Pastor's Letter-- October 4, 2020

The saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed that is why the saint is often a martyr; he is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote. He will generally be found restoring the world to sanity by exaggerating whatever the world neglects, which his by no means always the same element in every age. Yet each generation seeks its saint by instinct; and (s)he is not what people want, bur rather what the people need…Therefore it is the paradox of history that each generation is converted by the saint which contradicts it most. - G. K. Chesterton

Jesus does not demand great action from us but simply surrender and gratitude.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux

The wonderful book titled The Way of Trust and Love by Jacques Philippe, which should be required reading of a St. Thérèse devotee, could perhaps be summarized by this quote of our patroness. Thérèse was one who, in the form of an antidote to her age, emphasized and “exaggerated” the trust that we are called to as Christians. Trust in God’s goodness. Trust that He doesn’t need us to be spiritual body-builders.

In the time and place of St. Thérèse there was a heresy known as Jansenism that taught specifically this lie: God “demands great action” from you. If you do not do great things, you will not find the Lord’s favor nor find your name in the book of life.

The continued intercession of St. Thérèse is proof that this is a lie.

She was never a big-shot. She relished in being a small plaything in the Lord’s hands, trusting in His goodness. If she continued throughout her life to cherish being His beloved “little flower,” Thérèse knew that she would always be held by Him and given the holiness she longed for. This is not just my own idea, as the words of John Paul II in 1997 on the occasion of declaring her a doctor of the Church clearly stress this point.

She has made the Gospel shine appealingly in our time; she had the mission of making the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, known and loved; she helped to heal souls of the rigors and fears of Jansenism, which tended to stress God's justice rather than his divine mercy. In God's mercy she contemplated and adored all the divine perfections, because "even his justice (and perhaps even more so than the other perfections) seems to me clothed in love" (Ms A, 83v·). Thus she became a living icon of that God who, according to the Church's prayer, "shows his almighty power in his mercy and forgiveness" (collect for 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time).

Perhaps in our own day and age a new type of Jansenism has been seeping in, with a slightly different result: people despairing of God’s love because they feel so unworthy of it. I think we all can benefit from the perspective Thérèse has of who God is and how much He loves us. We finish with her words once more:

Even if I had on my conscience all the crimes that one could commit, I am sure I would lose nothing of my confidence; I would throw myself, my heart broken with sorrow, into the arms of my Savior. I know how much He loves the prodigal son; I have heard His words to Mary Magdalene, to the woman taken in adultery, to the Samaritan woman. No, there is no one who could frighten me, for I know too well what to believe about His mercy, about His love. I know that in the twinkling of an eye, all those thousands of sins would be consumed as a drop of water cast into a blazing fire." (Last pages of manuscript C).