Maurice Belliere. Photo Credit: White Fathers (Missionaries of Africa)After the 21-year-old seminarian, Maurice Belliere, wrote to the prioress of the Lisieux Carmel asking her to designate a nun to pray and sacrifice herself especially for his vocation and mission, and Mother Agnes of Jesus, Therese's sister Pauline, chose Therese for this mission, Therese composed her first prayer for Maurice Belliere (ACL).  This is the eighth of the twenty-one formal prayers found among her writings.  (She often suddenly "lapsed" into spontaneous prayers in her other writings).  This prayer was in Therese's voice; she wrote it to pray herself, but she gave it to her prioress, who, without allowing Therese to correspond with Maurice, sent him the prayer no later than October 22, 1895.  (Their exchange of letters came only later, under the priorate of Mother Gonzague). 

Characteristically, Therese begins "O my Jesus!  I thank you for having fulfilled one of my greatest desires . . . ."  She means business: "I offer you joyfully all the prayers and sacrifices at my disposal."  In fact, in her rough draft, she wrote "I want my life to be consecrated to him," a line later struck out.1  In a phrase reminiscent of her June "Offering of myself as a Victim of Holocaust to Your Merciful Love," she asks Jesus to look on her as "a religious wholly inflamed with your love."  She declares solemnly "Now my desire will be reaized." 

Since the state no longer exempted seminarians from military service, Maurice is about to leave the seminary for the barracks.  He has written the Carmel for help at a vulnerable moment in his young life, and Therese asks Jesus to "keep him safe amid the dangers of the world."  She then turns to Mary, the "gentle Queen of Carmel," drawing a comparison between how Mary wrapped Jesus in swaddling clothes and how Maurice will hold the Eucharist in his hands at the altar.  Read the full text of Therese's "Prayer for Abbe Bellliere" thanks to the generosity of the Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites and the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux. 

Notes

ACL = Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.

1.  The Prayers of Saint Therese of Lisieux, ed. Steven Payne, O.C.D., tr. Aletheia Kane, O.C.D.  Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1997, p. 81.

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 We have looked at the first “blind” letter Maurice Belliere, a 21-year-old seminarian for the diocese of Bayeux, wrote on Monday, October 15, 1895 to the prioress of the Lisieux Carmel, asking that a nun dedicate her prayers and sacrifices for his vocation and mission. Maurice’s letter was mailed on the 16th and reached the monastery on the 17th.  Therese’s sister Pauline, Mother Agnes of Jesus, was then prioress, and she chose to ask Therese, then 22, to undertake this mission.  It's not until 20 months later, when Therese is writing her third autobiographical manuscript, addressed to Mother Gonzague in June 1897, that Therese recounts how, on Thursday, October 17th, when she was hard at work with the community in the laundry room, Mother Agnes took her aside and read Maurice's letter to her.  Since Maurice wrote on October 15, the feast of her patron, Teresa of Avila, Therese considered him "a feast-day gift."  She recalls the desire she had  cherished since childhood of having a brother who would become a priest.  Maurice had "promised to remember the one who would become his sister at the Holy Sacrifice each day after he was ordained."  Therese, of course, never approached the altar; it was outside the enclosure, and she was separated from it by the grille, so that Maurice's offer decreased the distance between her and the Eucharist she loved so much.  She was deeply touched by this delicacy of Jesus, and she wrote: "Mother, it would be impossible for me to express my happiness."  Read her full account on the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.

Characteristically, Therese took this mission very seriously:  "I understood fully the obligation I was imposing on myself, and I set to work by trying to redouble my fervor."  Mother Agnes, who laid great emphasis on silence and hiddenness for Carmelites, preferred Therese not to engage in correspondence with this young seminarian, so she answered his letter herself.  Therese did compose a prayer for him, and in our next entry we will examine this prayer, which Mother Agnes sent to Maurice.

Source:  Story of a Soul, The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux, 3rd edition, tr. John Clarke, O.C.D.  Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1996.

Fr. Maurice Belliere. Photo credit: White Fathers (Missionaries of Arica)

On October 15, 1895, Maurice Belliere addressed a letter to the prioress of the Lisieux Carmel, whose name he did not even know, which became the foundation for a great spiritual friendship between him and the future St. Therese of Lisieux.

