Banner with photo of Therese displayed on the bell tower of the Basilica at Lisieux. Photo credit: Peter and Liane Klostermann

Saint Therese of Lisieux,
Doctor of the Evangelical Path to Holiness

21. In the conclusion of his Encyclical Letter Redemptoris Missio, which explains the permanent validity of Christ's missionary mandate, John Paul II states:

The call to mission derives, of its nature, from the call to holiness. …The universal call to holiness is closely linked to the universal call to mission. Every member of the faithful is called to holiness and mission. …The missionary spirituality of the Church is a journey towards holiness.¹⁴

Thérèse of Lisieux transformed this doctrine into a lived experience. As a result, she was proclaimed Universal Patroness of the Missions, together with the great apostle Saint Francis Xavier. Her experiential doctrine is of great relevance to the new evangelization. She entered Carmel to reach holiness by means of the contemplative life: "God made me understand my own glory would not be evident to the eyes of mortals, that it would consist in becoming a great saint."¹⁵ 

From the beginning she was convinced that she entered Carmel not to flee from the world, but to enter it more profoundly. Her spiritual experience was not a search for a refuge from a hostile world, but a conscious offering of herself as a martyr.

22. "Today a renewed commitment to holiness …is more necessary than ever. …It is therefore necessary to inspire in all the faithful a true longing for holiness, a deep desire for conversion and personal renewal in a context of ever more intense prayer and of solidarity with one's neighbor, especially the most needy."¹⁶ Therese of Lisieux admirably unites holiness and mission within her own personal vocation. Her authentic contemplation commits her to evangelization. Thus, she unequivocally proposes a Gospel way of witnessing to the good news and of proclaiming it in response to the challenges of modern times.

By emphasizing that the heart of holiness is love, Therese helps to close the gap between contemplation and action, because love unites both. She entered the contemplative life to become more effective in her apostolic life. In this way, she revolutionized the relationship between asceticism and mysticism. She emphasized the kind of asceticism that consists in evangelical self-denial lived one day at a time. For this reason, she preferred service to others more than corporal mortification: welcoming others, understanding them, forgiving them, being helpful, and standing in solidarity with them. These are great practical lessons in spirituality for the new evangelization.

 - excerpted from Therese, A Doctor for the Third Millennium, the joint pastoral letter written by the Carmelite superiors general,  Fr. Camilo Maccise, O.C.D. and Fr. Joseph Chalmers, O. Carm., when Therese was named a doctor in 1997.  For the footnotes, please follow the link to the complete document. 

"St. Therese Doing the Dishes," by Brother Mickey McGrath, OSFS for Trinity Stores. Purchases through this link support the Web site.Saint Therese of Lisieux, Doctor of the Experience of God's Love Expressed in Communion and Service

18. Experience is the key in a technical and scientific world. Everything must be experienced, seen in some way. Christian spirituality is no exception to this trend. Experience and testimony are fundamental in the Christian life, being particularly important today when we see a reaction against an exaggerated intellectualism in matters of faith and religion. Despite the danger of subjectivity and a certain spiritual infantilism, this search for experiences cannot be rejected out of hand. Spiritual experiences are a source of knowledge and of a deeper revelation of God.

Thérèse of Lisieux is a teacher of an authentic experience of God that contains within itself a commitment to following Jesus. She teaches us about the experience of contact with the Word of God, the meaning of the community that Christ communicates to us and the necessity of giving a real response guided by love.

19. Spirituality in the church today tends to stress the communion of all in Christ and in the Spirit. We need to place all the gifts we have at the service of the community of believers. The main lines of the experience and doctrine of St. Thérèse can be clearly seen in this dimension of today's spirituality of evangelization. She lived for the Church, the Body of Christ. She desired to live all possible vocations in the Church so that she could bear witness to the Gospel and proclaim it to the most distant places on earth until, while meditating on chapters 12 and 13 of the first letter to the Corinthians, she discovered her vocation and mission in the church: "Jesus, my Love …my vocation, at last I have found it. …My vocation is love! Yes, I have found my place in the Church and it is You, O my God, who have given me this place; in the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be Love. Thus I shall be everything, and thus my dream will be realized."¹²

20. Thérèse strongly centered her life on God as the only absolute. She conversed with him in prayer that took into account the needs of her brothers and sisters. Inspired by this encounter, she devoted herself to others and lived her vocation for the salvation of the world. In Manuscript C, Therese gives a precious direction for an authentic spirituality committed to the new evangelization:

Just as a torrent, throwing itself with impetuosity into the ocean, drags after it everything it encounters in its passage, in the same way, O Jesus, the soul who plunges into the shoreless ocean of Your Love, draws with her all the treasures she possesses. Lord, You know it, I have no other treasures than the souls it has pleased You to unite to mine.¹³

Thérèse was convinced that the authenticity of our love for God is demonstrated in the quality of our love for others. This conviction has truly influenced the spirituality of our century, particularly in the area of commitment to evangelization. Her experience and doctrine have taught Christians that the dimension of fraternal love opens us to ever new and wider horizons, like the concentric ripples in a pond set in motion by the impact of the love of God. The first circle reaches those nearest us. The wider circles embrace the whole of humanity. Confidence and surrender to God, our Father-Mother, are in Therese of Lisieux the source of fraternal charity and the apostolate. They give love expression by the way they seek to share with all the good news of salvation.

