St. Thérèse of Lisieux
By Fr. Conor Donnelly
(Proofread)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
For St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, the glance was very important. Anything can be said and communicated in a simple exchange of glances. A mutual look is the deepest and richest communion we can have on earth, but it will especially be the case in the Kingdom.
This exchange of loving glances between St. Thérèse and Jesus was the heart of her contemplative life. She wrote, “I need the glance of my Divine Savior” (Thérèse of Lisieux, The Poetry of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux).
The glance of Jesus was a space in which Thérèse absolutely needed to live, to be herself, to be free. She needed it so as not to be imprisoned by the looks of others or by her own looking in on herself, as we will see later.
The glance of Jesus is not one that’s judgmental, an accusing, enclosing stare, but a glance that liberates and is encouraging, a look of compassion and mercy.
Thérèse was seven when she saw the ocean for the first time at Trouville. It made a deep impression on her. Watching a little sailboat, she recalled, she “made the resolution never to wander far away from the glance of Jesus in order to travel peacefully towards the eternal shore!” (Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux).
There are different aspects to the divine glance. It is the look of the Creator on His creature by which He makes it live. It is the tender glance of the Father on His child.
For Thérèse, who felt called to the religious life, it was the glance of Jesus the Bridegroom on His spouse. The glance of Jesus is life-giving. It is a glance that chooses, that distinguishes in order to select. This is the mystery of vocation.
St. Thérèse often expressed surprise at the free choice of God in her life. God does not call those who are worthy, but those who please Him, out of pure mercy, and she desired to take refuge in the grace of God’s merciful choice for her.
God’s glance is also one that adorns with beauty. Thérèse took from St. John of the Cross the idea that merely by His glance, God clothes His creatures in beauty. St. John of the Cross wrote:
“Scattered a thousand graces,
He passed through these groves in haste,
And, looking upon them as he went,
Left them, by his glance alone,
clothed with beauty” (John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle & Poems).
God’s glance imprints a resemblance with Jesus. And it gives life and fruitfulness. This glance receives the other in His poverty. It is a glance of understanding.
At the time of her First Communion, Thérèse wrote, Jesus and she had been looking at each other a long time and they understood each other. “That day,” she said, “it was no longer simply a look, it was a fusion; they were no longer two, Thérèse had vanished as a drop of water is lost in the immensity of the ocean” (Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul).
God’s glance is a look that purifies, “like the fire that transformed everything into itself,” as Thérèse once wrote (Thérèse of Lisieux, The Prayers of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux: The Act of Oblation). And so, it also rejuvenates.
Here is the truth worth meditating on: we are purified by allowing God to look on us, placing ourselves in His loving glance. Why is this so?
First of all, [it is] because our holiness comes from God as a participation in His divine holiness. St. Thérèse goes so far as to tell God, “I desire, in a word, to be a Saint, but I feel my helplessness and I beg you, O my God! to be yourself my Sanctity” (ibid.).
When God looks at us, however, He sees us through His Son, through whose merit we have obtained forgiveness of our sins. Because of His Son and His offering on the Cross, God forgives us and purifies us of our sins.
The worst impurity is not letting ourselves be looked upon by God, fleeing from His glance, lacking trust in His love and hope for His mercy.
In this era of self-absorption and ‘selfies,’ we spend much time looking at ourselves (with approval or disappointment, as the case may be), obsessed with our image instead of looking at God and letting ourselves be seen by Him.
How impure is this narcissistic attitude of constant focus on self! We focus on ourselves instead of making God the center of our lives.
In addition, the glance of Jesus purifies because it is a look of hope. Jesus doesn’t consider our poverty, our woundedness, our human blemishes; He sees the children of God in us, the glory and splendor already ours.
He knows our human deficiencies are temporary, and His grace will bring us to fulfillment one day, provided we believe in His love and expose ourselves to it.
“We shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” says St. Paul to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:51-52). God sees us already in glory and rejoices in our future beauty, which for Him is the present.
Thérèse one day asked herself how the good Lord who loves us so much could bear to see us suffer here below. Her response: “Already God sees us in glory. He takes delight in our eternal beatitude!” (Thérèse of Lisieux, Letters of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Volume I: 1877-1890).
In a commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew on his calling (Matt. 9:9-13), Pope Francis spoke of the power that Jesus’ gaze has to transform a person.
