V

VERITAS

First Steps on the

Little Way of
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
Father Peter John Cameron, O.P.
 The Knights of Columbus presents
The Veritas Series
“Proclaiming the Faith in the Third Millennium”

First Steps on the Little Way

of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

by
FATHER P ETER J OHN C AMERON , O.P.

General Editor
Father John A. Farren, O.P.
Director of the Catholic Information Service
Knights of Columbus Supreme Council
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Reverend Monsignor Francis J. McAree, S.T.D.

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Most Reverend Robert A. Brucato, D.D.
Vicar General, Archdiocese of New York
December 28, 2000
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Copyright © 2001 by Knights of Columbus Supreme Council. All rights
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Cover: Saint Thérèse of Lisieux holding a lily, July 1896. The photo was taken by
Sister Genevieve of the Holy Face (the Saint’s blood sister, Celine) in the
Courtyard of the sacristy of the Carmelite Convent. © Central Office of
Lisieux, France.
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 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
Doctor of the Church
Why did the Church in 1997 bestow the title of “Doctor of the
Church” on one so deeply esteemed as “the Little Flower?”
In Thérèse’s own writings, which are not many, the saint makes
reference to the Doctors of the Church no fewer than eleven times. But
one entry seems to question whether Church Doctors are really necessary.
Thérèse wrote:
Jesus has no need of books or doctors to instruct souls. He who
is himself the Doctor of Doctors teaches without the noise of
words. Never have I heard him speak, but I feel he is within me
at each moment; he is guiding and inspiring me with what I
must say and do (Story of a Soul, Washington, DC: ICS
Publications, 1976, p. 179).
Doctors of the Church
Then why does the Church distinguish certain saints as Doctors of
the Church? Pope John Paul II explains it clearly:
When the Magisterium proclaims someone a Doctor of the
Church, it intends to point out to all the faithful particularly to
those who perform in the Church the fundamental service of
preaching – or who undertake the delicate task of theological
 teaching and research – that the doctrine professed and
proclaimed by a certain person can be a reference point, not only
because it conforms to revealed truth, but also because it sheds
new light on the mysteries of the faith – a deeper understanding
of Christ’s mystery (L’Osservatore Romano n. 43 (1513) 22
October 1997).
Normally, the decision to declare a saint a Doctor is based on three
conditions: the eminent learning of the candidate, his or her high degree
of sanctity, and proclamation by the Church.
However, this declaration is not in any way an ex cathedra decision –
nor does it even claim that the teaching of the Doctor is absolutely
without error. In other words, to proclaim a saint a Doctor of the Church
is not essential to the Church’s life, but rather it is an enhancement of the
beauty of the Church. Saint Thérèse is a Doctor of the Church because what
Jesus, the “Doctor of Doctors,” inspires Thérèse to say and do enhances
the beauty and the life of the Church. What Thérèse says and does sheds
new light on the mysteries of the faith, and provides a deeper
understanding of Christ’s mystery.
In fact, Saint Thérèse possessed a graced premonition of October 19,
1997, when Pope John Paul II declared Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus
and the Holy Face to be a Doctor of the Universal Church. Thérèse wrote
in her autobiography:
I feel within me other vocations… I feel the vocation of the
doctor…. Ah! in spite of my littleness, I would like to enlighten
souls as did the Prophets and Doctors (Story of a Soul, p. 192).
Not only that, others recognized this vocation in her. About her
grade-school days, Thérèse wrote:
I grasped easily the meaning of the things I was learning, but I
had trouble learning things word for word. As far as the
catechism was concerned, my efforts were crowned with success
and I was always first. Father Domin was very much pleased
with me and used to call me his little doctor because of my name
Thérèse (Story of a Soul, p. 81).
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 But perhaps the greatest clue to why Thérèse deserves to be a Doctor
of the Church can be found in a passage that to some may seem
contradictory:
Our Lord’s love is revealed as perfectly in the most simple soul
that resists his grace in nothing as in the most excellent soul; in
fact, since the nature of love is to humble oneself, if all souls
resembled those of the holy Doctors who illumined the Church
with the clarity of their teachings, it seems God would not
descend so low when coming to their heart. But he created the
child who knows only how to make his feeble cries heard. It is
to their hearts that God deigns to lower himself. When coming
down in this way, God manifests his infinite grandeur (Story of a
Soul, p. 14).