Thérèse of Lisieux translated into life the Gospel's demand for service to those of least importance in the world's eyes and those who are poorest. In them we discover the face of Christ (cf. Mt 25:31-45). God reveals himself to them in a special way (cf. Mt 11:25-27). We must be ready to give our lives for others in the service of God, like Christ, who asked the Father to take away, if possible, the chalice of suffering, but who nevertheless clearly accepted his Father's will and desired to fulfill it. 

 - excerpted from Therese, A Doctor for the Third Millennium, the joint pastoral letter written by the Carmelite superiors general,  Fr. Camilo Maccise, O.C.D. and Fr. Joseph Chalmers, O. Carm., when Therese was named a doctor in 1997.  For the footnotes, please follow the link to the complete document. 

 Statue of St. Therese in Lisieux. The phrase "omen novum" on the tablet she is holding is from a speech by Pope Pius XI the day after her canonization; he called her "a new omen, a Word of God in our time." Photo credit: Peter and Liane Klostermann

Therese of Lisieux,
Doctor of the Experience of a God Both Merciful and Near to Us

17. The rediscovery of the paternal-maternal face of God was the starting point of a new path to holiness that our sister trod, especially from 1894, as she experienced more and more her own weakness. Jesus showed her, as she says, that the road to follow is that of surrender to God with the confidence of a child sleeping fearlessly in it's Father's arms:

Whoever is a little one, let him come to me. So speaks the Holy Spirit through the mouth of Solomon. This same Spirit of Love also says: For to him that is little, mercy will be shown. The Prophet Isaiah reveals in His name that on the last day…As one whom a mother caresses, so will I comfort you; you shall be carried at the breasts and upon the knees they will caress you. …Jesus does not demand great actions from us but simply surrender and gratitude.¹⁰

This experience of Thérèse of Lisieux is one of a God who is both Father-Mother; who has love even for the unjust and evil (cf. Lk 6:35); who knows what we need before we ask; who forgives our sins and asks us to forgive; who protects and looks after us (cf. Mt 6:8-9, 14-15, 26). Here we see the change from fear to confidence. We stand before God as sons and daughters before a father and a mother. God makes everything work together for our good, even our deficiencies and faults. Getting to know a God who is both Father and Mother requires the heart of a child that chooses to remain small:

What pleases [Jesus] is that He sees me loving my littleness and my poverty, the blind hope that I have in His mercy. … It is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to Love.¹¹

God's initiative is at the root of every Christian vocation. Responding to God's invitation, those who are called trust in God's love and give their life unconditionally, consecrating everything, present and future, to God, abandoning it all confidently into his hands. All this is of capital importance in Christian spirituality for the third millennium.

 - excerpted from Therese, A Doctor for the Third Millennium, the joint pastoral letter written by the Carmelite superiors general,  Fr. Camilo Maccise, O.C.D. and Fr. Joseph Chalmers, O. Carm., when Therese was named a doctor in 1997.  For the footnotes, please follow the link to the complete document.  

 Sculpture of St. Therese on the facade of the Hotel du Sud in Rome, where she stayed as a pilgrim in November 1887 Photo credit: Juan Marrero

Section II A), "Demands of the New Evangelization," of Therese, A Doctor for the Third Millennium, siggests what is necessary to proclaim the gospel.  This section continues to create the context for Therese's doctorate.  Excerpted from  the joint pastoral letter written by the Carmelite superiors geneeral,  Fr. Camilo Maccise, O.C.D. and Fr. Joseph Chalmers, O. Carm., when Therese was named a doctor in 1997.  For the footnotes, please follow the link above to the complete document.  

A) Demands of the New Evangelization

10. To make the proclamation of the Gospel ring out requires following in the direction pointed out by the encyclical Redemptoris Missio: witness, proclamation, communion, and service.³ It is useful to keep these in mind in order to understand the heart and relevance of the message of Thérèse of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church.

