Studies in Sanctity
This article continues our series Of stiolleA of saintly characters who have in different ages and different ouoloor. 000.imod transforming influence on the life of their day. Next week M x iss Evelyn Underhill will writo on Father Wainright of London nooks. XI.—Saint Therese of Lisieux
BY SHEILA KAYE-Swim.
IT is interesting to compare those saints of the Catholic 1. and:1161MM Church who have made the biggest stir outside with those who have the biggest following within - the two great Franciscan saints. St. Francis and St. Anthony, or the two great Carmelites, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Therese of Lisieux. Outside the Boman Church there is probably none of her saints better known or more admired. than St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Teresa's mystical works are still read beyond the boundaries of her own communion. On the other hand St. Anthony and St. Therese are little more than names. The reason probably is that the outside world judges the Saints by heir lives and writing* and both Francis and Teresa have left voinminous records ; while the world within the Chmnii is more itiqUessed by their spiritual contacts with it after-death:'In§Sic the Clmrch, St. -Franeis is certainly a great deal more than a name, but his coitus bears only a slight comparison with that of his brother of ['mina, who being dead seven hundred years yet speaketh ; while the Little Flower of Lisieux, who spent nearly the whole of her life in a small market town the size of Dorking or East. Grinstead, was canonized by popular acclaim less than thirty years after her death. In her case it would not be true to say that she left no personal record, for her auto- biography-4fistoirc (rune Ante—lots played an im- portant part in the history of her cause and cult ors. But it was published after her death ; a part of that post- mortem activity which she foretold and looked forward to from the htunblc ways of her hidden life.
Her life was in every way humble and hidden. She had not even the distinction of poverty. Her father was a well-to-do jeweller in Alencon, who on the death of his. wife retired to Lisieux, bringing his five daughters, of whom Therese, born in 1873, was the youngest. Piety flowered naturally in his home, and Therese was a happy little girl, to whom religion was a part of play as well as of work. All five daughters entered religious orders, and two are still alive in the Carmelite convent at Lisieux. The earliest age for admission is fifteen, though naturally such admissions are exceptional ; and while still a child, Therese determined that at fifteen she would enter Carmel. Her father—a saintly man to whom she owed much— readily gave his consent ; but that of the ecclesiastical authorities was harder to obtain, though Therese personally appealed to the Bishop of Bayeux, and on one memorable occasion, during a pilgrimage to Rome, literally laid violent hands upon the Pope. She was determined to enter Carmel at fifteen, and, being a girl of extraordinarily strong will, had her way, though her entry was not popular in the convent—On volt Men que nos cloitres sent balayes per sine enfant de quinze ens, was the Reverend Mother Prioress's comment on her first few months.
Therese was equally determined to become a Saint, and soon many of those around her were impressed by her quality, though her piety was often so independent of general standards that many also doubted if she was any good at all. She practised no austerities beyond those prescribed by her Rule, had no visions or ecstasies, sometimes fell asleep in choir and saw no harm in it. She wrote verses—some of more than average merit—which she set to the music of old songs ; she painted pictures with a gifted but untrained hand. Later she was given charge of the novices, though on account of her age she was never officially made novice-mistress. Under this calm exterior raged the tempest of her life, clamouring first for martyrdom, then—as her spiritual understanding grew—to give herself as the Victim of LoVe in whatever way her Lord appointed. She regarded her last illness as an answer to this prayer. Enjoying robust health, she was nevertheless suddenly stricken with phthisis, which carried her off in eighteen months.
For nine years she had seen only her own family and the personnel of her convent ; but her funeral was attended by huge crowds ; for the rumour of her sanctity had spread beyond the convent walls. Her grave in the public cemetery was visited daily, at first only by one or two pilgrims, then by dozens, then by throngs. The publication of her autobiography—written in obedi- ence to her superiors—was instrumental in spreading her fame ; but side by side with this went more personal manifestations. Wonders were wrought on bodies and souls—as she had foretold. .1pres ate .mort jc fcrai minkr une pluic de roses. A few. years after her death she had become a centre of popular devotion, and when the War broke out the French army carried her name into the trenches. She became La petite Soeur des Tranehees, the soldier's friend . . . The whole idea seems to the non-Catholic a trifle grotesque ; to the Catholic it is an aspect of the Communion of Saints.
So great was popular fervour that the ecclesiastical authorities waived the official time limit of fifty years. She was beatified in 1923, canonized in 1925. In her ease the Voice of God had spoken through the voice of the people, shouting a miracle. Soeur Therese had saved lives from the dangers of earth, air, fire and water - -she had healed the sick, even of incurable maladies ; more, she had saved sinners from their sins and brought back the wandering to the fold.
But side by side with the examination of her miracles went the official examination of Soeur Therese's life. Hidden from the world, it was known in detail to those
Who had been her companions ; it was also •unfolded in L'Histoire d'une in which she expounds her Little Way of Holiness.
To understand her Little Way one must take note of the popular tendency to sec the Saints two or three times life size—they arc giants, practising terrible .aus- terities, or rapt in visions and ecstasies, or striding the earth as missionaries and laying down their lives. Therese kneW none of these things, and for the most part was determined not to know them. . To be a Saint had been her ambition from childhood, but she was convinced that there was a shorter way to heaven, or rather a Smaller way, the way of children, who cannot practise austerities or experience ecstasies or preach to the heathen. but who reach heaven simply by suffering themselves to be carried in their Father's arms. It is significant that the call to Spiritual Childhood comes from the most adult, sophisticated nation in the world. Therese's appeal does not mean quite what it would mean in English. For her a child is no Little Eva, with golden hair and sprouting wings, but a being sensible enough to know its own limitations and spiritual enough to know God's unlimited love and power: The idea of suffering—suffering as a creative force in the world—is closely allied to that of childhood, and her child is indeed a victim, a little victim, incapable of any great endurances, but dying daily in a hundred small oblations.
She is a Saint whom perhaps it is not easy for those outside the Roman Church to understand. The virtues she preached are not popular to-day, and her life makes little appeal to the active-minded. Indeed it would be true to say that the story of her life begins only with her death, as she had always said it would. From the moment when as a child she had taken upon herself to pray for the condemned bandit Pranzini, and read after- wards in the newspaper of his repentance in the last few seconds of life, she had felt that her work was to save souls—not by external means of persuasion but by prayer. That work she also knew could be fully And freely carried out only after her death—after her death God would grant her everything she wanted, because she loved Him. Je passerai mon del en faisant dtt blot stir la Terre.
As a poor little nun in the poor little Carmel of Lisieux, she could only love and suffer, but once she was set free from the bonds of her own weakness—Vows verrez—tout le monde m'aimera. Only one who spiritually was indeed a child could have dared speak with such trustful arrogance.
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