“Jesus stopped; he did not quickly turn away. He looked at Matthew calmly, peacefully. He looked at him with eyes of mercy; he looked at him as no one had ever looked at him before. And that look unlocked Matthew’s heart; it set him free, it healed him, it gave him hope, a new life. … This is our story, and it is like that of so many others. Each of us can say: ‘I too am a sinner whom Jesus has looked upon’” (Francis, The Infinite Tenderness of God).
To let Jesus look at us is the most important thing in our life.
St. Thérèse spoke of another important aspect to the divine glance: the veiled glance of Jesus in His Passion. She was deeply affected by the image of the suffering servant in Isaiah and by the mystery of the Holy Face without beauty or radiance.
Calling these words “the foundation of my whole piety,” she said: “I have also desired to be without beauty, to tread the winepress alone, unknown to every creature” (Thérèse of Lisieux, Her Last Conversations).
In the Holy Face she contemplates the revelation of Jesus’ infinite love: the most dazzling of the children of men was disfigured, His beauty hidden, because He had taken upon Himself all our strains and weaknesses, thus enabling us to regain our original beauty and, still more, to be clothed in divine glory.
In this she finds a call to welcome suffering and humiliation as a grace, a privilege; by their means we enter into an intimate communion with the Heart of Jesus. The tears veiling Jesus’ glance are an invitation to console Him by accepting suffering with Him.
It is also an invitation not to seek glory in the eyes of men but to be hidden with Him. St. Thérèse said, “Your Face is my only wealth. I ask for nothing more. Hiding myself in it unceasingly, I will resemble you, Jesus” (Thérèse of Lisieux, The Poetry of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux).
Look especially at how Thérèse considers the suffering of her father during his sickness, which was terribly humiliating for him and for the whole family. Due to a cerebral degeneration, Mr. Martin had to be admitted to Our Savior of Caen—a crazy house, as they said at the time—where he spent three years.
This was a very painful trial for Thérèse, all the more so because the gossips of Lisieux didn’t hesitate to say her poor father had lost his mind because all of his daughters had entered religious life.
Conscious at times of his condition, he accepted it, saying: “I never had any humiliations in my life, and I needed one” (Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul).
He who was such a faithful image of the Father now resembled the suffering Son. Thérèse considered this trial to be a gift, a choice by Jesus, which she described in a poem written to her father after his death:
“A glance from the Divine Face
Came to test you by a glorious choice” (ibid.).
This painful trial was an invitation to turn towards the source of all fatherhood, God’s Fatherhood that nothing can diminish.
For all the reasons noted here, St. Thérèse had an immense need to remain constantly in God’s gaze, writing:
“My God’s glance, His ravishing Smile,
That is Heaven for me!” (ibid.).
She absolutely needed the gaze of Jesus so as not to focus inward towards herself but outwards, towards others.
As we all realize, the gaze of others can be positive or negative. Thérèse was grateful when the regard of another carried some blessing or encouragement: her father’s gaze, full of tenderness; the gaze of her sisters who loved her and encouraged her; the regard of her superiors at Carmel who trusted her.
She also experienced the limits of another’s regard. She was often judged poorly by some of her sisters at Carmel, who thought her slow and infantile. Most people had no idea of the depth of her spiritual life or her suffering.
One of her novices was afraid of her and avoided her. But she accepted misunderstanding and did not try to justify herself. She wanted to live hidden, seen not by creatures but by Jesus alone.
As for her self-gaze, Thérèse’s view of herself gradually underwent a great change. At the start of her life at Carmel, experiencing her limits, her weakness, her imperfections, she tended to become discouraged and anxious, fearing that the Lord wasn’t happy with her.
But having discovered the “little way,” she came to understand better God’s merciful, Fatherly love, and she became freer. She retained her ardent desire to become holy, to please God, to respond to His love, but she realized that what she called her “smallness” was not an obstacle to sanctity; it was a grace.
Her smallness obliged her to stop depending on herself and count only on God’s mercy, abandon herself entirely to Him, and love with limitless trust.
As a result, Thérèse no longer dwelt upon her limits and weakness. She was turned totally towards God with infinite trust and so was perfectly receptive of divine grace, working within her what she could not accomplish by her own strength and leading her to the summit of love.
In her writings, for example, Thérèse notices that she often fell asleep during silent prayer. Here, she remarked, was proof that she was “far from being a saint. … I remember that little children are as pleasing to their parents when they’re asleep as well as when they’re awake” (Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul).
What mattered for Thérèse was not what she did or didn’t do but God’s gaze on her, the loving look of a Father on His little child. Instead of despairing, she rejoiced in that loving gaze.
Thérèse let herself be loved just as she was, without ever doubting that God’s gaze on her was a gaze of love. That gave her a great capacity to accept herself—and so to forget herself completely in order to be fully receptive to God’s love and to give all to others.
