Icon of the Face of Jesus. (Licensed from Shutterstock).

 "My Heaven on Earth"

Jesus, your ineffable image

Is the star that guides my steps.

Ah! you know, your sweet Face

Is for me Heaven on earth. . . .

Your Face is my only Homeland.

It's my Kingdom of Love.

Wolfgang Sauber / CC BY-SA

It was probably in the summer of 1895  that Therese wrote the poem "The Atom of Jesus-Host" at the request of Sister St. Vincent de Paul, a lay-sister who was evidently not enthusiastic about the monastery's receiving members of the rising bourgeoisie like the Martin sisters. 

Sister St. Vincent de Paul was remarkably devoted to the Eucharist, and she gave Therese her thoughts about herself as the "atom" of Jesus and asked for a poem on that theme.  The energy hidden in the atom had not yet been discovered; to Sister St. Vincent the word meant simply a tiny fleck of dust.*

When Sister St. Vincent de Paul entered the Carmel, she was distressed to discover that the grille between the choir and the sanctuary was covered with black cloth so that the nuns could not even see the tabernacle.  So great was her desire to be as near the Eucharist as possible that she used to spend the whole hour set aside for "mental prayer" in the evening before supper hidden in the corner of the choir closest to the little Communion grille.  This was one of the darkest corners of the choir, but was closest to the tabernacle on the other side of the grille. 

The editors of The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux describe this as "second-rate poetry that we will quickly pass over."  They are not mistaken, for, when she writes according to a unique inspiration, Therese's poems are more spontaneously written and more deeply felt than when she writes to order.  But this poem is of biographical interest because Therese wrote it for Sister St. Vincent de Paul, about whom her sister Pauline, Mother Agnes of Jesus, said "[Therese]  told me she had to overcome more antipathy for Sister St. Vincent de Paul (who was very smart) than for poor Sister Marie of St. Joseph (a mentally ill sister whom Therese helped in the linen room in 1896-1897). "1  Yet Therese wrote four poems for this Sister, and they are not devoid of Therese's own sentiments about the Eucharist.

Sister St. Vincent de Paul and St. Therese

Zoe Alaterre of Cherbourg, orphaned at age eight, grew up at the orphanage operated by the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul in Caen, where Leonie and Celine had boarded in the spring of 1889 to be near their father at the Bon Sauveur Hospital.  Entering at age 22, she was saddened that in Carmel she could no longer receive Communion every day.   She was talkative, had opinions about everything, and was called the "living encyclopedia."  Very courageous in suffering, she worked hard despite being chronically ill throughout her religious life.  Read about the phases of Sister St. Vincent de Paul's complicated relationship with St. Therese in her biography on the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.  And read the brief and somewhat humorous obituary circular Therese's sister Pauline, Mother Agnes of Jesus, wrote when Sister St. Vincent de Paul died in 1905. 

i thank the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux for digitizing and sharing the documents that permit us to know Sister St. Vincent de Paul. 

______________

* The Poetry of St. Therese of Lisieux, tr. Donald Kinney, O.C.D.  (Washington, D.C.: Washingotn Ptovince of Discalced Carmelites, 1996), p. 106.

1.  Biography of Sister St. Vincent de Paul on the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux at http://archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/les-soeurs-dexperience/st-vincent-de-paul/biographie, accessed 8/5/2020.

The Capture of Saigon by the French, February 28, 1859, paintd by Antoine Morel-Fatio. Public domain..

July 29, 1895

July 29, 1895 was an eventful day in the Carmel of Lisieux.  It was the first anniversary of the death of St. Therese's father, the now-canonized St. Louis Martin.  It was the feast of St. Martha, a special feast celebrated in honor of the lay sisters, and in 1895 Therese played the role of Jesus in a play she had written, Jesus at Bethany.  On top of that, Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart, a nun from the Carmel of Saigon who had lived at Lisieux since 1883, returned to the Saigon Carmel that day.

The Carmel of Saigon and Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart

After the French conquered Saigon in 1859, more missionaries began to go there.  The Lisieux Carmel, which had a fervent missionary consciousness, supplied, on request, four "foundresses" for the Carmel of Saigon in 1861.  They founded the Carmel in "really heroic conditions."  Two of them, whose health could not adapt to the vastly different climate, returned to France, but the community remained and began to receive native applicants.  Among them was Maria de Souza, born in Macao in 1850 of a Portuguese father and a Chinese mother.  She entered the Saigon Carmel in 1874, when baby Therese in far-off France was a year old.  [See a photo of the Saigon Carmel on the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux]. Professed in 1876 as Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart, she had a strong desire to transfer to a French Carmel.  The Lisieux Carmel received her in June 1883, about a month after the Blessed Virgin had obtained the cure of ten-year-old Therese. 

Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart and Sister Therese at the Carmel of Lisieux

Indochina, then called "Cochin-China," became a French colony in 1887, a year before Therese entered at Lisieux.  Sister Anne, a member of the community for almost five years, welcomed Therese when she entered on April 9, 1888.  Eight days later Sister Anne gave Therese a holy card on the theme of "the cradle as the first altar of sacrifice," no doubt because the postulant was given the name "Therese of the Child Jesus."  On it Sister Anne inscribed Therese's name, her own name, and the words "United in prayer and sacrifice."  The text on the reverse was titled "The sacrifices of the new law of love."  Later Therese drew a graph on this holy card, using the design, which she adapted, for her painting "The Dream of the Child Jesus." 

In 1893 Mother Marie of the Angels, creating a word picture of each Carmelite of Lisieux for the Visitation at Le Mans, wrote:

Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart, who came from Saigon. A real Chinese type, whose mother is Chinese and whose father is Portuguese.  Filled with spirit, knowledge, and talents, she works wonderfully, but her little strength doesn't allow her to be assigned jobs.  Fervent as a seraph, and truly edifies us by her bravery and her devotion.1

 Just as several of the French foundresses could not adjust to the drastic change in climate, Sister Anne never adapted from the heat of Saigon to the cold and fogs of Normandy.  Her health continued to deteriorate, and she had to give up her dream of remaining at Lisieux.  On July 29, 1895 she had to return to the Carmel of Saigon.

St. Therese's possible departure for Indochina

After she left, the bond (strong since 1861) between the Carmel of Lisieux and that of Saigon remained powerful.  In the second half of 1896, the Saigon Carmel was asking for "foundresses" [French citizens,necessary to make a new foundation in the colony of Cochin-China] for a new monastery at Hanoi.  Mother Gonzague considered sending MotherAgnes of Jesus, then Sister Genevieve (Celine) and Sister Marie of the Trinity, and finally Therese herself.  In November 1896, the Carnelites began a novena to now-St. Theophane Venard to know whether God wanted Therese to go to Indochina.  During the novena, her health grew worse, and she never transferred there.

St. Therese's letter to Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart in Saigon

On May 2, 1897, a special feast day at the Lisieux Carmel, Therese, at the suggestion of her prioress, Marie de Gonzague, wrote a letter to Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart in Saigon.  She wrote:

I recall with joy the years I spent in your company. . . . The hot sun of Saigon is nothing in comparison with the fire burning in your soul.  Oh, Sister! I beg you, ask Jesus that I myself also may love Him and that i may make Him loved.2

Therese sends her respectful good wishes to the new prioress, who had succeeded Mother Philomena of the Immaculate Conception from Lisieux; Mother Philomena had died in 1895. 

When Therese was in the infirmary, her sister Celine, Sister Genevieve, seeing her so ill, remarked "When I think that they are still waiting for you in Saigon!"  Therese answered:  "I'll go there very soon; if you only knew how quickly I will go!"  The chapel in the Carmel of Saigon today contains a replica of Therese's shrine at Lisieux. 

Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart's one testimony about St.Therese

Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart was to die in Saigon in 1920.  Unfortunately, neither the Carmel of Saigon nor the Lisieux Carmel prepared an obituary circular for her.  For what is known and for her photo, see Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart on the Web site of the Archives of the Carnel of Lisieux.  Yet Sister Anne lived long enough to offer a valuable testimony about St. Therese.  Toward the end of Sister Anne's life, when the not-yet-canonized "the Servant of God, Sister Therese of the Child Jesus" had taken the world by storm and it was known that Sister Anne had lived with her in France for seven years, she was often asked about Sister Therese, and she answered in words that show how well Therese succeeded in her desire to live a completely hidden life:

There is nothing to say about her;she was very good and very self-effacing; one would not notice her; never would I have suspected her sanctity.3

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1.  Sainte Therese de l'Enfant Jesus at de la Sainte-Face, Correspondance generale, T. II.  Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1992, pp. 1174-1175.  Translation copyright Maureen O'Riordan 2020.

2  Letters of St. Therese of Lisieux, Vol. II: 1890-1897.  Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Discalced Carmelite Friars, 1988, pp. 1090-1091.

3.  Ibid., p. 1091, note 2.

I thank the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux for digitizing Therese's letter to Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart and for making it possible to link to her photo and biography, to the holy card she gave Therese, and to the paintiing Therese produced from that holy card.