The Church has never proclaimed a martyr a Doctor of the Church.
But in Thérèse, perhaps for the first time, the Church declares as a Doctor
one who is also a simple, childlike soul, one who truly illumines the
Church precisely in the way that she humbly invites God to lower
himself to her. In one and the same little soul, God both reveals his love
perfectly and gives us a teacher to instruct us how to understand the
infinite grandeur of his love.
Clearly, then, Thérèse is a new kind of Doctor, a type that even
Thérèse didn’t conceive of. Pope John Paul II confirms this when he
states:
Thérèse of Lisieux did not only grasp and describe the profound
truth of Love as the center and heart of the Church, but in her
short life she lived it intensely. It is precisely this convergence of
doctrine and concrete experience, of truth and life, of teaching and
practice which shines with particular brightness in this saint
and which makes her an attractive model especially for young
people and for those who are seeking true meaning for their life
(ibid.).
God has raised up Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church, to
enable us to grasp and live the profound truth of divine Love with the
same intensity as she lived it. Or to put it another way, the Church has
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proclaimed Saint Thérèse a Doctor of the Church in order to help God’s
people love the love that is mercy.
Yet, the question remains: Why do we need a Doctor of the Church
to teach us to love the love that is mercy? And the answer is that, over
and over again in this regard, we falter and fail.
Loving the Love that is Mercy
One of the truly diabolical influences at work in the world is the
attempt to destroy and dismiss God’s mercy. This evil influence has
created serious spiritual tensions in the Church from the very first
moments of her history.
And Thérèse experienced these serious spiritual tensions in her own
little Carmel in Lisieux, one that was not even fifty years old. The central
problem was that these spiritual tensions made a stranger out of God. By
overstressing God’s transcendence – his eternal majesty and supremacy –
and by selling short the dynamism of divine justice, the god that many
people revered was not the true God of Christianity.
In fact, the attempt on the part of many Christian witnesses to
protect the Lord’s almighty sovereignty forced God into a kind of witness-
protection program: people couldn’t have known God if they wanted to.
Their attitude made God unrecognizable, impersonal, faceless,
formidable, unapproachable, almost anonymous.
This defective approach to God was very much caused by the 17th
century heresy called Jansenism. Bishop Guy Gaucher writes about this
in his book The Story of a Life:
Some Carmels had been diverted towards indiscreet ascetical
practices, sometimes towards a narrow moralism. The Lisieux
Carmel had not escaped these tendencies which the general
climate of French Christianity – with its Jansenist leanings –-
encouraged. The spirit of penance and mortification was in
danger of taking precedence over the dynamism of love. More
than one Carmelite was terrified of God the Judge. (New York:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1987, pp. 88-89)
Of course, the mixed up way that people thought of God in turn
marred the way that people related to God. Piety was reduced to
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appeasement. People dutifully did what the Church prescribed in order
to stave off punishment. The Jansenist thinking went something like
this: “If I just take care of my end of the deal with God, then God will
take care of me.”
Pierre Descouvement refers to this in his magnificent book Thérèse
and Lisieux when he writes:
To save the world, consecrated souls were in fact encouraged to
offer themselves as victims to God’s justice in order to take upon
themselves the anger of the thrice holy God which was ready to
strike sinners. In accepting God’s thunderbolts, they were
happy to act in some way like a beneficial lightning rod
(Toronto: Novalis, 1996, p. 234)
And this was the world into which stepped the young Carmelite,
Thérèse Martin.
That same book tells the story of how Sister Thérèse was disturbed
upon reading the obituary of a Carmelite nun from another part of
France. The obituary said that the sister made a habit of offering herself
“as a victim to divine justice.” In her agony, the dying nun was heard to
cry out in anguish, “I bear the rigors of divine Justice! Divine Justice! I
do not have enough merits, I must earn more!” That was what Jansenism
did to well-intentioned religious (ibid., p. 235).