Chapel of the former Major Seminary at Sommervieu. Photo credit: Wikimedia

 Maurice was a twenty-one-year-old seminarian (of the  diocese of Bayeux) with missionary ambitions; he was studying theology at the Major Seminary in Sommervieu. The chapel of this seminary, pictured above, will figure importantly in the story of Therese's second missionary brother, Fr. Adolphe Roulland.

 Major Seminary at Sommervieu. Photo credit: Brendan Riley Photos. Used with permission.

Inspired by St. Teresa of Avila, whose feast it was (and also, of course, Therese's feast day during her lifetime), Maurice asked "that a nun devote herself particularly to the salvation of my soul, and obtain for me the grace to be faithful to the vocation God has given me, that of a priest and a missionary."1  He added that he was about to leave for his year of military service (from which seminarians in France were no longer exempt), where he would be "subjected again to the assaults of a world which is not entirely dead for me."2 

Maurice's letter probably reached the Lisieux Carmel on Wednesday, October 16.  Mother Agnes of Jesus (Therese's sister Pauline), then prioress, read it and asked Therese to undertake this mission.  This decision eventually gave birth to a correspondence which contains many of Therese's most personal insights and shows her capacity for a relationship at once personal and apostolic.  Reading her letters to Maurice allows her to draw the reader into the same intimate friendship she enjoyed with him.  We will follow this story as it develops over the next two years of her life.

For a preview, read a short but authoritative version of Maurice's life story at "150th anniversary - Father Maurice Belliere," written by Piet van der Pas, M. Afr., a member of the White Fathers, for one of their publications.

You can also read my booklet Praying for Priests with St. Therese of Lisieux, prepared for the Catholic Truth Society in 2009  and now available only as an e-book. It contains a resume of Therese's apostolate of prayer for priests, a selection of the passages I consider most powerful from her letters to Maurice Bellliere and to Fr. Adolphe Roulland, and a novena composed wholly of words written by Therese.  I am proud that the print version remained available for about nine years, and I'm happy that now readers in any location can have instant access to the e-book and give it to friends without the trouble of shipping it.  I'm particularly enthusiastic about this booklet because it is an inexpensive resource but contains the most beautiful excerpts from Therese's correspondence with these two young Frenchmen. 

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Notes:

1.  Major seminaries are schools where men study at the college and post-college level to prepare for the priesthood. Note that the seminary in Sommervieu was closed in 1906, after the French Law on the Separation of Church and State was passed in 1905.  Minor seminaries, more common in the past than today, were high schools where young men considered suitable for the priesthood were encouraged to enroll, in the hope that those called to the priesthood would go on to a major seminary.  Today they are often called “high school seminaries.”  In Therese's time there was a minor seminary in Lisieux.

2.  Maurice & Therese: The Story of a Love, by Patrick Ahern.  New York, New York: Doubleday, 1998, p. 16. (As this letter was not addressed to Therese, it does not appear in the published collections of her letters.  To my knowledge, this book is the only book that contains a complete English translation). 

3.  Ibid., p. 16.

 Guillem Ramos-Poquí, ‘St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face’, 2009. Photo Credit: Sophia Deboick

 On the vigil of the feast of St. Therese, I am delighted to promote for the first time a groundbreaking doctoral thesis that delves deeply into how she was made known to the world:  "Image, Authenticity, and the Cult of Saint Therese of Lisieux, 1897-1959" by Sophia Deboick.  I can't contain my inexhaustible enthusiasm for this work, so I invite you to look at it for yourself by clicking on the title above.  No matter how much you know about St. Therese, you'll know her better after reading this.  Plan to do so in chapters!  For the feast, I try in particular to promote only the best, so that I'm publicizing this thesis on September 30 will tell you how highly I think of it. 

 The Carmelite Institute of North America invites you to participate in a novena led by Fr. Christopher LaRocca, O.C.D., "a pilgrimage along the 'Little Way' that leads to heaven."  To hear this audio novena, click the image below.

Please visit the Web site of the Carmelite Institute of North America.