Vigils Reading – St Therese of the Child Jesus

THE MISSION OF ST THÉRÈSE

By Hans Urs von Balthasar1

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There can be no doubt that Thérèse of Lisieux was directly entrusted by

God with a mission to the Church. Thérèse’s mission, at the very first glance,

displays the marks of a clearly defined, and quite exceptional character. This is

much less due to the personal drama of the little saint than to the sacred form

into which the trickling grains of petty anecdotes are compressed, into a hard,

unbreakable block, by a firm invisible hand. It is contrary to all expectation that

the simple, modest story of this little girl should eventually culminate, as it

irrefutably does, in the enunciation of theological truths.

Originally, she herself never dreamt that she might be chosen to bear

some fundamental message to the Church. She only became aware of it

gradually; in fact, it did not occur to her until her task was almost completed,

after she had already lived out her teaching and was writing the last chapters of

her book. Suddenly, as she saw it all laid out before her, she recognized its

strangeness, that in her obedience she had unwillingly conceived something

beyond her own personality. And now that she saw it, she also understood it,

and seized it with a kind of violence…

At that moment she realized she was to be set on a pedestal, and that every

bit of her life, even its smallest details, would be used as a pattern for many of

the “little ones”. She regards the publication of her manuscript as “an important

work”; she knows “that all the world will love me”, and that her writings “will

do a great deal of good”. During her last months, as if making her last will and

testament, she repeats constantly: “One must tell souls.” Exactly the same

expressions recur in reference to the mission she is soon to begin in heaven: “I

feel that my mission will soon begin to teach souls to love God as I love Him, to

give them my little way…” Similarly, she recognizes the function within the

Church of her mission. She not only foresees the proclamation of her own

sanctity but she also, as it were, foresaw the canonization of her doctrine.

So, her life only contains exemplary value for the Church insofar as the

Holy Spirit has possessed her and used her in order to demonstrate something

for the sake of the Church, opening up new vistas onto the Gospels. That, and

that alone, should be the motive for the Church’s interest in Thérèse. That, and

that alone, should engage the attention of those who feel themselves put off my

many features of her cult, or even of her character, or who experience

indefinable objections to them. In fact, there are few other cases in which it is

so prudent to distinguish between the mission of a saint and its essentials.

In the case of Thérèse of Lisieux the dramatic tension between her

mission and her person needs specially to be borne in mind, and to be

appreciated primarily in theological terms; the essence of sanctity has to be

grasped as truly evangelical, as belonging to the Church, as a mission and not

simply as an individual ascetical, mystical manifestation. Moreover, it is not

just because of contemporary “needs” but because of the depth of revealed truth

that portraits of the saints must in future be remodeled, so that the saints can

again live amongst us, and in us, as the best protectors and inspirers of the

community of the saints, which is the Church.