Jesus at Bethany, Therese's fourth 'pious recreation'

for the feast of St. Martha, July 29, 1895

DeFacto / CC BY-SA

 At the Lisieux Carmel, the feast of St. Martha on July 29 was celebrated as the feast of the lay-sisters.  At that time the monastery, somewhat mirroring the class structure from which its applicants came, had two ranks of sisters: the choir nuns, who recited the Divine Office in choir, and the lay-sisters, called in French "converse."  The lay-sisters, of whom there were five in Lisieux Carmel in 1895, wore a white veil all their lives.  They did not recite the Divine Office, substituting a certain number of "Our Fathers."  They went to bed earlier than the choir nuns and got up earlier, and they were responsible for much of the monastery's heavy domestic work: cooking, gardening, looking after the poultry.  They often came from poorer families and had had less education than the choir nuns. 

On the feast of St. Martha, the roles were reversed.  All the choir nuns gave small presents to the lay-sisters, and, because a much richer menu was permitted, the benefactors of the monastery, the Guerin family, sent in lavish treats for them. See the letter of Marie Guerin (Sister Marie of the Eucharist) to her parents in 1896, thanking them for melons, chocolates, and other delicacies. All the lay-sisters signed it.

The lay-sisters were not allowed to set foot in the kitchen; instead, the novices had free rein there on that day.  For the novices, the day was somewhat hilarious; see Marie Guerin's letter to her father in 1898 describing their adventures and how thoroughly they enjoyed the feast.

In 1895 St. Therese wrote a simple but profound play, "Jesus at Bethany," for the feast-day recreation.  It had only three characters:  Jesus (played by Therese); Mary (played by Marie of the Trinity); and Martha (played by Therese's sister Celine, Sister Genevieve of St. Teresa).  It is a dialogue in which Jesus speaks at length first with Mary and then with Martha.  All the lines are written to be sung (to four different melodies).  Note that, like many people at that time, Therese believed that St. Mary Magdalene was a former prostitute and that she and Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, were the same person.  Thus her character is called "Magdalene."

Unlike other authors, although Therese mentions the contrast between contemplation and action that Mary and Martha are often thought to represent, she does not dwell chiefly on it.  Instead, her interest is in whether the "pure soul" (Martha) or the "repentant soul" (Mary, in the play usually called only "Magdalene") can love God more.  In the first manuscript of her memoir, which she is writing this year, she presents this conflict, expressing her profound conviction that the pure soul can love at least as much.  God has loved that soul more by preventing it from falling in the first place.

Mary is grieved that she has caused Jesus sorrow, but he assures her that

with a single stroke of flame

I can change hearts.

Your soul, made young again

By my divine look,

Will bless me without end

In eternal life.

This theme of the divine "look" that instantly rejuvenates the soul is dear to Therese; it appears in the "Offering of myself to Merciful Love" she had just made on June 9.  Her Jesus insists that he loves both sisters:

My goodness without equal

Would like that the sinner

And the virginal soul

Rest on My heart.

He promises Mary that one day she will rise higher than the angels and asks her on earth 'to draw hearts to Me."  Martha enters the dialogue with the complaint she makes about her sister in the gospel.  He acknowledges Martha's generosity but wants something more from her.  She realizes:

I finally understand it, Jesus, supreme beauty.

Your divine look has penetrated my heart.

All my gifts  are too little, it is my soul itself

That I must offer You, O very loving Savior . . . .

Jesus tells Martha that she offers him innocence and Mary has humility.  Martha understands the union of their apostolate:

Jesus, to delight You, I want all my life

To despise honors and human glory.

While working for you I will imitate Mary

Seeking only Your divine gaze.

Therese insists gently that it is not whether one is engaged in work (which must be accompanied with "fervent prayer") or in contemplative prayer that matters; "it is your heart that I desire."  These are only four verses from this artless but significant "pious recreation," which sheds light on a theme extremely personal and dear to Therese. 

Thanks to the generosity of the  Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites and the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux, you can read the text of Jesus at Bethany online.  When you have done so, I highly recommend consulting the volume The Plays of Saint Therese of Lisieux, perhaps the least-known volume of the works of St. Therese published by the Institute of Carmelite Studies.  Its introductions and notes set forth the community context in which each play was written and performed and offer invaluable insight into  the place each composition has in the tradition of the Teresian Carmel and in Therese's personal development.

I thank the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux for the two letters of Marie Guerin which give us such a personal taste of this annual feast. 