Another example. The prayer on the back of one popular holy card
of the day read: “Holy Father, look at your only Son, the object of your
eternal benevolence and, for love of him, save us despite our crimes. Look
at Jesus and Mary…and the thunderbolt will fall from your divine
hands” (ibid., p. 235).
But the sad thing is that Thérèse didn’t have to look to other
Carmels to experience such ghastly disorder. Unfortunately, it had crept
into her own monastery and contaminated it. This is clear in the story of
Sister Saint John the Baptist who wanted to acquire sanctity by the
strength of her own efforts, by multiplying prayers and penances. She
accused Thérèse of relying too much on God’s mercy in a way that
neglected divine justice. And this is why Thérèse regarded Sister Saint
John the Baptist as, in her own words, “the image of God’s severity”
(ibid., p. 236).
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 And the infection didn’t end there! Even the sub-prioress of the
community, Sister Febronie, thought that Thérèse over-emphasized
God’s mercy and forgot his justice; and they debated back and forth in a
friendly way about this. But Sister Febronie wouldn’t listen to reason,
and Sister Thérèse finally had to say to her: “Sister, you want the justice
of God and so you will have the justice of God. For the soul receives from
God exactly what it expects” (ibid., p. 186).
What do we expect from God? Do we expect enough? For God does
not define himself as “justice”; he defines himself as love. That’s what he
expects us to expect from him. And Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Doctor of
the Church, raises our expectations by teaching us to love the love that is
mercy.
Sadly, the curse of these misguided Jansenist notions translated into
tragic, practical hardships. For example, at the end of the 1800s, the
Church began to encourage Catholics to receive Holy Communion
frequently and the chaplain of the Carmel wanted to offer frequent
Communion to the nuns there. But the Jansenist practice restricted
reception of Communion to very rare occasions. And so the Mother
Prioress of the community, Mother Marie de Gonzague, would not listen
to the chaplain when he pleaded to make frequent Communion available
to the sisters. For Mother Gonzague would have nothing to do with
what she considered to be a newfangled custom.
In this, Thérèse disagreed with her Mother Superior. And Sister
Thérèse respectfully let her know. Thérèse wrote: “Jesus does not
descend from Heaven daily in order to remain in a golden ciborium, but
to find another heaven, the heaven of our souls, in which he takes his
delight” (Story of a Soul, p. 104).
Ironically, it was during the deadly influenza epidemic of 1891,
when the entire Carmelite community was nearly wiped out, that Sister
Thérèse got her wish. As one of the few able-bodied sisters up-and-about
during the outbreak, Thérèse cared for the sick, buried the dead, and also
took advantage of receiving Holy Communion daily.
Even with all that, Mother Gonzague would not give in to the
petition of Thérèse for more frequent Holy Communion. And so Thérèse
looked at her, and said with resolve: “Mother Gonzague, when I am
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dead, I will make you change your mind” (The Hidden Face, Ida
Friederike Gorres, New York: Pantheon, pp. 234-35).
And that is precisely what she did! The great revision of liturgical
practices undertaken by Pope Pius X was attributed largely to the
intercession of Saint Thérèse. A wonderful story: a few days after
Thérèse’s death, a newly-ordained priest came to the Lisieux Carmel
where he preached his first sermon on the words, “Come and eat my
bread.” Soon after that, with the Prioress’s blessing, the chaplain
introduced daily Communion to the Carmel.
Thérèse was so convinced about how much we need to love the love
that is mercy – instead of some twisted, inept infatuation with justice –
that she made it the theme of a little Christmas play she wrote and
performed for the community in 1894.
In the play, the Angel of Judgment approaches the infant Jesus in
the manger and says this:
Have you forgotten, Jesus, O Beauty supreme, that the sinner
must at last be punished? I will chastise the crime in judgment;
I want to exterminate all the ungrateful. My sword is ready!
Jesus, sweet victim! My sword is ready!! I am set to avenge
you!!! (Theatre au Carmel, Paris: Cerf DDB, 1985, p. 108,
author’s translation)
And the baby Jesus replies:
O beautiful angel! Put down your sword.
It is not for you to judge the nature that I raise up and that I
wish to redeem.
