A homily on the commemoration of Therese de Lisieux

Therese de Lisieux did not live a long life. Perhaps that’s why the impression I get of her spirituality is one of lightness; despite her knowledge of pain and grief, a joyful wisdom, a certain pureness of prayer. 

I find it curious that the lection chosen to pair with Therese, the little flower, comes from the curious book of Judith. A part neither of the Jewish nor any more of the Christian canon, Judith is likely a novel, according to my commentary,^[i] written about 100 years before Jesus was born, and now contained in our apocryphal, or deuterocanonical writings: useful for the broadening of our understanding of God and our relationship to God, but not used in our Church for the development of doctrine. This is important, for reasons I’ll come back to.

Judith, so the story goes, is a widow. Her husband has died of heatstroke while working in the fields. Judith is a model biblical widow. Beautiful, wealthy, and devout, she devotes herself to fasting and secludes herself on her roof, not in the community of a convent, but at least in the company of her maid (not to speak of the slaves left her by her husband). Hearing that her city was under siege from the evil empire, she summoned the leaders and they obeyed and came before her. Judith asked them,

“Who are you to set yourselves up in the place of God in human affairs? … You cannot plumb the depths of the human heart or understand the workings of the human mind; how do you expect to search out God, who made all these things, and find out the mind of God or comprehend the thought of God?” (Judith 8:12-14, paraphrased)

The rest of her story is written for you to discover in the books between the Testaments, if you don’t already know it. Remember, though, that we do not base doctrine nor direction nor direct action on the words of the apocrypha, and that this book was written as a novel, not an instruction manual; Judith’s story is violent, and we have had quite enough of violence. Enough of that. 

You understand what I’m saying: we have some distressing and frankly dangerous texts in our Bible, but we have, too, the words of Jesus: the commandment to love our enemies; and the actions of Jesus, disarming his disciples in the Garden, saying, “Nor more of this!” Enough of that. (Luke 22:51) Let’s be really clear about that: about Jesus, for us the Word of God, as the context of our Evening Prayer.

Therese did not aspire to as dramatic a life as Judith’s. But Therese wrote that while her heart occasionally aspired to the flight of an eagle, that heart was contained within a little bird, never destined to fly so high, yet sheltering under the same sky, the same Divine Sun, the Star of Love, so that it should never be afraid. She knew that she would not live a long life. But she knew, too, that she could live a deep life, and a full life, if she stayed close to Jesus. She wrote, as if for us,

I understood it was Love alone that made the Church’s members act, that if Love ever became extinct, apostles would not preach the Gospel and martyrs would not shed their blood. I understood that LOVE COMPRISED ALL VOCATIONS, THAT LOVE WAS EVERYTHING, THAT IT EMBRACED ALL TIMES AND PLACES…. IN A WORD, THAT IT WAS ETERNAL!^[ii]

Therese did aspire to find out the mind of God, to plumb not only the depths of the human heart, contained in her convent sisters, but the heart and mind of Jesus, her love. 

Over and again, in so many words, Therese describes herself as a very little soul [who can] offer God only very little things. Yet neither does she underestimate the value of a life – her life – devoted to the love of God and prayer for God’s world.

Here perhaps is where Therese and Judith coincide after all: Judith in fasting, ashes and sackcloth on her rooftop, and Therese in the cloister. 

Therese wrote, 

For me, 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.^[iii]

Both women, through prayer, aspired to expand their souls to unite themselves to God.

We live, my friends, in troubled and troublesome times. Perhaps we feel besieged. Perhaps we feel breathless, as Therese in the convent infirmary. Perhaps we aspire to the eagle’s flight, yet find ourselves earthbound. 

Perhaps the message of these two women, and their sister, the widow at the Temple gates; perhaps their message tonight is to remain in prayer, to be steadfast in faith, to remember that the faithfulness of God will not leave us bereft, despite the sufferings of the world and ourselves within it. Our vocation is to strengthen community wherever we find it, to direct love wherever it is most needed. If we are faithful to that call, we will please Jesus.

And, the salvation of the world is not in our hands, but the promise of prayer is. And while the peace of God passes our understanding, it is at hand. It is found in the smallest act of love, a little flower growing between the cracks of a fractured and fractious world, persistent in its beauty, brave in its striving, and unstoppable in its reach toward the sun.

^[i] The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume III (Abingdon Press, 1999), 1075

^[ii] Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux (the Little Flower), by St. Therese of Lisieux [The Authorized English Translation of Therese’s Original Unaltered Manuscripts], Kindle Edition, 213.

^[iii] Ibid., 260