Sunday 29 September 2024

Feast of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1st reading: Isaiah 66,10-14

Psalm: 102

2rd reading: 1 John 4,7-16

Gospel: Matthew 18,1-4

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The first two readings first place for us the background that we must contemplate. In Thérèse, we find this very great conviction that it is God who has the initiative and that it is God who acts first. And this is what Saint John makes us hear in this letter: " This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins. Thérèse's life is a response to God; throughout her life, Thérèse lives this dialogue with the Lord as a response.

The second point of this background that the first reading evokes is the whole dimension of the Church, people of God, body of Christ, temple of the Spirit, of which Jerusalem is the heralding figure. This Jerusalem that the Lord contemplates and that he invites to rejoice and exultation. “Rejoice with Jerusalem! Exult in her, all you who love her! For the Lord declares: ‘Behold, I will bring peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream.’”. God's plan is to gather all humanity into the unity of the body of Christ, and the Church is the sacrament of this gathering, the first fruits of this gathering.

I would like to give Thérèse more space to speak on two fundamental points that could be taken from the last two words of manuscript C: trust and love. The love that she never stops not only talking about, but living, and then this trust that is the trust of the child.

The point I want to emphasize about love in Thérèse's life is that it is something that grows. Love in Thérèse unfolds throughout her life. First, she learns love in her family. She learns love, forgiveness, from her parents, from the way she is loved. We know how Thérèse, when she is very young - since it is Zélie who tells the story, so she was less than four and a half years old - when she has done something stupid, it is the first thing she has to tell her father when he comes home, so that he can forgive her. She really has this concrete, family experience of what love is lived, of what mercy is lived. And, let us also see that between sisters, this fraternal love unfolds. But other events will be like founding stages in the unfolding of this love.

The first major step is obviously that of Christmas 1886, when Thérèse will move from this very painful period between the death of her mother and this event, this “second part of her life” as she calls it, where she cannot recover from the death of her mother, even if she “digests” it: she retains an extreme sensitivity to it that makes her suffer. This conversion that she experiences at Christmas, she therefore describes it in manuscript A, and after having described what happened, she says this:

He made me a fisher of souls, I felt a great desire to work for the conversion of sinners, a desire that I had not felt so strongly...

I felt in a word charity enter my heart, the need to forget myself to please and since then I was happy!…

Saint Therese Manuscript A 45v

In a word, I felt charity enter my heart. It seems that something definitive is happening there, a significant event in his life: charity entering. It is the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is perhaps what today a whole charismatic movement would call “the outpouring of the Spirit,” basically: charity entering my heart…

It is Christmas 1886.

Thérèse, on April 9, 1888, entered Carmel, and followed the steps of taking the habit, profession, etc. We arrive nine years later, on June 9, 1895, where Thérèse had this intuition, during the feast of the Holy Trinity, to offer herself as a “victim of holocaust to merciful love.” When she describes this event a little later in manuscript A, she says this:

This year, on June 9, the feast of the Holy Trinity, I received the grace to understand more than ever how much Jesus desires to be loved. […]

Ah! Since that happy day, it seems to me that Love penetrates me and surrounds me, it seems to me that at every moment this Merciful Love renews me, purifies my soul and leaves no trace of sin there, so I cannot fear purgatory… Manuscript A 84

A new step: something that deepens. She said 9 years before: I felt charity enter my heart. She now says: Since that happy day, it seems to me that love penetrates me and surrounds me.

Love can only grow, or it can die. It cannot remain at a stable level.

Let us fast forward a little over a year; it is September 8, 1896, the anniversary of her profession. She is in retreat, she writes this prayer that springs from her heart — what we will later call manuscript B — and she describes her vocation thus:

O Jesus, my Love… my vocation, finally I have found it, my vocation is love…

Yes, I have found my place in the Church and this place, oh my God, it is you who gave it to me… in the Heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be Love… thus I will be everything… thus my dream will be realized!!!…

As a new step again: this love that deepens, that becomes his fundamental vocation. Not only the charity that enters his heart, the love that penetrates it, but the love that becomes his vocation: I will be love.