The one who will judge the world is myself, the one named
Jesus!
The life-giving dew of my Blood will purify all my chosen ones.
Don’t you know that faithful souls always give me consolation
in the face of the blasphemies of the unfaithful by a simple look
of love? (ibid.)
This little dramatic scene proved to be prophetic. In it we see
prefigured the very model for Thérèse to be proclaimed a Doctor of the
Church. We hear a little child…speaking with the authoritative voice of
God…correcting a destructive concept of divine justice…offering a new
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way to grasp God’s love…and transforming the world through a graced
teaching on God’s mercy.
Justice and Mercy
Thérèse, Doctor of the Church, teaches us to love the love that is
mercy in a way that foreshadows Pope John Paul II’s magisterial teaching
on the theology of justice and mercy in his 1980 encyclical, Dives in
misericordia. In that encyclical, the Holy Father teaches that mercy is
love’s second name, its nickname, if you will. And all justice must be
based on this love. Authentic justice flows from this love and tends
towards it. To put it another way, mercy is the source of justice. As a
result, mercy conditions justice so that justice serves love.
Why does the world so dearly need this mercy – and a Doctor of the
Church to teach us this mercy? Because, as the Holy Father makes clear,
a world without mercy and forgiveness would become a world of cold and
unfeeling justice. Selfishness would corrupt society into a system of
oppression of the weak by the strong, a world of division, segregation,
and unending strife. Unfortunately, we understand all too well just how
impotent mere justice is to transform the world.
That’s why we need God’s mercy! For mercy confers on justice a new
content – a content expressed in forgiveness. When mercy reigns, then
compassion, pity, generosity, and tenderheartedness serve it in
attendance.
Only the love that is mercy is capable of restoring men and women
to themselves. That is why God reveals himself to us as mercy, and
nothing less. For mercy is the content of our intimacy and of our dialogue
with God. Mercy is what our friendship with the Lord is all about. Mercy
is the air that Christians breathe and the language we speak. If we are not
fluent in mercy, then we have nothing to say to God.
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church, teaches us how to
speak the language of mercy. For God wants the world to remember him
in precisely the way that he reveals himself to the world. This moves
Thérèse to cry out:
On every side God’s love is unknown, rejected; those hearts
upon whom you lavish [love] turn to creatures seeking
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 happiness from them with their miserable affection; they do this
instead of throwing themselves into your arms and of accepting
your infinite love…. Among his own disciples, Jesus finds few
hearts who surrender to him without reservation, who
understand the real tenderness of his infinite love (Story of a Soul,
pp. 180, 189).
It is this ignorance on the part of so many that led Saint Thérèse on
her deathbed to testify:
I feel that my mission is about to begin, my mission of making
God loved as I love him, of giving my little way to souls. If God
answers my desires, my heaven will be spent on earth until the
end of the world. Yes, I want to spend my heaven doing good on
earth (St. Thérèse of Lisieux: Her Last Conversations, Tr. John
Clarke, O.C.D., Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1977, p.
102).
Of course, some may argue that the Church of today is no longer
vexed by Jansenist paranoia. But we seem to have gone over to the other
extreme in the way we take God’s mercy for granted and confuse it with
justice, acting as if we have a right to it.
Many of us harbor a feeling of “entitlement” – as if God owed us
something. Most of the questions we ask God that begin with the word
“why” presume that God owes us something and that he is shirking his
end of the bargain. Questions like: “Why aren’t my prayers answered
when and in the way I want?” “Why do good people suffer?” “Why is my
neighbor so much better off than I am?”
Justice alone can’t adequately answer these questions. Only that love
which is mercy can satisfy. Perhaps more than ever, the Church needs
Thérèse’s radically new way of believing in God’s love for us, and of
responding to that love.
• How many people are obsessed with trying to prove to God
their worthiness?
• How many people think of God’s grace like the “merit raise”
they strive for at work?
• How many people equate holiness with “just trying harder?”
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 • How many people think they can do something “good” and
deserving of heaven apart from God’s grace?
These people do not understand Gospel mercy. And this ignorance
is a malignancy in the Church that cries out for a Doctor. And God has
given us one in Saint Thérèse of Lisieux who teaches us to love rightly
the love that is mercy.