We can ask for the grace to live as St. Thérèse did, in God’s sight, to receive from His gaze all the benefits mentioned here, reminding ourselves that at the heart of it lies an act of faith.
Sometimes we will experience this look of tenderness that makes us free, but sometimes we will feel nothing. Yet God’s action is far more vast and deep than any sensory experience. Our part is to live in faith and, in this act of faith, embrace the divine gaze upon us, remaining in it trustingly.
We can ask ourselves how we look upon others. Does our gaze, like God’s, give life, freedom, and encouragement? Is it a look of hope? Or is it a look of judgment, condemnation, and constraint?
A simple look can give life, but it can also give death. We can ask for the grace to see each person with the eyes of Jesus, so that our eyes communicate life and hope to those we encounter.
One writer has written, “The greater is the faith of the soul, the more closely it is united to God” (John of the Cross, Ascent of Mt. Carmel).
Sometimes while praying, we have agreeable feelings of peace and happiness, a sensation of the presence of God. We may also receive enlightenment regarding some aspect of the mystery of Christ or intuitions of what God expects from us.
These graces that move our senses or enlighten our intelligence are very precious, and we must welcome them in recognition that they are a kind of food and an encouragement for faith and love.
Even so, they are not the essence of what brings us closer to God and places us in communion with Him. In fact, God is infinitely beyond all we can know with our senses or perceive with our intelligence.
When the senses are in a dry spell and the intelligence is darkened, we should never be discouraged or feel far from God. What ensures, what gives rise to, contact with God are neither feelings nor rational knowledge, but an act of faith. “I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord” (Hos. 2:20).
From the moment I make a sincere and real act of hope (a loving, confident hope, desiring to give myself to God), I can be certain of being in touch with God, no matter what positive or disagreeable emotions I may happen to be feeling or what thoughts, whether light or dark, fill my mind. St. John of the Cross often insisted that faith suffices for someone united to God, a great consolation indeed.
Sometimes when we feel very low, we have the sense of being far from God, even though a simple act of faith would be enough to stir up absolute certainty of being in profound communion with Him, communion that sooner or later will bring the fruits of interior transformation—a faith simultaneously consisting of both total confidence in God and full adherence to what He reveals to us of Himself through the Scriptures and the Church.
One writer says, “This is given to me like the wings of the great eagle of the Apocalypse (Rev. 12;14), which carries me, as it were, to the limit of faith, towards what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor heart felt (1 Cor. 2:9). Nor do I see, hear, experience, but the gift of faith goes infinitely further, leading to the reality that infinitely surpasses any humanly accessible reality.
“Faith leads us to Him who gives it, well beyond all experience or personal conviction, beyond even what love would dare, if God were not present at the very mystery of his own love” (Christiane Sanson, Marie de la Trinité: de l’angoisse à la paix).
I saw that faith imbued with love makes us attain this other side (the profound depth of the life of the Trinity), not through Christ and in him, but drawing us into it as he himself resides in it. And I was there myself through his mercy, and in faith embedded with love—and I saw how near at hand it is” (Marie de la Trinité, Consens à n’être rien).
One could make an interesting connection between the role of faith in the spiritual life and the role of the sense of touch in the life of the senses.
Among the five senses at our command, touch is the first to be developed starting even at our mother’s bosom, and it forms a point of origin for all the others. It doesn’t have the richness of some other senses, like vision (with all the diversity of images that we can ponder) or hearing (encountering the variety of sounds, melodies).
It is the most primordial, but the most essential sense in life and in communication. And it possesses an advantage other senses don’t have: reciprocity. We can see without being seen, hear without being heard, but we can’t touch an object without being touched by it at the same time.
The contact that comes with touching something is more intimate and immediate than that created by any other sense. It is par excellence, the sense of communion.
In a similar way, faith has certain obvious limitations (one does not “have faith in” what is seen or heard or otherwise apprehended by the senses), yet it is also what is most vital in the spiritual life. Through faith, we can, in a mysterious but real way, touch Godand let ourselves be touched by Him, establishing ourselves in intimate communion with Him and allowing ourselves to be transformed, little by little, by His grace.
Let us ask Our Lady that by this meditation on the life of St. Thérèse of Lisieux and her spiritual adventures, we might deepen in our desires for holiness and deepen in our appreciation of the role of sanctifying grace in the souls of each one of us.
I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
EW
Based on Fire & Light: Learning to Receive the Gift of God by Jacques Philippe (Scepter, 2016).