Everything seems accomplished…

Let’s fast forward a few months; it’s June 1897, three months before Thérèse’s death. She writes on commission what we now call Manuscript C. What do we read?

This year, my dear Mother, God made me understand what charity is ; before I understood it, it is true, but in an imperfect way.

Extraordinary! Here is yet another new stage where, in her humility, Thérèse says: "But in fact, I have not yet understood what charity is. There you have it... I said that it had entered my heart, I said that it penetrated me, I said that it surrounded me, I said that my vocation is love. But in fact, I had not understood everything."

And I invite you to obviously reread this manuscript C where she describes this fraternal charity very concretely, choosing to love the Sister who annoys her the most, as if she were the person she appreciated the most.

I note all this so that we can truly be part of a movement, in our own spiritual life. It is about moving forward, it is about letting ourselves expand more and more by this charity that comes to us from God. We have not finished learning to love, we have not finished discovering height, width, depth, as Paul says in Ephesians (3,18:XNUMX), of what charity is, of what the love of God is and of what the love that can spring from our heart is.

The second point, which will be quicker, is the spirit of childhood. This famous spirit of childhood which is ultimately the spirit of trust, and trust in the mercy of God. And I just note two passages, both from 1896, which is this extremely fruitful year ultimately; while Thérèse entered into darkness, it is a great fruitfulness that she lives.

In this letter to Léonie, letter 191, July 12, 1896, she writes: Look at a little child, who has just upset his mother by getting angry or by disobeying her; if he hides in a corner with a sulky air and cries out in fear of being punished, his mother will certainly not forgive him for his fault, but if he comes to hold out his little arms to her smiling and saying: "Kiss me, I won't do it again." Will his mother be able not to press him to her heart with tenderness and forget his childish mischief? ... However, she knows well that her dear little one will do it again at the next opportunity, but that doesn't matter, if he takes her by the heart again he will never be punished... […]

Let us therefore know how to hold him prisoner, this God who becomes the beggar of our love. By telling us that it is a hair that can work this miracle, he shows us that the smallest actions done out of love are those that charm his heart… LT 191 to Léonie July 12, 1896

Here is this spirit of childhood, where finally Thérèse grasps that mercy, the love of God is so great, that none of our sins can reach this size finally, and that we can always return. But it is obvious that to return like the little child is to put love first, it is not to consider that sin is nothing… but on the contrary it is to consider that love is always greater.

And then, in letter 196, to Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart, in which she introduces what we now call manuscript B, she says to her:

I understand so well that only love can make us pleasing to the Good Lord that this love is the only good that I aspire to. Jesus is pleased to show me the only path that leads to this Divine furnace, this path is the abandonment of the little child who falls asleep without fear in the arms of his Father… […]

I reread: “this path is the abandonment of the little child who falls asleep without fear in the arms of his Father.”

Ah! if all weak and imperfect souls felt what the smallest of all souls feels, the soul of your little Thérèse, not a single one would despair of reaching the summit of the mountain of love, since Jesus does not ask for great actions, but only abandonment and gratitude.

It is nothing other than when Jesus tells us: "If you do not change and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 18,3:5-XNUMX). And before doing this, Jesus took a child and placed him in the midst of the disciples: the child let himself be taken by Jesus' arms and let himself be placed where Jesus wanted. Which says something about this abandonment, this docility to the will of the Lord.

May we truly learn from Thérèse to never be discouraged. You know that this is one of the three resolutions of her first communion: I will not be discouraged.

To never be discouraged, but on the contrary, to see that the best is always yet to come, since we have not finished discovering the mercy of God and the greatness of the love that we can give.

We have not finished becoming little children to throw ourselves into the arms of God our Father.

Amen

Father Emmanuel Schwab, Rector of the Shrine