Saint Thérèse heals us as she educates us. She once wrote:
I cannot conceive of a greater immensity of love than the one
which it has pleased you[, Lord,] to give me freely, without any
merit on my part…If your justice loves to release itself – this
justice which extends only over the earth – how much more does
your merciful love desire to set souls on fire since your mercy
reaches to the heavens…It is only love which makes us
acceptable to God…It is no longer a question of loving one’s
neighbor as oneself but of loving him as he – Jesus – has loved
him, and will love him to the consummation of the ages (Story
of a Soul, pp. 256, 181, 188, 220).
But let us be clear: Thérèse’s doctrine does not do away with divine
justice. Rather, her teaching purifies false notions and it elevates divine
justice to its rightful place in the spiritual life.
Thérèse helps us to see that the justice of God consists in God’s
giving us what we need to satisfy God. Justice, then, means receiving
from God what we cannot offer him on our own without him. Christian
justice means seeking God first in Jesus. Christian justice means seeking
God in Jesus especially when we’re tempted to rest on our own strengths,
on our own accomplishments – on a false sense of entitlement. Because
when we seek God first in Jesus Christ, then God gives us whatever we need
to please him. And that is what authentic Gospel justice is all about –
letting God give us what we need to please him.
This beautiful truth moves Thérèse to exclaim:
Ah! Lord, you know very well that never would I be able to love
my sisters as you love them, unless you, O my Jesus, loved them
in me. Your will is to love in me all those you command me to
love… For me to love you as you love me, I would have to
borrow your love (Story of a Soul, pp. 221, 256).
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 To say it again, authentic Christian justice is the work of God’s
merciful love by which he makes his children just by giving them what they
need to please him. That is the love that Thérèse, Doctor of the Church,
teaches us to love and to make our own.
Father Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus, who has been called one of
“the most important disciples of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux in the twentieth
century” and whose own cause for canonization has been introduced,
summarizes all of this for us when he writes that mercy
is the love of God which gives itself beyond all demands and
rights…What glorifies God and “delights him” is to be able to
give himself, and give himself freely. This was Thérèse’s
discovery: what gives God joy is the power to give more than
what is required by strict justice, freely, based on our needs and
the exigencies of his nature which is love and not on our
merits…. In the plan of redemption all things find their
meaning and reason for being in the mercy which governs the
economy of the Christian world. The discovery of this truth of
divine faith in so simple and pure a light seems to me the
highest and most important contemplative grace given to Saint
Thérèse of the Child Jesus (Under the Torrent of His Love, New
York: Alba House, 1995, pp. 23, 242, 104).
As Thérèse herself says so simply: “Merit does not consist in doing
or in giving much, but rather in receiving, in loving much. To please
Jesus, to delight his heart, one has only to love him, without looking at
one’s self” (Letters of St. Thérèse of Lisieux: Volume II, Tr. John Clarke,
O.C.D., Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1988, pp. 794-95).
So then how do we receive much and love much? How do we please
Jesus without, on the one hand, falling into the trap of that poor, dying
nun who felt she needed to earn more merits in order to appease God’s
justice or, on the other hand, becoming smug, cavalier, self-satisfied, and
presumptuous about God’s mercy – acting as if we were entitled to it?
And Doctor Thérèse’s sublime answer is her doctrine of spiritual
childhood in the Little Way. As she wrote to missionary Father Roulland:
“Perfection seems simple to me. I see it is sufficient to recognize one’s
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nothingness and to abandon oneself as a child into God’s arms” (ibid., p.
1094).
Thérèse once gave this counsel to one of her novices, Sister Marie of
the Trinity:
If God wants you to be as weak and powerless as a child, do you
think your merit will be any less for that? Resign yourself, then,
to stumbling at every step, to falling even, and to being weak in
carrying your cross. Love your powerlessness, and your soul will
benefit more from it than if, aided by grace, you were to behave
with enthusiastic heroism and fill your soul with self-
satisfaction (St. Thérèse of Lisieux by Those Who Knew Her,
Christopher O’Mahony, Dublin: Veritas, 1975, p. 250).
