Today is the feast of the great Little Flower, Saint Therese of Lisieux. I was privileged this year to prepare for the feast by preaching the novena at Saint Mary of the Hills in Boylston. I offer here my simple reflections on this great Saint in the hopes you may find something of interest in them. The first is a reflection on Saint Therese and Suffering and the second on the Little Flower as the greatest flower in God's Garden!
Saint Therese of Lisieux Novena
Sickness, Suffering, and Life
It is so appropriate that we begin this Novena, seeking the intercession of the Little Flower of Lisieux, with a celebration of the anointing of the sick. For while Therese lived at a time that seems so long ago (the year she was born was the same year our Cathedral was being built at the conclusion of the great Civil War), her experience of sickness and death are as real to us as they were exquisitely painful and joyful to her.
Yesterday afternoon, I anointed and brought Viaticum to two people in the Cathedral parish who were close to death. And while their names were not Zelie and Louis Martin, death, the great equalizer, drew me into the same mysteries of suffering which these now blessed parents knew, and which so informed the life of their saintly child.
So tonight, as we pray for all who are sick, and especially for those who are mortally ill, I invite you to return with me to the sickbeds of Therese’s mother and father in a time far away, but a circumstance as close as the aches and pains of our own bodies and hearts.
I
Therese was only four years old when her mother died of breast cancer. But her cancer was not the first encounter with sickness and death experienced by Zelie Martin. Zelie was a sick child and had been turned away from entering the convent due to a chronic bronchial condition and recurrent headaches. But even more terrible was the fact that four of her nine children (Joseph, Joseph-Jean-Baptiste, Helene, and Melanie) had died as babies. Even their youngest, the infant Therese, was subject to several bouts of several sickness, one of which was cured when she was placed before a statue in their family garden known as the smiling Virgin.
Zelie wrote of the deaths of her children, "When I closed the eyes of my dear little ones and prepared them for burial, I was indeed grief-stricken, but, thanks to God's grace, I have always been resigned to His will. I do not regret the pains and sacrifices I underwent for them." She then goes on to say that she "doesn't understand people who say 'You'd have been better not to have gone through all of that." She adds, "They're enjoying heaven now. Moreover, I have not lost them always. Life is short, and I shall find my little ones again in heaven."
Nor was the death of Zelie and Louis’ babies the only encounter with sickness and death in the course of their married life. Eight years before Therese was born, Louis’ father died. "I would never have believed,” Zelie wrote, “how his death could have affected me. I'm desolate." Four years later, her own Father died. At this time she wrote, "I hope, in fact I am certain that my father has been well received by the good God. I only wish that my death will be like his. I have already had Masses said for him, and we will have many more. His tomb will be near that of my two little Josephs."
Thus was Zelie well prepared for death. Saint Therese recalls the moment as seen through four year old eyes: “the ceremonies of Extreme Unction impressed themselves deeply upon my imagination. I can still see the place where I knelt beside Céline. All five of us were there in order of age, and poor, dear father knelt there too, sobbing."
II
And then there was the second great sorrow of Saint Therese’s life, suffered just a year after she entered the convent, when despite the thick walls which separated the Carmel from the outside world, her own Father’s death cut so deeply into her young heart.
It was the year after she entered that Louis suffered two paralyzing strokes as the result of a cerebral arteriosclerosis. The hardest part for Therese was that while she was, finally in her beloved Carmel, she was truly “a prisoner of love.” Reports would reach her through her sisters of the effect which the strokes were having on her father, of how he would wander from the house and disappear, to be found three or four days later at Le Havre or some other place.
Ironically, it is because of Louis’ illness that we admirers of the Little Flower possess one of the greatest memorials of her life. Since Louis could no longer visit the Carmel, Sister Pauline asked a gas lighting contractor working in the convent to take a picture of the young Therese so that her Father might see her in her Carmelite habit. I’m sure you’ve seen these two wonderful photos of Thérèse as a novice kneeling by a Cross. On the back of one of the pictures Pauline wrote, "Make sure nobody sees them. People might be scandalized at nuns having their picture taken."
