St. Therese of Lisieux has been a constant companion, a guide for my journey. My relationship with her started way back in my college days after reading her autobiography: The Story of a Soul. Her life story challenges me to live each moment of my life dedicated to Jesus; she re-affirmed to me that God indeed is a loving Father who always thinks affectionately of me. I also consider it a great privilege to see her relic when she first visited the Philippines a decade ago.
Pope Pius XI proclaimed Therese as co-patroness of mission on December 14, 1927. Indeed, it was a complete paradox to proclaim someone who did not even leave the four walls of the convent to be the patroness of the mission of the Universal Church; but by doing so, the Church emphasizes that by the virtue of our baptism, we are all called to be missionaries and St. Therese proved that we can be missionaries by being faithful to Jesus and to one’s vocation in life – even without leaving our mother land.
In Therese’s life and spirituality, I can identify four elements that make her truly missionary. The first of these is her ardent desire for mission. In her autobiography, she wrote: “in spite of my littleness, I would like to enlighten souls as did the Prophets and the Doctors. I have the vocation of the Apostles. I would like to travel over the whole earth to preach your Name and to plant your glorious cross on infidel soil. But…one mission alone would not be sufficient for me, I would want to preach the Gospel on all the five continents simultaneously and even to the most remote isles. I would be a missionary, not for a few years only, but from the beginning of creation until the consummation of the ages.”
Another element would be her exemplar life of prayer and sacrifice dedicated to the mission. By prayer and sacrifice, Therese is showing us that to be a missionary, an ardent desire for the mission is not enough, it must also entail a lot of action and in her case, Therese devoted her life through prayer and sacrifice. Knowing her limitations as a contemplative nun, she offered prayers for the missionaries toiling in all corners of the world, and united with Jesus suffering on the cross, she offered her sufferings for the salvation of the world, conversion of sinners, and intentions of missionaries especially her missionary brothers Maurice Belliere and Adolphe Roulland. In other words, her life became a sacrifice offered on behalf of those who are actively working for the mission.
The third element that I can identify is her spirituality of “little way of spiritual childhood” which can be described as having a child-like trust and confidence in God. I always see this spirituality of Therese as the simplified doctrines of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. This simple approach to spirituality makes Therese relevant to many people and its simplicity draws many to a deeper relationship with Jesus, which in a sense, is one of the goals of our missionary works. In Divini Amoris Scientia that proclaimed Therese as a Doctor of the Church, Pope John Paul II said that “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 rigours 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.” 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.”
Lastly, it is love that defines the missionary life of St. Therese of the Child Jesus. She said that “in the heart of the Mother Church I will be love” and her capacity to love opened the door of limitless opportunities for her to be a missionary. Her love for Jesus and trusting love to God the Father made her reach out even to the farthest end of the world. With love, Therese bore willingly her sufferings especially when she was already afflicted with tuberculosis; and with love, she joyfully undergone the obscure life in the monastery. Therese was convinced that her vocation is love as she stated in her autobiography “love is at the heart of every vocation, it embraces all things, because love is eternal.”
THE ELLIS EXPERIENCE 