Benedictines of Jesus Crucified<\/a> at their Monastery of the Glorious Cross in Branford, Connecticut. Founded in 1930, these Benedictines count Saint Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face among their special patrons. The homily alludes to this relationship.<\/em><\/p>\nIsaiah 66:10-14c
\nPsalm 130: 1-3
\nMatthew 11:25-30<\/p>\n
Many years ago, while reading the biography of P\u00e8re Jean-Baptiste Muard, the founder of the Benedictine abbey of La-Pierre-Qui-Vire, I came upon a line that so struck me that I have never forgotten it. P\u00e8re Muard said something like this: \u201cIt is not we who choose this saint or that to be our friend; it is, rather, the saints who choose those whom they wish to befriend. The saints choose us, and this, in the light of God\u2019s wisdom and providence.\u201d<\/p>\n
We have not, then, to ask why Mother Marie des Douleurs chose Saint Th\u00e9r\u00e8se as a patroness of the Congregation at its beginning. We have, instead, to ask why Saint Th\u00e9r\u00e8se chose the Congregation. There are few obvious reasons: superficial affinities that anyone can observe. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se was French. So too were the first Sisters. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se was young at the time of her illness and death. So too were many of the first Sisters. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se suffered from tuberculosis. So too did many of the first Sisters. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se was canonized in 1925. The Congregation of the Benedictines of Jesus Crucified was founded in 1930 when Th\u00e9r\u00e8se, had she lived, would have been only fifty-seven. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se answered a call to the monastic life. So too did the first Sisters. None of these reasons, however, explain why Th\u00e9r\u00e8se chose the Congregation. The answer lies much deeper. It is, I think, for the most part, hidden in the mystery of God\u2019s providence. There are, nonetheless, a few indications that lift the corner of the veil on God\u2019s hidden designs, and they are worth pondering.<\/p>\n
The first of these has to do with the fundamental grace of Saint Th\u00e9r\u00e8se: a boldness, the audacity that comes from the absolutely certainty of being loved. In the first Sisters, and in you, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se sees women called to believe that they are loved. Her work is precisely this: to help those marked by suffering — Love\u2019s signature — to believe that they are loved. \u201cWe know and believe the love God has for us\u201d (1 Jn 4:16). Out of this grows an immense confidence, a boldness in the Spirit that authorizes even the weakest among us to see in the Child Jesus, a brother; and in the Holy Face of the suffering Jesus, the traits of a lover, the gaze of a spouse. This identification with the Child Jesus and, even more, with the Holy Face of Jesus, makes the friends of Th\u00e9r\u00e8se bold, confident, audacious in their relationship with the Father. \u201cSince you loved me so much,\u201d says Th\u00e9r\u00e8se in one of her prayers to the Father, \u201cI beg you to look upon me only through the Face of Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second reason why Th\u00e9r\u00e8se may have chosen the Congregation has to do with the missionary zeal of Saint Th\u00e9r\u00e8se or, even better, with her uncontainable desire to love. In the first Sisters, and in you, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se sees women with great aspirations, women with hearts made to love, women with love to give, women ready to mother the whole world, with a special tenderness for sinners, and for priests. \u201cThe love of Christ impels us\u201d (2 Cor 5:14). Some of the first Sisters wanted to be missionaries; they did not choose the enclosed, monastic life. It was, in God\u2019s mysterious designs, chosen for them. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se, in her own way, says to each of us that the limitations of a body marked by the Cross are not an impediment to love, but a way to love. She says that monastic enclosure cannot contain the uncontainable; and love is, by its very nature, uncontainable.<\/p>\n
The third reason why Th\u00e9r\u00e8se may have chosen the Congregation has to do with her intense desire to live life to the full. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se\u2019s holiness is not of the \u201chalf-dead-half alive\u201d variety. \u201cI came that they may have life, and have it abundantly\u201d (Jn 10:10). Her holiness is energetic, enterprising, and effective, precisely because it is a holiness of love, the most energetic, creative, effective force in the world. The first Sisters, and certainly not the unstoppable Mother Marie des Douleurs, were not women half-alive. Even the weakest Sisters, those most hemmed in, limited, and sometimes confined to bed for the better part of their monastic life, were women determined to live life to the full.<\/p>\n