But even a photo of his beloved youngest daughter was not enough to bring peace to poor Louis Martin. Finally, he was committed to an asylum for the insane. Yet even on the day he was committed, a kindly nurse said to him "You can exercise a wonderful apostolate here." And despite his growing mental disabilities, Louis replied: "I know, but I would prefer to exercise it anywhere else. Well, all my life I've been in command and giving orders, so maybe God is purifying me—to control my pride and officiousness by being subject to orders now." Three years later, Louis suffered a severe stroke and was paralyzed, was taken from the asylum and died at home in Lisieux after a heart attack.
It was Louis’ sickness which first drove Saint Therese to a reflection on the dark night of the soul of Saint John of the Cross, and his death which provoked some of her most beautiful reflections on how real love demands real suffering, and how sacrifice is a necessary part of union with the Cross of Christ. “Love,” she wrote at the time of her Father’s death, “proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love."
In those words and with Louis’ death, Therese came to understand the teaching of Saint Francis of Assisi that it is giving that we receive, in pardoning that we are pardoned and in dying that we are born to eternal life.
III
As with each of us, the deaths of Therese’ blessed parents helped to prepare her for her own death. Her death, however, came so soon, at the age of twenty-four.
She was first stricken with tuberculosis at Easter time, and yet tried to hide it from her sisters, welcoming her sickness as a participation in the sufferings of Christ at Gethsemani. As she would cough up blood from her diseased lungs, she would smile and, as she later wrote, “sing the mercies of the Lord.”
For in her dying, Saint Therese seemed to have achieved a command of that suffering which was her everyday aspiration and her everyday work. On her last day on this earth she is reported to have declared: "I have reached the point of not being able to suffer any more, because all suffering is sweet to me." Her last words were the story of her life: "My God, I love You!"
Conclusion
Such was the experience of sickness, suffering and death in the life of Saint Therese of Lisieux. It’s enough for a series on HBO. The death of four baby siblings, the loss of a mother as a four year old child, the long and torturous death of a parent to mental and physical illnesses, the inability to help or control it all from within cloistered walls, and finally her own painful death to a dreadful disease.
But what did the Little Flower learn from all this suffering?
She learned that all people suffer, you me and the person sitting next to us. But that for the follower of Christ faith gives meaning to the mystery of suffering and value for our own salvation.
She learned that while the sick person should fight against illness, he is not along in this struggle. That indeed, doctors and nurses and the whole medical community work to find ways to get them better. And the whole Church, as we see tonight, fulfills the command of Saint James: Is there anyone sick among you? Then let him call for the Priests and let them anoint him and lay hands upon him in the name of the Lord Jesus.
She learned that we need the sick. For they remind us what is truly important and truly lasting. Faith, hope, and love are the only things that last! And all the rest will fade away. This voice you hear will grow weak in not so many years and this mind will grow dim. These hands will begin to shake and some day this heart will cease to beat. In the end, this body will stop working entirely. And I, who spend most of my waking moments in denial, need to be with sick people who remind me “of the essential or higher things.” The things that really last.
And finally, and most importantly, Saint Therese learned and teaches us that sickness is a gift. It is a sharing in the Passion of Christ. For “Christ is still pained and tormented in his members, made like him. We should always be prepared to fill up what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings for the salvation of the world.” (PCSD)
Through her many sufferings, through her many encounters with death, the little flower taught us many things. But most of all, she teaches us the little way. that even in suffering, and especially through suffering, we can cry with here: "My God, I love You!"
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The Little Flowers and the Roses
Second Night of Novena
I always find the gospel you just heard to be nothing short of shocking. Here Jesus has just finished explaining to his disciples that the Son of Man must suffer, and die. You would think that their reaction would be one of sorrow and compassion for that terrible ordeal which their Lord was soon to face.
But no, what is it that preoccupies the disciples as they walk the road to Capernaum? Jesus asks them. And their faces turned red. And they twitch. And try to look in another direction.
He knows what they were discussing. They were discussing which one of them would be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. Who would have the biggest throne. Who would get the room with a view or the corner office.
