St. Therese loves to find people. She loves to gather flowers, or souls, for Christ and bring them to Him. In High School, before I was Catholic or aware of the saints, I knew nothing of her. But I was drawn to her words that I stumbled upon: “Let us love since our heart is made for nothing else”. This sentiment from St. Therese is so simple, yet profound. Its powerful truth moved me to faith, hope, and charity.
When I found this girl’s autobiography (at a thrift store of all places), I recognized her name and grabbed it. Knowing nothing of her, I got to know her through her story. I read it with an open curiosity. My initial impression of her was that she was a sister and someone I could relate to. And looking back, I was impressed by her moral strength!
A scene that struck me very much was a detail in the description of her “strange sickness”. She recounts how she believes the illness had been the work of the devil. She writes, “I believe the devil had received an external power over me but was not allowed to approach my soul nor my mind…but although God permitted the devil to come near me, He also sent me visible angels.”
St. Therese, the little flower, insightfully understood how God had permitted the demonic to afflict her, due to her family’s holiness! This lovable girl was both wise and strong.
When I joined the Catholic Church a few years later, I learned of her fame as a beloved, and very active, missionary saint in heaven.
I also grew to love St. Mary Magdalene as a Saint of love, mercy, and the presence of Christ.
When re-reading A Story of a Soul, I noticed that St. Therese has an affinity for St. Mary Magdalene. She mentions her in all three manuscripts! I can’t help but wonder if part of this affinity for Mary Magdalene was due to a shared experience of liberation from the demonic.
But there are other important connections between the two. Both women accompanied Christ in His passion. Mary Magdalene stood with Him at the crucifixion. St. Therese suffered in death at the end of her life and offered it for Him, participating in his Passion.
It would appear that St. Mary Magdalen’s spirituality provided inspiration for St. Therese’s offering to Merciful Love. She mentions this saint when she writes of her discovery of her vocation to love. Realizing how integral St. Mary Magdalene is to St. Therese’s spirituality reveals the depth of the “little way”, and that it’s not for the faint of heart. Let’s take a deeper look at these two “sister saints.”
St. Therese opens her autobiography with the proclamation of the goodness of God, and of His mercy. In explaining how she overcame her hesitation to obediently write her story, she writes,
…but since then Jesus has made me feel that in obeying simply, I would be pleasing Him; besides, I’m going to be doing only one thing: I shall begin to sing what I must sing eternally: “The Mercies of the Lord.”[1]
St. Therese not only identifies God as merciful, she also identifies her eternal mission as announcing this truth about Him. In opening her story, she immediately recognizes that she is personally called to sing of His Mercies. She is most attracted to this about God, and it gives unity and meaning to her entire life. She sees everything as being given to her out of His Merciful love.
St. Mary Magdalene, who was delivered by seven demons, is also known as a Saint closely identified with the Mercy of God.[2] Seven, being a perfect number, seems to indicate that she was delivered from a tremendous burden of evil through the Merciful power of Christ. Having been shown His profound love, she became a saint who accompanied Him to the Cross, and stood beneath it as the blood and water from His side birthed the Church and brought forth mercy for sinners. We can then understand St. Mary Magdalene as closely connected to Christ’s Mercy. And it can be ascertained that she doesn’t keep the news of His Mercy to herself. She is known as the Apostle to the Apostles for having proclaimed the good news of the Resurrection of Christ to the Apostles. She is the one to proclaim the Mercy inherent in the good news of Resurrection.
Both St. Therese and St. Mary Magdalene have personal vocations to proclaim the good news and the Mercy of God.
Through her writings, St. Therese reveals that one reason she is attracted to St. Mary Magdalene is because of her lowering of herself for Christ. The image of lowering oneself, and of God lowering Himself for us, is one that defines her spirituality as being grounded in His merciful love. St. Therese’s entire spirituality is largely expressed through her understanding of God’s mercy being shown by Him stooping down and lowering Himself for us. She writes,
I understood, too, that Our Lord’s love is revealed as perfectly in the most simple soul who resists His grace in nothing as in the most excellent soul; in fact, since the nature of love is to humble oneself, if all souls resembled those of the holy Doctors who illumined the Church with the clarity of their teachings, it seems God would not descend so low when coming to their heart. But He created the child who knows only how to make his feeble cries heard; He has created the poor savage who has nothing but the natural law to guide him. It is to their hearts that God deigns to lower Himself. These are the wild flowers whose simplicity attracts Him. When coming down in this way, God manifests his infinite grandeur. Just as the sun shines simultaneously on the tall cedars and on each little flower as though it were alone on the earth, so Our Lord is occupied particularly with each soul as though there were no others like it. And just as in nature, all seasons are arranged in such a way as to make the humblest daisy bloom on a set day, in the same way, everything works out for the good of each soul.[3]
In this passage, St. Therese articulates her understanding of how God’s Mercy does not escape any soul. His love and Mercy is made manifest in His lowering of Himself to a soul. The more He lowers Himself for them, the more the glory of His love and Mercy is revealed. She points out how love consists in lowering oneself. This suggests that she sees the deepest love in Christ lowering Himself for us, and she also sees that humility is a lowering of oneself for love of God.
