St. Thérèse of Lisieux: Patron Saint of Common Sense | Stephen Sparrow | Ignatius Insight
In August 2005, as part of a solo six-week tour of Southern Europe I travelled from New Zealand to Paris intending to spend five days based in the city. My hotel was on the edge of the Latin Quarter and quaint but from my window I could see Notre Dame Cathedral barely three hundred yards away across the Seine River. Oh and yes the quaintness of the hotel would have sent shivers down the spine of any self respecting fire safety officer but it was adequate for my needs. Anyway, two of my five days in Paris I allocated for day trips outside of the city. Chartres was my first choice and the second came down to either Versailles (and Napoleon’s tomb) or Lisieux. No disrespect intended to Napoleon, but in his day he did leave a lot of hard feelings, so Lisieux easily won out.
Lisieux is an attractive town about two hours by rail west of Paris and I arrived there on the same train as two Presentation Order nuns from India. Sister Lucilde was a registered nurse in a Paris Hospital and Sister Grace a teacher in Southern India and with shy smiles they wasted no time in inviting me to share their food and drink before the three of us set out to explore the town on foot. The Sister’s natural courtesy and lively sense of fun added greatly to a day that commenced with a visit to the Convent where St Thérèse had lived as a cloistered nun. A group of German pilgrims with their priest were about to have a mass in the chapel so we joined them and afterward inspected the Convent’s small museum, where among many items may be seen the Saint’s waist length blond wavy hair cut off the day she took her first vows.
Next we headed for the large modern Basilica dedicated to Thérèse — an impressive building in white stone with a spectacular hilltop setting. Large modernistic style murals on walls and arches dominate the interior décor. After eating lunch in the sun, we made our way to Les Buissonnets: the former home of the Martin family and now a museum. It’s an uncanny sensation to see displayed there the saint’s toys and dolls, or to use the same stairs she would have run up and down many times daily, and then to go outside and stroll through the garden with its tall cypress trees; all easily old enough to be the same trees Thérèse would have played under as a child.
Late afternoon I farewelled my new friends and started walking to the station to catch a train back to Paris. Being a hot day I entered a pub for a cold beer. The publican told me he had lived in Lisieux for only a couple of years having bought the business with redundancy money. He was curious about what a Kiwi was doing in town and asked if there was a religious significance to my visit and learning there was, proceeded to shake his head and say he couldn’t understand why people came from all over the world to visit a shrine honouring an obscure nun who did nothing except write down some deep thoughts. ‘She did nothing, nothing at all,’ he kept repeating. I refrained from pointing out that if his thinking caught on, the economic outlook for both the town and his pub would be gloomy to say the least and asked instead if he had ever read anything Thérèse had written. Not surprisingly he hadn’t, so I told him he might discover something important if he took the trouble to read her autobiography and urged him to make a start. The discussion was cut short by the imminent arrival of the train but it highlighted how much ill informed opinion exists about St Thérèse, even in the town in which she grew up and lived.
However, for those who have taken the ‘trouble’ to read Story of a Soul – and they number many millions – most seem to end up with at least one of three viewpoints. Many are amazed by the humility and simplicity of the saint, others by her radical heart centred theology, and still others by her courage in facing the doubt that God even existed. And of course taken together, all three viewpoints form a sort of Trinitarian blueprint for the spiritual life.
Given the circumstances surrounding the saint’s birth, we should consider ourselves fortunate that she didn’t die during the first weeks of her life. Thérèse was born on January 2nd 1873 in Alencon. She was the ninth and last child of Zèlie and Louis Martin. Four of the couple’s other children had already died and only one of those made it to age five. High rates of infant mortality were characteristic of the time, even in well to do families and although the Martins were comfortably off, Zèlie, like all mothers of large families worked hard; not only in the home but also managing her successful lace making business.
At the time Thérèse was born, Zèlie Martin was most likely in the early stages of the breast cancer that four years later would end her life, and that last pregnancy must have accelerated the course of the disease. Considering her health and age (42) it was hardly surprising that Zèlie found it difficult to breast-feed her newborn baby. Thérèse was just not thriving, quite the opposite in fact and after three months, Zèlie heeded her doctor’s advice and bundling up the now ailing infant she headed off in cold weather on the nine kilometre walk to Semaillé and the peasant home of Rose Taillè. Rose took over the task of breastfeeding and during the next twelve months reared Thérèse into a bonny, sun tanned, precocious toddler.
While Thérèse was fostered out, she wasn’t totally cut off from her family since every Thursday was market day and Rose usually travelled to Alencon to sell produce and while there would leave Thérèse at the Martin house until after the market closed. While living in the Taillè household, Thérèse was frequently cared for out in the fields while her foster family worked close by, and no doubt as she grew older she came to enjoy those wheelbarrow rides to and from the farmhouse. It seems likely that this period in Semaillé with its open fields and farmyard environment sowed in Thérèse the seeds of an interest in nature; confirmed later by her love of flowers and birds, and in her autobiography she recalled sharing with her older sister Celine a room that contained among other things, a large wire cage housing a mixed collection of finches and canaries.
Coming back into the family permanently at fifteen months, Thérèse found herself the centre of attention. However let’s be under no illusions, although love and kindness reigned in the Martin household, Thérèse described herself as bossy and temperamental and frequently given to tears when things didn’t go her way.
Shortly after the death of Zèlie in 1877, M. Louis Martin sold the home in Alencon and leased another in Lisieux so that his daughters could have close contact with the family of Zelie’s brother Isidore Guérin. The two families quickly became close, the all girl cousins being much the same age. Thérèse was now being taken care of by her two oldest sisters, Marie and Pauline. Not surprisingly she developed a strong attachment to her father and when he was home would follow him constantly, especially in the well-treed garden and he in turn would indulge her frequent whims such as transplanting some small flowering plant into a new position favoured by her. When a little older, Thérèse often accompanied M. Martin on fishing trips to local streams and while he waited patiently for the float to bob under indicating a fish strike, she would ramble nearby gathering wild flowers.
Spiritual formation of the five Martin girls had always been a priority for the parents and within a year of the move to Lisieux, Thérèse had entered the same routine as the rest of the family by attending Mass with them each morning in the town’s cathedral. In her autobiography (written in the Carmel under obedience) Thérèse told of how at an early age her thoughts often turned to God and how she could best serve him, however she did admit that about this time she was also plagued by religious scruples.
School was not a particularly enjoyable experience and Thérèse disliked math as a subject but did excel at science, religious study and French. At this time she owned a favourite blue hat and was so fond of it she sometimes wondered if it were possible to love God as much as she loved that hat. We’ve already heard about the birds that lived in her room but she also had a spaniel named Tom and both she and Celine had bantams given them by Rose Taillè. Thérèse was not afraid to recall incidents of her bad behaviour and related one occasion when as a small child she asked the family maid to reach up to get something from a high shelf and when the request was denied she stood firm and declared, "Victoire, you are a brat" and then turned and fled while the excitable maid ran through the house complaining shrilly that Mademoiselle Thérèse had just called her a brat.
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