A not-so-little flower

Therese of Lisieux, who died at 24, is considered a Doctor of the Church

By Silvano Cola

He wanted to be a man of the snows, Louis Martin; not the abominable snowman, but the peaceful man of the snows, the contemplative, ready when need be to throw himself into a snowstorm to save from frostbite some traveler trying to cross the Alps. But the Superior of Great St. Bernard monastery told him that it was better for him to go back to his family and finish school.

Young Zélie Guérin dreamed of white hospital wards and wearing the white headdress of the Daughters of Charity. The superior, however, could find no traces of a religious vocation in her.

Louis and Zélie, these two rejected religious aspirants, met each other by chance one day and later married. They had nine children. The last one, born on January 2, 1875, was Therese.

In the Martin home one worked hard. Louis owned a jewelry store. Zélie, ahead of her time, had decided to be economically independent and was specialized in the business of lace-making. It was a kind of rivalry between husband and wife as to who earned more. Zélie won, and Louis had to resign himself to giving up his beautiful jewelry shop in order to be the administrator of his wife’s very flourishing business. The two young spouses loved each other very much, and, despite the commercial temptation, they were honest with God and with their neighbor.

Little Therese was born literally among the laces and grew up rather spoiled. Seeing that with endearments one obtains everything, little Therese used them for everyone in every circumstance; and so she became the little queen of the home.

Therese was extremely sensitive. She was only 14 when she felt God’s love and in order to love him chose the most difficult road, the most opposite to her nature. “Why do I want to become a Carmelite? In order to suffer more!” she wrote. “I would be so pleased to be a missionary but I think that it is harder to work without ever seeing the fruit of one’s own labors, to work without encouragement, without distraction, up to the total sacrifice…”

Well, it takes a good dose of the Holy Spirit to understand these things, especially at 14. And Therese was so radically convinced of it that she found the courage to overcome all the obstacles. One of these was her uncle: “To enter the Carmel at fifteen years old? Are you crazy? It would be such a scandal!” Another one was the bishop’s representative, absolutely fed up with hearing from the nuns themselves about this girl: “And again with her! To hear you it would seem that the salvation of the community depended on the entrance of a little girl. Let her stay home.” The Bishop, on his part, was moved but tried to dissuade her. Therese reply was, “It means that I will go directly to the Pope!”

And true enough she went to the Pope on the occasion of a pilgrimage. “Holy Father, in honor of your jubilee, permit me to enter the Carmel even if I am only 15. If you say yes, there is no one who can say no!”

Leo XIII, a saintly pope, looked at her and smiled, “You will enter. You will enter if God wants it!” The Vicar General of Lisieux, dismayed in the face of Therese’s courage, was cautioned to accompany her himself to the Carmel. “This one is trouble.”

I love the little flower. Everyone loves her. Little is spoken of her, however, because it is difficult to talk about her. The last thing that you would want to do is write her biography, first because she herself already wrote it, secondly because it is a life lacking the sensational. Therese embarrasses you no matter how you look at her. She tells of such simple and transparent things that seem trivial to you, characteristic for a young person but, if you try to put them into practice, good luck!

She said, “I would like to be an apostle but I do not have the right stuff for that: I would like to be a priest but I cannot; I would like to be a doctor, a prophet, a confessor, a martyr…” and she burst out laughing at herself. “No, none of all this. Anybody else can do better than I. My place is my heart, hidden, invisible, in order to give life to the whole body. My vocation, then, is to love. I will be love.”

This is the core of her “Story of a Soul”, the book translated into more than 50 languages, with millions of copies in the whole world.

Fr. Silvano Cola (1928–2007) served as director of the Focolare International Center for Priests in Italy beginning in 1964.