When St. Therese recounts how she discovered her vocation to love, she writes of Mary Magdalene and points out how this saint of the gospel lowered herself for Christ. This implies that she understands Magdalene to be a saint of humility and mercy. In expressing how her search in the gospels for her true vocation went, Therese writes,
During my meditation, my desires caused me a veritable martyrdom, and I opened the Epistles of St. Paul to find some kind of answer. Chapters 12 and 13 of the First Epistle to the Corinthians fell under my eyes. I read there, in the first of these chapters, that all cannot be apostles, prophets, doctors, etc., that the Church is composed of different members, and that the eye cannot be the hand at one and the same time. The answer was clear, but it did not fulfill my desires and gave me no peace. But just as Mary Magdalene found what she was seeking by always stooping down and looking into the empty tomb, so I, abasing myself to the very depths of my nothingness, raised myself so high that I was able to attain my end. Without becoming discouraged, I continued my reading, and this sentence consoled me: “yet strive after THE BETTER GIFTS, and I point out to you a yet more excellent way.” And the Apostle explains how all the most PERFECT gifts are nothing without LOVE. That Charity is the EXCELLENT WAY that leads most surely to God…Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that if the Church had a body composed of different members, the most necessary and most noble of all could not be lacking to it, and so 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, that if Love ever became extinct, apostles would not preach the Gospel and martyrs would not shed their blood.[4]
She connects St. Mary Magdalene to the discovery that her vocation is to love. This love is closely connected to the Mercy of God. Mary Magdalene’s action of persisting in stooping down to find Christ is attractive to her because she understands this action of lowering oneself to indicate humility, mercy, and love of God. Both of these saints suffer much for Christ. Both of them lower themselves for His sake. In her discovery of her vocation to love, St. Therese is strengthened to suffer much for Him.
After having been shown the Mercy of Christ herself through her liberation from great evil, Magdalene goes to the depths of suffering with Christ as she witnesses His crucifixion at the foot of the Cross. She profoundly experiences His absence when he descends into hell. St. Mary Magdalene goes to the very depths with Christ, feeling His absence so utterly as she waits for Him at the tomb, and rises again in spirit when He appears to her resurrected. This very same movement of Love and abasing oneself is shown in the life and spirituality of St. Therese.
Therese understands the depths of God’s Mercy for her. This culminates in her willingness to suffer and offer everything for Him. She, like Mary Magdalene, experiences His profound absence when at the end of her life heavenly things seem no longer to exist. Both of these Saints experience the profound absence of God, which is magnified by their knowledge of His love and presence. Both also are motivated to suffer with and for Him due to the knowledge of His merciful love. Both St. Therese and St. Mary Magdalene are victims of the merciful love of Christ.
Both of these powerful saints had a powerful calling to live in the truth of Christ’s love and mercy. They were given the mission of proclaiming the good news of Christ. St. Therse, though she was a cloistered Carmelite nun who remained hidden in her mission on earth, is now the patron saint of missions. And St. Mary Magdalene went in search of the lost presence of her Lord at the tomb. She was then given the mission of proclaiming the Resurrection. Neither of these saints stays closed in on wounds or sin. They are healed and sent.
How might God be asking you to embrace your mission? Ask Him in His merciful love to reveal it to you, whether it be big or small, grand or seemingly mundane. St. Therese shows us that hidden acts of charity are missionary ground. How might you live your present life as a mission for Christ?
Visit the Lord in adoration. Allow yourself to be gazed on in His love, and to be liberated from whatever is hindering you from receiving your life as a mission and as a gift coming from the hands of your loving Father. Let yourself be seen. Let go of the perfectionism, anxiety, criticism, or whatever you need to release.
Let Him love you and call you, as he did with these two powerful missionaries of merciful love.
[1] St. Therese of Lisieux and John Clarke, O.C.D., Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux (the Little Flower), 1996, pg. 13
[2] Luke 8:2
[3] St. Therese of Lisieux and John Clarke, O.C.D., Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux (the Little Flower), 1996, pg. 14
[4] St. Therese of Lisieux and John Clarke, O.C.D., Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux (the Little Flower), 1996, pg. 194
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Image courtesy of Unsplash.
