Saint Therese of Lisieux: A Gateway

Introduction

The Extraordinary Jubilee  of Mercy began on December 8, 2015.  The feast of St. Therese on october 1 falls within this Jubilee of Mercy. I invite you to join the members of the community of faith in nine days of prayer and reflection, beginning on Thursday, September 22, and concluding on Friday, September 30, the anniversary of St. Therese's death and the vigil of her feast.  We will reflect on the Pope’s Apostolic Letter, “Misericordiae Vultus” (“The Face of Mercy”) and on related themes in the lived experience of St. Therese, the great missionary of God's mercy. May this be an opportunity for God to pour out Mercy on us and through us.

After reading the reflection below, please pray as the Holy Spirit leads you, and close your prayer with the “Prayer of Pope Francis for the Jubilee.”  Of course, you may include any personal intentions you like in the prayer.  Most of all, I invite you to join in the intention expressed by the Pope:

 “Send your Spirit and consecrate every one of us with its anointing,

so that the Jubilee of Mercy may be a year of grace from the Lord,

and your Church, with renewed enthusiasm, may bring good news to the poor,

proclaim liberty to captives and the oppressed,

and restore sight to the blind.”

           One could not prepare better for the feast of St. Therese during the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy than to read “Misericordiae Vultus” as a whole, and I encourage you to do so.  For this first day, read especially the first four numbered paragraphs. 

Day One

Reflection on the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy and St. Therese

The face of the Father's mercy

Pope Francis opens:  “Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy.” He urges us “constantly to contemplate the mystery of mercy.”  St. Therese spent her whole life contemplating that mystery.  Since the first publication of her memoir, Story of a Soul, in 1898, has been the messenger of mercy to the whole world.  She knew very well that her charism was to experience and proclaim mercy.  At 23 she wrote

 “ I understand . . . that all souls cannot be the same, that it is necessary there be different types in order to honor each of God’s perfections in a particular way. To me He has granted His infinite Mercy, and through it I contemplate and adore the other divine perfections! All of these perfections appear to be resplendent with love . . . “

[Story of a Soul, tr. John Clarke, O.C.D.  Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Carmelites, 1975]. 

Indeed, Therese offered herself to Merciful Love.  But she saw the relationship between love and mercy as so intimate that she did not always need to use the word “Merciful” to describe “Love.” 

The feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8: a day of mercies for the Martin family

 Pope Francis goes on to say that the jubilee year opens on December 8, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.  A note about the significance of this date to the Martin family.  On December 5, 1875, Zelie, 43, wrote to her daughter Pauline, 15:

So Wednesday is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and it’s a great feast day for me! On that day, the Blessed Mother granted me many notable graces. Ask your aunt if she remembers December 8, 1851.  (On that date, Zelie, a young woman uncertain about how to earn her dowry, heard an interior voice:  “See to the manufacturing of  Alençon  lace,” in which business she became very successful). As for me, I haven’t forgotten it.

Nor have I forgotten December 8, 1860, the day I asked our Heavenly Mother to give me a little Pauline. But I can’t think of it without laughing because I was exactly like a child asking her mother for a doll (Zelie’s mother never let her have a doll), and I went about it the same way. I wanted to have a Pauline like the one I have, and I dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s because I was afraid the Blessed Mother wouldn’t quite understand what I wanted. First and foremost that she have a beautiful little soul, capable of becoming a saint, but I also wanted her to be very pretty. As for that, she’s hardly pretty, but I find her beautiful, very beautiful, and she’s as I wanted her to be!

Again, this year, I’ll go to find the Blessed Mother at daybreak, and I want to be the first to arrive.  (Each year, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Zelie went on pilgrimage to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception at Seez). I’m going to light my candle to her as usual, but I won’t ask her for any more little daughters. I’m only going to ask her that those she’s given me all become saints and that I may follow them closely, but they must be much better than I am.

A Call to a Deeper Love: The Family Correspondence of the Parents of St. Therese of Lisieux, 1863-1885, ed. Dr. Frances Renda.  Staten Island, New York: Society of St. Paul, 2011.

May the Mother of Mercies be for us, too, a channel of the grace of the Jubilee.

The Holy Door

  In honor of the Jubilee of Mercy, on December 8, 2015 Pope Francis opened the Holy Door, which had remained closed since the last ordinary Holy Year in 2000.  He writes:  “On that day, the Holy Door will become a Door of Mercy through which anyone who enters will experience the love of God who consoles, pardons, and instils hope.”  Has Therese herself not been such a door of mercy?  For the nuns who knew her well, she was a door to the experience of God’s mercy in their everyday lives.  Since the publication of Story of a Soul in 1898, she has been a door of Mercy through which countless pilgrims have entered into an experience of God’s "consuming and transforming love."  St. Therese of Lisieux is the threshold of Mercy, a powerful way to Jesus Christ.  How many people, entering into her experience of God's Merciful Love, have crossed that threshold to receive the graces of baptism, healing, conversion, vocation!  She will also guide you across the threshold.  Call on her confidently during this year of grace.

The Fiftieth Anniversary of Vatican II

Pope Francis chose December 8, 2015 to open the Jubilee because it was the 50^th anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council.  “The Church feels a great need to keep this event alive. . . .With the Council, the Church entered a new phase of her history, a new phase of the same evangelization that had existed from the beginning.”  Therese, too, introduced a new era for the Church, asking God "to cast Your divine glance upon a great number of little souls."  She liberated sanctity and made it accessible to everyone. 

Notes:

1. for the significance of Therese to the Second Vatican Council, please see the essay by William Thompson, "Therese of Lisieux: A Challenge for Doctrine and Theology, Forerunner of Vatican III" in Experiencing St. Therese Today, ed. John Sulllivan, OCD (Wellesley, Mass.; Christus Publishing, 2012, p. 206.
2. For the significance of Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin for Vatican II, please see "What if Louis and Zelie Martin had known about Vatican II?" - a conference delivered by Mgr Jacques Habert, bishop of Seez, on July 14, 2012. 

Time of Personal Prayer

Pray as the Holy Spirit leads you.  Consider reading over the first four numbered paragraphs of "Misericordiae Vultus” and pausing wherever your heart feels moved.

The Prayer of Pope Francis for the Jubilee

Click here to read the Prayer of Pope Francis.