I have recently been re-united with an old love. To be more accurate, I have been paying more attention to this love, which has never left me and rediscovering how much I can learn from it. In my childhood home there was a book which I read and re-read before I was 11 years old. It was a big book, with a green leather binding. I was both fascinated and inspired by the story it told although, at that age, I was unable to understand why it spoke to me so powerfully. Starting grammar school and moving into adolescence, I entered a world of pseudo-sophistication. I must have heard my peers dismissing the author of my book as being sentimental and, desperate to be accepted, I set her aside. As I reflect on my early life, however, I recognise that in reading the autobiography of St Therese of Lisieux, “The Story of a Soul”, I was uncovering my deepest desires. They were further stirred by Romans 11:33-35, which was printed in my rudimentary missal, for me to enjoy while the epistle for the day was proclaimed, by the priest, in Latin. To this day, I experience a thrill when I hear those verses.
Only today, has it occurred to me that in these writings, God was acting to counter the harsh image of a God who was likely to send me to hell, inculcated in school, at the age of 6. So often, I have often wondered how I could I have had a longing for a God who seemed to forbidding, so impossible to please. The kindness of God, however, can creep in so gently and unobtrusively into even seemingly intractable situations.
As a college student, the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, studied under the guidance of an inspirational teacher, stirred me powerfully, and played an important role in my decision to enter religious life. While I was a novice, I became re-acquainted with Therese. Not believing I had much else to offer, I was drawn to her example of fidelity in little things. In hindsight, I see that, although this is, indeed, a practice to be cultivated, for me it became yet another expression of the striving for perfection which has resulted from my false image of God. Sadly, in 1960s religious circles, there were all too many traces of the Jansenism and Pelagianism, dominating the French culture in which Therese was raised. Without her mature insight, I, unfortunateley, did not recognise that, in her writings, was the key to freedom from my misconceptions.
Setting oneself unobtainable goals, and nothing is more unobtainable than spiritual perfection, is a recipe for disaster. In my case, it was at least a contributory factor in the deepening depression which led to my leaving religious life. Therese was not alone in disappearing from my consciousness during the several years which followed. As St Julie Billiart once said of herself, ‘I (was) like a little blind woman stumbling around with my hand in the hand of the Good God”. I however, although I am sure God’s hand was always in mine, and I never lost my faith, could not feel it. In his teaching about the true and false self, Richard Rohr says we need our False Self in the earlier part of our lives. Again, I am aware that God used mine to help me to survive those years. I am truly amazed, as I remember them, at how I coped, and I recognise that God always gave me enough grace to take the next step. That pattern of being given enough is so clear in my life, and I try to remember it when difficulties surface in the present.
Coming back to Therese: of all things, it was the Enneagram which first made me aware of her again. Recognising that we are the same type, I was amazed at how she, without the benefit of the guidance of anyone, or anything, other than the Holy Spirit, realised what she needed to do to overcome her compulsions. This was a young woman with only an elementary education, who had led a very sheltered existence and died aged 24. Nonetheless, she was declared a Doctor of the Church. How God can use the most unpromising material!
It was, however, Franciscan Richard Rohr who truly woke me up to what Carmelite Therese Martin has to teach me. (He claims that Therese was a Franciscan, although she did not know it.) Fr Richard’s own reflections on Therese excited me, but he also drew attention to the writings of a De La Salle brother, Joe Schmidt, which have truly woken me up. Reading Schmidt’s book, “Walking The Little Way of Therese of Lisieux”, has been a truly profound experience. This blog is probably too long already, and I will need to write a second installment. For now, it must suffice to say that God has, again, been guiding and surprising me and very clearly illustrating the truth of the words of T.S. Eliot: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know that place for the first time.”
mariaevans1 