Witness

11. To evangelize is not to transmit a doctrine but an experience transformed into life. This experience is precisely what is shared: "Something which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have watched and touched with our own hands…we are declaring to you…so that you too may share our life" (1 Jn 1:1-3). At the threshold of the third millennium the world to which we must give witness is largely one of unbelief and injustice. Christians are called to "always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you have" (1 Pt 3:15). The question is how to make this hope and witness clearly intelligible. It must lead the faithful to revise their personal lives and the way they participate in the Church because: "People today put more trust in witnesses than in teachers, in experience than in teaching, and in life and action than in theories."⁴ "The evangelical witness which the world finds most appealing is that of concern for people, and of charity toward the poor, the weak and those who suffer,"⁵ along with a commitment to peace, justice, and human rights.⁶

Proclamation

12. As well as witnessing by their lives, Christians fulfill their evangelical missions by proclaiming the good news of salvation: Christ has died and is risen, and he has transformed us into sons and daughters of God; he has set us free from the slavery of evil, sin, and death. We must proclaim the love of God, our Father, who calls us to union with Him. The good news is addressed to all. There are some areas that need our particular attention in our day: big cities tend to foster individualism, anonymity, cultural disintegration, pluralism, and indifference. Young people in particular need to be evangelized. They are the future of the world. There is also urgent need to proclaim the Gospel among the masses of non-practicing Christians. Of perennial importance is the need for a first proclamation to those who have never heard the Gospel or who do not know Christ.

Communion

13. "God, however, does not make men and women holy and save them merely as individuals, without bond or link between one another. Rather has it pleased him to bring mankind together as one people, a people which acknowledges him in truth and serves him in holiness."⁷ with these words the Second Vatican Council stressed that faith is lived in community, that the fruit of evangelization and the action of the Spirit is the creation of fraternal communities forming the new family of God. The coming of Christ manifests itself in this communion. "By this we know that we have passed from death to life (cf. 1 Jn 3:14)…and from communion there emanates a source of great apostolic energy."⁸ Communion comes about as a result of faith and the sacraments of faith which lead us to a koinonía, open to all, especially to those who believe in Christ through an ecumenism that is active and in solidarity. Communion demands a sincere and fraternal dialogue.

Service

14. Faith needs to be expressed in deeds because in Christ Jesus "only faith working through love" (Gal 5:6) has value. To serve God and people is the best proof of love. Christian diakonía is nothing else than following Jesus who "came not to be served but to serve" (Mt 20:28), and who lived among us "as one who serves" (LK 22:27). From the beginning, Christian service has been notable toward the poor, the outcasts, and the suffering. For this reason, at the threshold of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, John Paul II, in his Apostolic Letter "Tertio Millenio Adveniente," did not hesitate to state: "Indeed, it has to be said that a commitment to justice and peace in a world like ours, marked by so many conflicts and intolerable social and economic inequalities, is a necessary condition for the preparation and celebration of the Jubilee."⁹

Stay tuned for the next section, "Therese: Doctor of the Experience of a God both Merciful and Near to Us," which speaks more precisely of Therese herself. 

A statue of Therese, donated by Celine, at Santa Maria
della Vittoria in Rome, near the place where Therese,
as a pilgrim, wandered into the inner cloisters.  
Photo credit: Juan Marrero

The beginning of Section II of Therese, A Doctor for the Third Millennium, the joint pastoral letter written by the Superior Generals of the two branches of the Carmelite Order, Fr. Camilo Maccise, O.C.D. and Fr. Joseph Chalmers, O. Carm., creates the context for Therese's doctorate: the new millennium as a time of grace and the need for a new evangelization to respond to this time of grace.

II. Thérèse of Lisieux, Doctor for the Third Millennium

8. To speak of the third millennium is to speak, in the first place, of time and the action of God. He manifests himself and works within human events. Teresa of Jesus told us, "It is always a suitable time for God to grant great favors" (Foundations 4, 5). Two thousand years of Christian history are about to conclude. In celebrating this historical event, "It is certainly not a matter of indulging in a new millenarianism, as occurred in some quarters at the end of the first millennium; rather, it is aimed at increasing sensitivity to all that the Spirit is saying to the Church and to the churches (cf. Rv 2:7 ff.), as well as to individuals through charisms meant to serve the whole community. …Despite appearances, humanity continues to await the revelation of the children of God, and lives by this hope."¹ God calls us today, as he did yesterday and will always, to construct our personal and community existence through a reply that is free and responsible.

9. With regard to the celebration of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, God has awakened in the Church the awareness of a need for a new evangelization in order to respond to this special time of grace, and to renew faith, hope, and love by centering them on Jesus, who is the only Savior and center of history. He reveals to us the true face of God and helps us discover the presence and action of the Spirit in people and in the world.

History, our world, is the place where the saving presence of God is at work and the place where the responsibility of persons lies. "The church emphasizes the importance of history as the place in which God manifests himself. …But it is precise to say as well that the Church understands that time, liberty, and history are the place in which mankind constructs human existence. Both need to be present, not in an incommunicable parallel, rather in a dialogue, which, on God's part, is gratuitous and initiates and, on the part of mankind, is open to transcendental meaning."²

The time of new evangelization is also a time of great trials and challenges for the world. We cannot separate these two things.  The Gospel of Jesus, confided to the Church to be proclaimed and realized in the world around us, challenges us by its content and all that is in contrast with it.  The Gospel throws its light on these challenges and claims our total attention. Leaving aside the constancy of it, let us direct our words solely to the demands presented to us directly in the field of evangelization itself.

(my emphasis).

Coming soon:

the next section:

"Demands of the new evangelization:
 witness, proclamation, communion, and  service."