Unfortunately, some of those who object to Thérèse’s being declared
a Doctor of the Church do so because they refuse Christ’s command to
change and become like little children. Rather, they prefer to live under
the delusion of their own self-made excellence – their expertise, their
extraordinariness – thus giving free reign to ambition, arrogance,
egotism, and apathy.
The Little Way
We must be realistic! The world does not live the Little Way. If we
were truly living the Little Way:
• we would be delighted to take the last place in line
• we would recoil from flattery
• we would rejoice in the success of our neighbors
• we would make no excuses for our sins
• we would be quick to admit our weaknesses
• we would prefer hiddenness to acclaim
• we would be grateful when others criticized us and pointed out
our shortcomings
• we would not be undone by the injury and injustice we suffer
• we would be unmoved by worldly status, fame, and prestige
• we would experience peace in the midst of the world’s conflict,
turmoil, and strife.
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 The Church needs Saint Thérèse of Lisieux to be the Doctor of the
New Evangelization to teach us to understand, to revere, and to love the
love that is mercy. Her magisterial authority especially reaches out:
• to those who feel worthless
• to those who are undeserving
• to those who lack ability, or education, or advantage
• to those who are blackmailed by their sinfulness
• to those who live in spiritual conflict and turmoil, yearning for
peace
• to all those aching to know the meaning of life and the way to
make a difference in a hostile world
• to those who feel oppressed by their littleness and insignificance
• to those who feel like nothing but losers.
As Thérèse was so fond of saying, “The loser always wins!” (A
Memoir of My Sister St. Thérèse, Sister Genevieve of the Holy Face, Dublin:
M. H. Gill, 1959, p. 31)
The teaching of Thérèse is not some heady, abstract, speculative
ideology. Rather, Thérèse lived everything that she taught. As she wrote
in her autobiography:
I expect each day to discover new imperfections in myself… I
am simply resigned to see myself always imperfect – and in this
I find my joy…. My own folly is this: to trust that your love
will accept me. I am only a child, powerless and weak, and yet
it is my weakness that gives me the boldness of offering myself
as a victim of your love, O Jesus! (Story of a Soul, pp. 224, 158,
200, 195).
But we resist this doctrine – thinking it to be too easy, too
simplistic, or naïve, or illusory. How viciously the ways and the wiles of
the world seduce us.
The Holy Father pointed this out on the day that he declared Saint
Thérèse to be a Doctor of the Church. The Pope said:
Before the emptiness of so many words, Thérèse offers another
solution, the one Word of salvation which, understood and lived
in silence, becomes a source of renewed life. She counters a
rational culture, so often overcome by practical materialism,
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 with the disarming simplicity of the “little way” which, by
returning to the essentials, leads to the secret of all life: the
divine Love that surrounds and penetrates every human venture.
In a time like ours, so frequently marked by an ephemeral and
hedonistic culture, this new Doctor of the Church proves to be
remarkably effective in enlightening the mind and heart of
those who hunger and thirst for truth and love (L’Osservatore
Romano, n. 43 (1513) 22 October 1997).
And Thérèse, Doctor of the Church, enlightens our minds and hearts
by reminding us that divine mercy moves us to revere suffering as a
redemptive, God-given privilege.
Living on Love is not setting up one’s tent
At the top of Tabor.
It’s climbing Calvary with Jesus,
It’s looking at the Cross as a treasure!
Saint Thérèse, Doctor of the Church, teaches us to love the love that
is mercy by reinforcing the crucial role of sacrifice. Thérèse wrote that
“love is nourished only by sacrifices…. To love is to offer oneself to
suffering, because love lives only on sacrifice; so, if one is completely
dedicated to loving, one must expect to be sacrificed unreservedly” (Story
of a Soul, p. 237, O’Mahony, p. 236).
Thérèse goes on to confess in her writings: “I have no other means
of proving my love for you, [O Lord,] other than not allowing one little
sacrifice to escape, not one look, one word, profiting by all the smallest
things, and doing them through love…In suffering and combat one can
enjoy a moment of happiness that surpasses all the joys of this earth”
(Story of a Soul, pp. 196, 249).
