness and growth in the traditional missionary spirit. From external appearances, her early childhood and family life appeared to be typical of the comfortable upper middle class in France at that time. The bourgeoisie had retained a certain Catholic sense, which was perhaps more cultural than spiritual. But this was not so in the Martin family circle. Both of Thérèse's parents at first entertained the thought of a religious vocation. Through frequent and even daily attendance at Mass, reading of scripture and the lives of the Saints; and above all the example of an outstanding devout father (her mother died a holy death when Thérèse was only three) as well as the example of her sisters, Thérèse learned that love was synonymous with sacrifice. As a small child, she was taught by her sisters to make little sacrifices to please God and win the grace of conversion for sinners. The smallest and seemingly insignificant events of life could win souls for Christ. God's Merciful Love was revealed to her in an incident which occurred when she was thirteen years old:
"One Sunday, on closing my book at the end of Mass, a picture of the crucifixion slipped partly out, showing one of the Divine Hands, pierced and bleeding. An indescribable thrill, such as I had never before experienced, passed through me; my heart was torn with grief at the sight of the Precious Blood falling to the ground, with no one to treasure it as it fell. At once I resolved to remain continuously in spirit at the foot of the Cross, that I might receive the divine dew of salvation and pour it forth upon souls. . . .I was consumed with an insatiable thirst for souls, and I longed at any cost to snatch them from the everlasting flames of hell."
This craving for the salvation of souls was soon to be blessed with a most remarkable conversion. A notorious murderer, Pranzini, was condemned to death and, according to the newspaper accounts, he gave no sign of repentance. She offered prayer and sacrifice for the unfortunate man. She made bold to say: "My God, I am sure that you will pardon this unhappy Pranzini, and I shall still think so even if he does not confess his sins or give a sign of sorrow-such is the confidence I have in your unbounded mercy." But with childlike candor and feminine delicacy, she added that since this is her first sinner, she would like to have one sign of repentance to assure her that her prayers were answered. As he mounted the scaffold, under the prompting of grace, he turned to the priest standing nearby, seized the crucifix he held toward him and kissed Our Lord's Sacred Wounds three times. With this clear sign of the answer to her prayers and sacrifices, her zeal for the salvation of souls knew no bounds.
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When she was only fourteen she wrote in a letter: "It is a joy to think that for each pain cheerfully borne we shall love God more for ever. Happy I would be if at the hour of my death I could offer Jesus a single soul. There would be one soul less in hell, and one more to bless God for all eternity." Once inside the Carmel, her loving embrace of suffering became a preoccupation. "Suffering opened wide her arms to me from the first and I took her fondly to my heart. . . .Our Lord had made me understand that it was through the Cross that He would give me souls, the more crosses I encountered the stronger became my attraction for suffering. . . ."In her convent there were nuns who practiced greater austerities than did St. Thérèse. Due to her youth and frail health she could not engage in the extraordinary, so she made much of pouring every ounce of love into all the small insignificant events in life. Even her failures gave her an opportunity to humbly admit her nothingness and trust that much more on God's infinite mercy and love.
Toward the end of her life, she wrote of her great desire to involve many other souls as evangelizers. She even prophesied shortly before her death that God would raise up a whole "legion of victim souls" to follow in her footsteps, as victims of God's Merciful Love. This prediction was largely realized by means of her autobiography, "Story of a Soul". Her missionary zeal, which would involve the laity as well as religious and priests, anticipated Vatican II's decree on the laity in the Church's mission.
Everyone is called to be a missionary and the Church is continually on mission. As if to underline her untiring zeal of winning souls for Christ, through prayer and penance, Our Lady appeared in 1917 in Fatima, Portugal, exhorting her children, "To pray and make sacrifice, for many souls go to hell because there is no one to pray and make sacrifice for them." Catholics who follow her "little way" of heroic sacrifice by being faithful in the ordinary things in life in a spirit of reparation to the rejected love of God are thus fulfilling Our Lady's plea of participating in the salvation of souls.
Both by word and action Thérèse set the example. The hidden sacrifices which she strove to make to please Jesus may be summarized well in her own words: "I will let no sacrifice escape me, no look, no word, nor deed. I will make use of the smallest actions, and I will do them for love." Continuous fidelity, to the day by day, austere, close community life of a Carmelite is a martydom. All was done to please her Beloved, "Jesus, I would so love Him as He has never yet been loved before."
The cry of the dying Savior "I thirst!" resounded incessantly in her heart. The desire to quench His thirst for souls and win their love by a life of victimhood in imitation of her Master was always uppermost in her mind. She ever remained in spirit at the foot of the Cross to fill up that which is "lacking in the sufferings of Christ" (Col 1: 24). When Saint Thérèse said that she would remain at the foot of the Cross in order to receive and pour forth the divine dew of salvation upon souls, it was not just pious talk. She meant every word of it.
On one occasion the infirmarian put a hot water bottle to her feet and tincture of iodine on her chest. She was burning with fever and would have much preferred a glass of water. Her response: "My Jesus your child is thirsty! She is glad however to have this opportunity of resembling you more closely and thus of saving souls." Added to her physical suffering was the dark night of the soul and terrible temptations against the Faith. She told her sisters not to be alarmed if she died in total desolation, for did not Our Lord cry out from the Cross "My God, My God why have You abandoned me?" (Mk 15:35). Toward the end, she remarked to her sister that she didn't think it was possible to bear so much suffering, but added it was because of her great desire to save souls. On September 30, 1897, she died in a ecstasy of love gazing at her crucifix with the last words, "My God, I love You!" on her lips. She had predicted ". . .I think of all the good I shall do after my death. . .I will help priests, missionaries, the whole Church." Her promise of spending her heaven doing good upon earth was fulfilled in the innumerable graces and favors attributed to her intercession. In reading St. Paul's description of the various vocations within the Mystical Body, the Church, she understood that the "Heart" was essential and embraced all vocations (missionary, teacher, martyr etc.), "Oh Jesus, my love, my vocation, I have found it at last. My vocation is Love!" Missionaries would surely lose their zeal were they not sustained by grace. This grace, ultimately won by the crucified Christ, is made effective in the work of every missionary through prayer and sacrifices.
Indeed, missionaries have found that by praying to her for help, their efforts in winning souls for Christ suddenly became more fruitful. We find St. Thérèse's missionary zeal and vocation summarized well in these words of St. Thérèse which are found on one side of the arch which spans the entrance to the nave of the basilica dedicated to her at Lisieux: "There is but one thing to be done here below: to love Jesus and to save souls."
The above article was taken from the book entitled: St. Thérèse, Doctor of the Little Way published by the Academy of the Immaculate. Used with permission.
