St. Therese: Mirror of the Blessed Virgin

But authentic devotion to the Child Jesus includes suffering. Can one imagine the pain Mary experienced when Jesus was lost in the temple? Mary Immaculate, who ever exercised perfect maternal love, had lost her Son. She was fully aware that He loved her with the most tender, filial love. This made her all the more vulnerable to the anguish which she was about to undergo. Nothing forewarned her of the overwhelming three days of separation she experienced when Jesus remained in Jerusalem. Her preeminent virtue and His singular love would indicate that such a trial could never happen.

In her poem to Mary, Therese probes the depths of this mystery. "Mother, your sweet Child wants you to be an example/ Of the soul search­ing for Him in the night of faith.// Since the King of Heaven wanted His Mother/ To be plunged into the night, in anguish of heart,/ Mary, is it thus a blessing to suffer on earth?/ Yes, to suffer while loving is the purest happiness!" (v. 15-16) She writes both from fruitful meditation and per­sonal experience. She was pure, never staining her baptismal robe with mortal sin. Yet God "permitted my soul to be invaded by the thickest darkness... .He knows very well that while I do not have the joy of faith, I am trying to carry out its works at least." This severe trial of Therese's faith lasted for over a year until her death. To the very end she maintained her grateful, generous disposition to suffer for the love of God and the conversion of poor sinners. "Everything is a grace!" she would say in her last days of torment.

"Mary kept in mind all these things pondering them in her heart" (Lk 2:19). Like the Virgin Mary's, Therese's very life was a profound prayer, a continual dialogue of love with her Lord and God. She prayed without ceasing and saw God's providential hand in every aspect of her life. For her "prayer is an aspiration of the heart, it is a simple glance directed to Heaven, it is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trial as well as joy; finally it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus." Mary, the Mystical Rose, and Therese, the Little Flower, each strove for an ever deeper union with Jesus correspond­ing to the grace bestowed on each of them.

Mary "stood" at the foot of the cross actively cooperating with Jesus Crucified in redeeming the world, and became Mother of the Church and of each of its members. God the Father permitted the sword of sorrow to transfix her Immaculate Heart precisely because He willed that by her compassion she might also be our Coredemptrix and Spiritual Mother. The agonizing spiritual desolation of Jesus on the Cross, "abandoned" bythe Father, was experienced by Therese, and undoubt­edly by the Mother of Sor­rows as well. Trials and tribulations were to her the greatest honor the Father could bestow on His child. Each sacrifice was an op­portunity to renew her gen­erous love for God and to unleash grace for poor sin­ners.

She recalls how at the age of 14, "looking at a pic­ture of Our Lord on the Cross, I was struck by the Blood flowing from one of the divine hands. I felt a great pang of sorrow when thinking this Blood was falling to the ground with­out anyone's hastening to

gather it up. I was resolved to remain in spirit at the foot of the Cross and to receive the divine dew. I understood I was then to pour it out upon souls... I offered to God all the infinite merits of Our Lord."

After his victorious death and resurrection, Jesus willed that Mary remain and that her Immaculate Heart be, as it were, the very Heart of the Church. With all the ardor of Her Immaculate Heart, she prayed in the midst of the Apostles at Pentecost. Her Immaculate Heart was an ongo­ing link to the Incarnation and Redemption. She was in their midst for many years - interceding, instructing, and loving. We cannot begin to understand the depths of divine charity abiding within her Heart. Her zeal for the salvation of souls is limitless, especially for sinners who found in her a Mother of Mercy and Refuge of Sinners.

As mentioned in several other chapters of this book St. Therese in her great love of Christ and souls desired all vocations - warrior, priest, apostle, doctor, martyr. "My desires caused me a veritable martyrdom." St. Paul in his first Epistle to the Corinthians opened her mind and heart to realize all her ambitions - charity! "....I understood that the Church had a Heart and that this Heart was BURNING WITH LOVE. I under­stood it was Love alone that made the Church's members act....I under­stood that LOVE COMPRISED ALL VOCATIONS. . . .my vocation, at last I have found it.... MY VOCATION IS LOVE!... in the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be Love." Our Lady and our Saint both lived this hidden vocation of love which is so essential to the entire mystical Body of Christ, the Church.

Our Lady's cooperation with Christ the one Mediator is unique and her membership in His mystical Body is preeminent precisely because of her perfect cooperation with every grace He gave her.

"Who is my mother and who is my brethren?.. .Whoever does the will of my Father in Heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother" (Mt 12:48-50). God has freely chosen to entrust all grace and the entire order of mercy to her. "She is a mother to us in the order of grace... Taken up to Heaven she did not lay aside this saving office but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation." (Lumen Gentium 61, 62). As Mediatrix of All Grace and Mercy she continues to actively carry out her maternal mission in the hearts and minds of all her children. Similarly, Therese realized that her silent, simple hidden life was not only significant, but of prominent importance in the Church. Because God desired her little way to be of great importance for the en­tire Church, she too has been entrusted a role in Heaven. In her last weeks she revealed, "I feel that my mission is about to begin, my mission of making others love God as I love Him, my mission of teaching my little way to souls.... Yes, I want to spend my Heaven in doing good on earth."

How remarkable is the resemblance between Mary and Therese, between Mother and child! As the saintly Cure of Ars put it: "Virtue passes readily from the heart of a mother to that of her child." Let us heed the message which St. Therese wishes to teach us: only those who are "little" in their own eyes and in the eyes of the world will learn to love and resemble their Mother. Only then will they reach the heights of vir­tue and union with God to which our Saint attained. We end with her own words addressed to our heavenly Mother:

While waiting for Heaven, O my dear Mother,

I want to live with you, to follow you each day.

Mother, contemplating you, I joyfully immerse myself,

discovering in your Heart abysses of love... (v.18)

Unless otherwise noted in the text, all quotes are from "Story of a Soul" or the poem "Why I Love You, O Mary! " (verse indicated)