And Thérèse was sacrificed! She proved how much she lived this
Truth in the way she approached her tortuous death, a death from
tuberculosis that destroyed all but one small part of one lung so that she
literally suffocated on her deathbed, an agony in which the inner organs
of her body began to putrefy with gangrene inside her even while she was
still alive.
The July before she died, in a letter to missionary Father Roulland,
Thérèse wrote: “What attracts me to the homeland of heaven is the
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Lord’s call, the hope of loving him finally as I have so much desired to
love him, and the thought that I shall be able to make him loved by a
multitude of souls who will bless him eternally.”
Thérèse, Doctor of the Church
The Holy Father has declared that “Thérèse’s ardent spiritual journey
shows such maturity – and the insights of faith expressed in her writings
are so vast and profound, that they deserve a place among the great
spiritual masters” (L’Osservatore Romano, n. 43 (1513) 22 October 1997).
In her autobiography, Thérèse recalls a small but poignant moment
in that “ardent spiritual journey,” a story about a night when she was
walking home with her saintly father Louis. Thérèse wrote:
When we were on the way home, I would gaze upon the stars
which were twinkling ever so peacefully in the skies – and the
sight carried me away. There was especially one cluster of golden
pearls which attracted my attention – and gave me great joy
because they were in the form of a “T.” I pointed them out to
Papa and told him my name was written in heaven. Then
desiring to look no longer upon this dull earth – I asked him to
guide my steps; and not looking where I placed my feet – I
threw back my head, giving myself over completely to the
contemplation of the star-studded firmament (Story of a Soul,
pp. 42-43).
The Benedictus antiphon for the Common of Doctors of the Church
proclaims: “Those who are learned will be as radiant as the sky in all its
beauty; those who instruct the people in goodness will shine like the stars
for all eternity.” Now it is Saint Thérèse, Doctor of the Church, who takes
our hand as the spiritual children she has taught us to be, and who leads
us unerringly – so that we can take our eyes off the world, and fix our
gaze upon heaven – contemplating the radiant Truth of Thérèse’s
doctrine in all its Gospel beauty.
The future Doctor of the Church wrote in a letter to the missionary
seminarian, Maurice Belliere, making this request:
I would be very happy if each day you would consent to offer
this prayer for [your sister Thérèse] which contains all her
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 desires: “Merciful Father, in the name of our gentle Jesus, the
Virgin Mary, and the saints, I beg you to enkindle my sister with
your Spirit of Love and to grant her the favor of making you
loved very much” (Letters: Volume II, p. 1060).
The proclamation of Saint Thérèse as Doctor of the Church in some
way fulfills this prayer. For the magisterial force of Thérèse’s teaching
does make God loved very much – in the way that God wants to be
loved! and in a way that the world so drastically needs.
In the apostolic letter, Tertio Millenio Adveniente, Pope John Paul II
addresses the “crisis of civilization” (52) we are suffering. The Holy
Father decries the fact that civilization is “impoverished by its tendency
to forget God, to keep him at a distance.” It is supremely fitting for Saint
Thérèse of Lisieux to be proclaimed a Doctor of the Church because
Thérèse teaches us how to remember God and how to keep him close.
We might conclude with a little story that Thérèse herself tells in
her autobiography about the same catechism class already mentioned –
the one taught by Father Domin. Thérèse writes:
Once, a student who followed me did not know the catechism
question to ask of her companion. Father Domin, having made
the rounds of all the students in vain, came back to me, and said
he was going to see if I deserved my place as first. In my
profound humility, this was what I was waiting for; and rising
with great assurance I said everything that was asked of me, to
the great astonishment of everybody (Story of a Soul, pp. 81-82).
Perhaps after all is said and done, this is the real reason why Saint
Thérèse of Lisieux has been proclaimed Doctor of the Church: because –
even though there are much smarter, more learned people in the history
of the Church, Thérèse is the one who remembers the Truth and rises to
speak it at the very moment we most need to hear it, with great
assurance, to the great astonishment of all who hear her. This is why she
deserves her place as Doctor of the Church. It is this that the Church, in
her profound humility, has been waiting for.
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Doctor
of the Church – pray for us!
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