OCTOBER 1st. SOLEMNITY OF ST. THERESE OF THE CHILD JESUS
THE LITTLE FLOWER
From the very beginning
of life, Thérèse had an immense desire to please God. In the Martin family this was not one value
among others; in a sense it was the only value, and Thérèse
took
up the challenge with vigor and thoroughness. She confesses
that from the age of three she did not refuse God anything.
She counted her good deeds on beads and kept track in notebooks, trying to prove herself
before God and family. She always had “a
great desire to practice virtue,” but she
confesses that before her Christmas conversion in l886, when she was almost fourteen, she “went about it in a strange way.” In the days of her childhood she was
prisoner to a self- centered
“Jesus and me” piety. The marvelous grace of that Christmas
gave her a new beginning.
She picked up where she had left off at the time of her mother’s death, when she was four-and-a-half, and she began the third and final period of her journey to God, in which she ran “like a giant.”
From this
point forward she was in
charge of her life; she was a match for her hypersensitivity and, more important still, able to live for others. The Christmas conversion
in
1886 allowed her to grow up. It gave her the strength
to deal with her babyish, self- serving ways and to become solicitous for
others. The in
- breaking of God, with the gift of charity,
made the difference.
Charity
changed her and freed her life, to live for God and others. “The work I had been unable to do in ten years,” she wrote, “was done by Jesus
in one instant, content with my good will, which was never lacking.”
Good Will was now
empowered by mystical love.
She was no longer victimized by her feelings, but able to rise above them.
The victory was not total, but she was launched on a solid pattern. Thérèse puts the
whole experience in simple
and accurate words: “I felt charity enter my soul, and the need to forget myself and please others; since then I
have
been happy.” The new path was her apostolic vocation. From now on the desire to help
sinners gave direction
to her life.
She would be a
“fisher of souls,”
especially sinners, such as
the criminal Pranzini,
her “first child;” later after the pilgrimage to Rome and observing
many priests she would add priests
to her special ministry. The task was clearly beyond
herself, but it was possible,
because it was the work of Jesus and the communion
of saints.
It is revealing
to find Thérèse, not quite completely satisfied with this life of sensible
and spiritual consolations. God was obviously present in the family home.
But Thérèse looked for more, for sterner stuff.
She yearned for the “desert” of Carmel, a wish that surfaced first at Pauline’s entrance, and took more mature shape with her growth in appreciation of the role of suffering in her life. She had no illusions
about Carmel. It symbolized
a life of abnegation, the way
of Cross for the salvation of sinners and for
priests. Carmel fully matured her.
There Thérèse
developed “from piety to sanctity, from beginnings to perfection, from obedient
practice of set
exercises to the
breakthrough of a new, creative form of Christian life.”
