Saint Thérèse of Lisieux: Childhood Between Joy and Suffering
The Childhood of Saint Thérèse
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux suffered, already in the first months of her life, from severe illnesses that brought her almost to the threshold of death.
Yet Thérèse writes:
"How happy I was at this age! I was already beginning to rejoice in life."
A Happy and Radiant Childhood
The Sun-Filled Years
Thérèse remembers with sweet nostalgia the years of her early childhood:
"How quickly the sun-filled years of my childhood passed, but what a sweet regret they have left in my soul."
(Manuscript A, 11r.v)
And she further reflects on the importance of the education she received:
"With a nature like mine, if I had been brought up by parents devoid of virtue... I would have become very wicked, and perhaps I would have been lost."
(Manuscript A, 8v)
Early childhood is the beginning of a story in which no outcome is precluded: neither holiness nor perdition. Without a mother to help one pray, words freeze in the mouth and in the heart.
The Loss of Her Mother
Thérèse perceives how irreparable the loss of her mother is:
"Ah, it is not like mother... She always made us say our prayers!"
(Manuscript A, 12v)
It was a family in which God was loved and sought as a living person, as a dear and present person.
"Later on, when perfection appeared to me, I understood that to become a Saint one had to suffer much, always seek the most perfect, and forget oneself."
(Manuscript A, 10r.v.)
Suffering and Change
Character Changes
With the death of her mother, Thérèse experiences suffering and her character loses the radiance that distinguished it:
"...my happy character changed completely; I, so lively, so expansive, became shy and gentle, sensitive to excess..."
The Second Mother
Thérèse chooses a second mother in her sister Pauline, who does everything possible, but the child knows that the maternal world is forever closed to her. It is therefore at the level of love that her personality was shaken.
The Benedictine Boarding School
When Thérèse had to attend, like all her sisters, the boarding school of the Benedictine Abbey, those five years would be a torment for her:
"With my shy and delicate nature, I did not know how to defend myself and was content to weep without saying anything..."
(Manuscript A, 22v)
There is in us an irrepressible tendency to equate goodness with yieldingness, understanding with complicity, patience with weakness. The child Thérèse is repeatedly deprived of her mother; she suffers from it to the point of death and continues to invoke her desperately, until this very desperate invocation seems to suppress every other vital impulse.
Healing Through the Intercession of the Virgin
"The Virgin made me feel that it was truly She who had smiled at me and healed me."
The First Graces and the Vocation
The Gift of Piety
From adolescence, Thérèse already knows from experience the possibility of touching the hearts of men, even the most hardened. From her earliest years, the existence of a specific gift of the Holy Spirit is evident, which progressively invades all the spaces of her soul, her heart, and even her activity, both interior and exterior: the gift of Piety.
Being happy in God and making Him happy then becomes the secret of her life.
The Mission at Carmel
"What I came to do at Carmel I declared at the feet of Jesus in the Eucharist, in the examination that preceded my profession: I came to save souls and especially to pray for priests."
From Childhood to the Holy Face
Mortification as Love
Thérèse decided to follow the way of mortification, not so much as an ascetic commitment, but as a loving courtesy to the present Spouse, to whom she wanted to give everything.
Her Father's Illness
A very harsh suffering strikes Thérèse from the first months of her monastic life, a suffering that absorbs and reformulates within itself every other pain, every other aridity, every other emotional detachment: the severe illness of her father.
Inner Torment
Thérèse would like to be able to hide in the adorable face of Jesus to be sure of sinning no more, because her constant inner torment is to be sure of not having offended God so as to avert His rejection; the mere thought that such a misfortune could happen to her, without her being aware of it, is enough to plunge her into anguish.