The spirit of the Congregation has never been one of listlessness, vague sentimentality, and ineffective dreaming. It has always been energetic, enterprising, and effective, and this because love is, by its very nature, ordered to the fullness of life. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se has chosen the Congregation for a special relationship with her, but her friendship is by no mean limited to the Benedictines of Jesus Crucified.<\/p>\n
Th\u00e9r\u00e8se lavishes her friendship on all sorts of folks, with a particular fondness for sinners, for the lonely, the confused, and the desperate. She precipitates herself into the darkness of men and women who struggle, day after day, and night after night, to keep the flicker of hope alive in themselves. She is close to anyone who needs help believing that he or she is not only loveable, but loved — loved absolutely, unconditionally. She stands near those who are timid, and fearful. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se is present in prison cells, and near hospital beds. She is in homes. She is interested in families, in human relationships, in situations of dire need and bewildering complexity.<\/p>\n
Th\u00e9r\u00e8se, from her place in heaven, is not intimidated by the spectre of evil, by the brutality and ugliness of what sin can do to human lives, twisting hearts, disfiguring faces, paralysing the energies of love. \u201cI feel within myself, she wrote, the vocation of a warrior, of a priest, of an apostle, of a doctor, of a martyr . . . In spite of my littleness, I want to shine upon souls, like the prophets, like the Doctors.\u201d<\/p>\n
The liturgy takes the prophecy of Isaiah, and applies it to Th\u00e9r\u00e8se. \u201cRejoice, Jerusalem,\u201d becomes \u201cRejoice, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se, and be glad for her, all you who love her\u201d (Is 66:10). Th\u00e9rese dared to believe in love. Love made her bold. Love dilated her heart, transformed her from a narrow-minded middle class Catholic girl into a Great Mother, unafraid to bring love into the darkest places of every human drama. Her work is not over. \u201cI shall spend my heaven,\u201d she said, doing good upon the earth.\u201d \u201cYou will feel my soul close to yours.<\/p>\n
It is time to go to the Holy Table. The Table will be set, not for the wise and the clever, but those who believe in love, for the bold, and the daring. The Table will be set for those who dare to say, \u201dOur Father.\u201d If we learn anything from Th\u00e9r\u00e8se, the twenty-four year old doctor of the Church who has chosen us to be her friends, let it be this: to utter \u201cFather,\u201d in the breath of the Holy Spirit, to call God \u201cFather\u201d with an audacity that shocks the conventional and the comfortable, and brings comfort to those who, hoping against hope, believe in Love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Th\u00e9r\u00e8se is so often referred to as \u201clittle,\u201d that we risk not seeing the breadth and depth that are really characteristic of her, and the immensity of her desires. Paradoxically, there is nothing small, nothing narrow in this painfully sensitive middle-class girl who, at fifteen years of age, closed herself up in Carmel with a <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-saint-therese-of-the-child-jesus-and-of-the-holy-face","category-saints"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paVypq-Bp","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2319"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7680,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions\/7680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Th\u00e9r\u00e8se is so often referred to as \u201clittle,\u201d that we risk not seeing the breadth and depth that are really characteristic of her, and the immensity of her desires. Paradoxically, there is nothing small, nothing narrow in this painfully sensitive middle-class girl who, at fifteen years of age, closed herself up in Carmel with a certain number of saints, a certain number of women not altogether right in the head, her own sisters, and one rather unusual prioress. Once Th\u00e9r\u00e8se opened herself to the workings of the Holy Spirit, her heart began to expand — even in the midst of real emotional, spiritual, and physical sufferings, — until it reached the dazzling dimensions of the charity of Christ.<\/p>\n