 
"Prayer to Jesus in the Tabernacle" of St. Therese of Lisieux: July 16, 1895 

The statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel before which Pauline Martin was praying in St. Jacques Church in Lisieux on February 16, 1882 when she understood that she was called to Carmel. This statue is now in st. Pierre's Cathedral in Lisieux. My thanks to Corinne May for the photo.

Sister Martha of Jesus

In the Lisieux Carmel, July 16, 1895 was not only the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel but also the 30th birthday of Sister Martha of Jesus, a lay-sister eight years older than Therese who had entered Carmel about three months before Therese.  They had spent their time of formation together.  Sister Martha became so attached to Therese that she asked to stay in the novitiate permanently so that she might continue to benefit by Therese's good advice.

The "Prayer to Jesus in the Tabernacle"

Therese wrote the "Prayer to Jesus in the Tabernacle" as a birthday present for Sister Martha.    The lay-sisters, who got up even earlier than the other nuns and did much of the community's domestic work, were not obliged to stay up for Matins.  Sister Martha was the community's hard-working cook.  Her day ended with a visit to the Blessed Sacrament at about 8:00 p.m. In this visit she included her examination of conscience, and the editors of The Prayers of Saint Therese of Lisieux point out that the text suggests that she had asked Therese for a prayer to help in this examination.  

This prayer, written soon after Therese's "Offering of myself as a victim of holocaust to the Merciful Love of God," is important to understanding Therese and has, I believe, been somewhat overlooked to date.1 Thanks to the generosity of the Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites and the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux, you can read it online.  Yet, because the introduction and the notes, which do not appear online, contribute much to our understanding of Sister Martha and of the prayer, I strongly recommend consulting the volume The Prayers of Saint Therese of Lisieux.

Sister Martha, who had lost her mother at age four, spent her childhood in two different orphanages, and lost her father when she was no more than twelve, was marked all her life by the lack of maternal affection and of a stable early home. Despite a sincere devotion, she found it hard to live peacefully with those around her.  Therese acknowledges the faults this sister will have to confront on many evenings:

If I were more united to You, more charitable with my sisters, more humble and more mortified, I would feel less sorrow when I talk with you in prayer.

Yet, in a personal Theresian note, "very far from becoming discouraged, I come to you with confidence."  The line "I beg You to act in me despite my resistance" speaks to the spirit of contradiction with which Sister Martha had to contend.  Therese assures her boldly that on "the last evening of my life" she will reach at once "the unending day of eternity, when I will place in your Divine Heart the struggles of exile!" This conviction that those who trust in love will go straight to heaven, which, as  we have seen, marked Therese in a conversation with Sister Febronie before the latter's death in 1892, seems to find more frequent expression starting in 1895. 

Sister Martha's later life

Therese's relationship with Sister Martha is vital to a full understanding of Therese and of her life in the community, and I hope to examine it further.  Despite her lack of formal education, Sister Martha was an important witness at both processes, speaking simply and in rich detail of what she observed in Therese during the nine years they spent together.  Happily, in the end Sister Martha received the grace of the confidence Therese modeled for her.  Before her death at age 51, she received the last sacraments on August 28, 1916.   She said:

During the ceremony I felt the presence of our little saint. It was like a heavenly voice that said in my ear, “You too, if you wish in spite of your poor life, you can go straight to heaven” and I understood that the greatest sinner could obtain this grace through confidence and humility.2 

 May the companion for whom Therese wrote this prayer draw us all to the same bold confidence that brought Sister Martha to the Divine Heart.

Footnotes:

1.  The autograph of the prayer was destroyed; we have only a copy, which was fortunately made to be submitted to the Process of Therese's writings before the autograph was burned.  Most of Sister Martha's private papers were burned after her death to prevent tuberculosis from spreading in the monastery.  See Sainte Therese de l'Enfant Jesus et de la Sainte-Face, Correspondance generale, T. 1 (Paris: Editions du Cerf and Desclee de Brouwer, 1992), p. 68, footnote 46.  Most unfortunately, this bonfire consumed other notes from Therese which had not been submitted to the Process.  No one copied them before destroying the oriiginals.  An oral tradition in the Lisieux Carmel maintains that some of the novices received many more notes from Therese than they contributed to the Process.  Sister Martha, however, included the text of this prayer in her oral testimony before the diocesan process.  That some of Therese's other notes to her were burned is a serious loss to the archive of Therese's correspondence.  

 2.  http://www.archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/les-novices/marthe-de-j%C3%A9sus/biographie, accessed July 16, 2020.