And then Jesus does something entirely remarkable. It is so incredible it would be worthy of Saint Therese. Jesus, the Christ, the son of the living God, the one through whom all things were made, kneels down in front of these arrogant gossiping disciples, places his arms around a little child, and says you won’t even get into the kingdom of happened unless you become like a little child.
Little. The secret of life is to be little, to be least, to be last, to be the servant of all and the one who who is willing to die for all, even the arrogant gossipy disciples.
Not a very popular message in today’s world. In fact, if you google biggest, you get 151 million hits, but if you google littlest, you get a mere 4 million. Most important generates 242 million sites, whiles least important hits only 144 million. And boss gets 128 million, while servant, only 44.
But, then again, being the least wasn’t very popular in Saint Theresa’s day either. Except with the little flower of Lisieux, and, in fact, that’s where she got her name. As she once wrote to her sister Pauline:
JESUS has decided to teach me a mystery. He set before me the book of nature; I understood how all the flowers He has created are beautiful, how the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the Lily do not take away the perfume of the little violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked out with little wild flowers. And so it is in the world of souls, Jesus' garden. He willed to create great souls comparable to lilies and roses, but He has created smaller ones and these must be content to be daisies or violets destined to give joy to God's glances when He looks down at His feet. Perfection consists in doing His will, in being what He wills us to be.
Therese understood what had escaped the disciples: that those who aspire to be the least of the disciples are the greatest in the Kingdom of God. Want to be a Rose? Then be content as a dandelion, and be the best dandelion you can possibly be.
For the most pathetic of all men are those who aspire to greatness, because they believe themselves to be great. At the end of the day we are so blessed to be dandelions, for truth be told, we are usually more akin to weeds than to cultivated plants.
And why be content as a dandelion? Because, as the Gospel tells us, God shines on the dandelion and the Rose alike. And what really matters is not whether others tell us that our petals are so colorful or our odor is so sweet, but that we are what God has made us. Again, Saint Therese:
JUST AS THE sun shines simultaneously on the tall cedars and on each little flower as though it were alone on the earth, so Our Lord is occupied particularly with each soul as though there were no others like it. And just as in nature all the seasons are arranged in such a way as to make the humblest daisy bloom on a set day, in the same way, everything works out for the good of each soul.
And if God looks down on the dandelions and the weeds with his loving sunlight, what should we do? Should we not care for the weeds and the flowers with the same unconditional love?
Do you want to be the sweetest and most beautiful of all the flowers in God’s Garden? Then remember Saint Therese’s admonition: “Nothing is sweeter than to think well of others.”
So, if you would be the sweetest of flowers in God’s Kingdom you will love the poor, the sick, the crazy, and all those people you find so difficult to be around. You will seek out the ones who smell, the ones who whine, and the ones whom no one else will listen to. “Love one another,” Jesus told us, “as I have loved you.”
Saint Francis understood this so very well. For like Therese, he chose to be the little flower, that God might shower him with Roses. Do you remember the story of Saint Francis and the Roses? One day he found himself subject to the worst temptations, so he threw himself into the thorny rose bushes by the Porziuncula in order to be distracted from the devil. But out of veneration for the man of God, the Rose bushes shed their thorns that the little one of God might fall to the ground unscratched.
That story from the Fioretti, the “Little Flowers of Saint Francis” illumines yet another aspect of the life of the Little Flower of Lisieux. For often, when we seek to be the littlest of the flowers in God’s Garden, it means we must endure the thorns of suffering, and sacrifice, and rejection.
Perhaps that is why the Rose was first chosen by God to bear a crown of thorns. For in its beauty, it reflects the beauty of the Son of God. It is as if this sweet smelling flower were preaching to us: that beauty is acquired only through self-sacrifice and holiness through suffering.
For if we, like the Rose, accept the crowns of thorns God sends to us, we will be joined to him who wore those thorns as a crown of triumph. And through our suffering with him, we will know the sweet odor of sanctity and will live for him in glory forever in Heaven.
Oh Little Flower, pray for us dandelions in the Garden of God!
