Oct. 1, 2019: St. Therese of Lisieux
Oct. 1, 2019: St. Therese of Lisieux
The Hidden Life of the Little Flower
One of the greatest dangers in the spiritual life is wanting to be known as holy. Not only does pride damage our souls, it is also a main source of insanity, because it feeds our fear of what other people think of us. Pride gradually transforms us into actors upon a stage who become more and more dependent upon the applause of an audience.
In Dante's Inferno, the hypocrites (the word means actor) are clothed in huge choir robes made of solid lead, gilded on the outside with gold. The cloaks are so heavy that the hyprocrites can hardly move. What a graphic image of the desperate need to be recognized by others and the bone-weary insanity of trying to keep up appearances!"
Therese dealt with this reality one day when a novice spoke to her of the great fatigue that her work was causing her. Therese asked her how she felt when she was paid a compliment for her work. The novice said, "I feel revived." "It sounds like it's not the work that is causing your fatigue," said Therese, "but your need to have your work recognized."
When the motive of our actions is to gain either the recognition or approval of others, we drain ourselves emotionally. The "hidden life" counteracted this need for recognition and protected Therese from playing before an audience. However, being protected from playing before an audience did not protect her from the criticism of her audience. Far from being a shield of invisibility that protected her from the critical gaze of the world, living a "hidden life" actually made Therese more vulnerable to the misunderstandings and rash judgments of others.
This was because the other nuns looked at her in relationship to the "Ideal of Carmel," which emphasized physical mortifications. Like the ideal of any group, it functioned as the yardstick of comparison. It was the lens through which the nuns judged one another's holiness. Therese did not fare very well under such scrutiny. As she was dying, Therese overheard one nun say, "I don't know why they talk so much about sister Therese; she doesn't do anything remarkable. We never see her practicing ing virtue; in fact she could hardly be called even a good religious!"" Another nun said, "Sister Therese gets no merit for practicing virtue; she has never had to struggle for it." And one nun wondered what the prioress would be able to say about Therese in her obituary. "Sr. Therese will die soon.... She entered Carmel, lived here and died. There is nothing more that can be said." In the minds of many, Therese was a mediocre nun.
In a certain sense, this was one of her goals: not being a mediocre nun, but being thought of as one. In a letter to Marie she wrote, "Ask that your little daughter always remain a little grain of sand, truly unknown, truly hidden from all eyes, that Jesus alone may be able to see it ...." To be a grain of sand is to put on a guise of ordinariness. It is to be anonymous, to choose to appear average.
Therese's choice to seem average in the eyes of the world involved a deep transformation of the ego and the purification and redemption of the quest for immortality. There is something in us that says that not to be known or not to be seen means not to exist.
As one poet put it, "The smile's one-syllable sign says you're seen so you know you're there."" The prize of fame is visibility. It promises to confer existence upon us by rescuing us from the anonymous mass of undifferentiated humanity. It assuages our fear of annihilation by the promise of immortality.
The "hidden life" is about seeking where our deepest identity and the true source of immortality can be found, in the face of God alone. Therese wanted to become like a little grain of sand, hidden from all eyes for a reason: "so that Jesus alone may be able to see it." She sought her true reflection in the face of Jesus alone. Therese chose to direct her gaze inward so that the opinion of God alone would matter to her. In doing so, even though she suffered the misunderstandings and rash judgments ments of others, she freed herself from the exhausting task of trying to win their approval.
- “The love that keeps us sane: Living the Little Way of St. Therese” by Fr. Marc Foley, OCD
