Learning from Saint Therese of Lisieux

Dear Diary,

Just came back from a meet-up with a church friend. Had a long chat with him over dinner at “Nanxiang Steamed Buns Restaurant” which I thought was pretty mediocre but the xiaolong bao (buns with soup enclosed in them) tasted great. =) We later continued chatting till late over coffee at the nearby TCC. Among the various topics we spoke about work, his failed relationship … but the one that struck me most was when he spoke about that verse “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” says the Lord in the book of Isaiah 49:15. That verse hung on the multi-purpose hall of Saint Gabriel’s Secondary School, the school he attended as a youth. Subsequently, he accepted Christ when the Youth-for-Christ acted upon the seed, which the Catholic mission school planted. Thank God for Christian mission schools. It was quite an incredible moment when he spoke about that because his eyes suddenly welled up with tears.

I happen to be in the midst of reading this book which I casually picked up from the library. In this book titled “Why the Mystics Matter Now” by Frederick Bauerschidt. The author attempts to present the thoughts and wisdom of many Christian mystics from the past. I have only read the first story of the book on “Therese of Lisieux” and realised why we sometimes should examine the lives of these saints so that we can better understand our faith and God. I kinda summarised the story below…

In the fall of 1897, a 24-year-old Carmelite nun named Therese Martin lay in a French monastery, dying of tuberculosis. She was raised in an extremely devout Catholic family and like some other Christians in the 19th century, she at first found it difficult to accept that anyone could disbelieve in God. Maybe her strong piety of her home had protected her from the corrosive scepticism of the modern world… well… I don’t know, haha… =) In fact, she felt the unbelievers were actually speaking against their own conviction when they denied the existence of heaven. The experience of Godlessness was, in her view, simply not a possibility.

However, it came a time, as she puts it, when her soul was invaded by the “thickest darkness” that so clouded her sense of heaven that the thought of it became the cause of struggle and torment. A belief that once came so easily suddenly seemed impossible and incredible. She came to see that it is in fact possible that one’s “inner conviction” might speak against the reality of God. She wrote in her memoir an experience of “constant spiritual darkness”, which has come to be called her “trial of faith” in the final years of her life. In fact, she purportedly remarked, “I have reached the point of not being able to suffer anymore, because all suffering is sweet to me.”

Therese described her “trial of faith” with such honesty that would even startle the most sceptical unbeliever. She felt the absence of God at the very extremity at which many would hope for God to appear. Pointing out of the window to a shadow in the landscape, Therese told one of the sisters attending her sickbed, “Look! Do you see the black hole where we can see nothing; it’s in a similar hole that I am as far as body and soul are concerned. Ah! What darkness! But I am at peace.”

Peace? How could one love God as she lay suffocating, dying bit by bit both physically and spiritually? Perhaps the genius of Therese’s spirituality was that she located the encounter with God in the midst of what seemed most bereft of God: everyday life. Therese saw everyday life as constantly presenting us with opportunities to respond with love instead of anger, irritation or disgust. When God fled from her experience, she persisted in seeking God in the everyday. Faithfulness to the God she could no longer see took the form of love and generosity toward her fellow nuns, whom she could see.

Therese sought to understand her physical and spiritual sufferings as a mysterious purification of her faith and an initiation into a deeper understanding of God’s love. The danger of spiritual consolation (strong feelings of God’s love and presence) is that we come to depend on the consolation to undergird our faith, to love the experience of consolation rather than God. God becomes the Prince Charming of an enchanted fairy tale, lavishing gifts upon his beloved. Such faith and love are fragile things, subject to disenchantment. Therese’s trial of faith required her to abandon this fragile faith and cling with desperate stubbornness to the Jesus who cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

I always thought that anyone could be crucified…. but Jesus’ crucifixion was different because it was an abandonment of God. A separation of God the Father and God the Son, something that never happened before that. It was such a spiritual suffering for Jesus Christ that led to immense stress resulting in tiny capillaries in the sweat glands rupturing in what we know as haemotohidrosis (Luke 22:44).

Anyway, back to the story of Therese… One way in which Therese’s trail of faith is different from modern unbelief is that she did not resign herself to blasé atheism but actively seized upon the Godlessness of the world and of her experience and understands it as God’s path to her. The presence of God’s absence becomes what Jesus meant by “poverty in spirit” (Matthew 5:3). It is to the poor, the hungry and the mourning that Jesus promises the kingdom.

As Therese lay dying she spoke to her fellow nuns who surrounded her bed: “Little sisters! My God! My God, have pity on me! I can’t take it anymore! And yet I must endure… I am reduced… No, I would never have believed one could suffer so much… never!” And looking at the crucifix, she said, “Oh! I love Him… My God, I love you!”

It is the voice of one who, in the midst of a disenchanted world, re-enchants it by surrendering all plans, all controls, all love to the God who eluded her experience. What faith! When I completed reading that story… sigh… I hope I will always take my faith seriously because through the life of Therese, I have a glimpse of the suffering of Christ on the cross for the redemption of our sins. It was no cheap thing but an enormous sacrifice and suffering.

Anyway, Therese was rightly canonised a Roman Catholic saint in 1925. By the way, the brother of the mother of Saint Therese of Lisieux (which means her maternal uncle) is a pharmacist. Okay… that is a bit anti-climax, haha… =)

Must really pray more fervently from now onwards! Have a good night!

God Bless,

Andrew