Therese - Little Flower or Fierce Warrior
ONE
Therese of Lisieux had the heart of a Warrior – she was a fighter
Hans Urs von Balthasar in his book on Therese, Two Sisters in the Spirit writes:
Thérèse of Lisieux is fearless and aggressive. She loves war. She is a fighter by nature. Of herself she writes: “God wanted to make me conquer the fortress of Carmel at the sword’s point.”1 “God has granted me the grace of being totally unafraid of war; I must do my duty, whatever the cost.”2 “Let us always grasp the sword of the spirit. . . , let us never simply allow matters to take their course for the sake of our own peace; let us fight without ceasing, even without hope of winning the battle. What does success matter! Let us keep going, however exhausting the struggle may be. . . . One must do one’s duty to the end.”3 “This morning I read a passage in the Gospels where it is said, ‘I come not to bring peace but a sword.’ All that remains for us then is to fight. When we have not the strength, it is then that Jesus fights for us. Together let us put the axe to the root of the tree. . . .”4 “Sanctity! It has to be won at the point of the sword.”5 She speaks of “the way to force Jesus to come to your help”; and asserts that victory will not come cheaply: “It does not come in a day.”7 But for all her failings, there is one quality she never lacks: “I am not always faithful, but I am never discouraged.”8 “During meditation, I fell asleep for a moment. I dreamed that soldiers were needed for a war. You said, we must send Thérèse of the Child Jesus. I replied, I would prefer a holy war. But I went all the same. How gladly I would have fought in the Crusades or later against the heretics. Certainly I should not have feared the fire. . . . Is it possible that I shall have to die in bed?”9 “I am not a warrior who has fought with earthly weapons but ‘with the sword of the spirit that is the word of God’. “I always want to see you behaving like a brave soldier who does not complain about his own suffering but takes his comrades’ wounds seriously and treats his own as nothing but scratches.”
TWO
“Jesus said that ‘the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by storm.” Reflecting on this Therese wrote: “You cannot be half a saint, you must be a whole saint or no saint at all. I felt that you must have a soul of great energy…”
The warrior spirit of Therese explains the love and friendship for Joan of Arc that permeate all her writing. In her early days, she used to read chivalrous stories with great enthusiasm, “When reading the accounts of the patriotic deeds of French heroines, those of the venerable Joan of Arc in particular, I felt a great desire to imitate them.” And her attitude toward Joan of Arc remains absolutely unchanged even later, when she had come to realize that her glory would not lie in external deeds.
“When I began to learn the history of France, the story of Joan of Arc’s exploits entranced me; I felt in my heart the desire and the courage to imitate her; it seemed to me that the Lord meant me for great things too. I was not mistaken, but, in place of voices from heaven calling me to war, I heard in the depths of my soul a voice sweeter, more powerful still, the voice of the Spouse of Virgins calling me to other exploits, conquests more glorious, and, in the solitude of Carmel, I realized that my mission was not to get a mortal king crowned but to get the King of heaven loved, to bring the realm of hearts under his sway.”
THREE
Thérèse is a warrior even though her battles are fought for love by means of love, for peace by means of peace. Her battle is to wipe out…that human will-to-power disguised in the mantle of religion that drives one to assert one’s own greatness instead of acknowledging that God alone is great.
Now, here is the key that unlocks the power of the spiritual warrior that was Therese: “Jesus does not demand great deeds but only gratitude and self-surrender.
FOUR
True Nature of Self-Surrender
St. Maximilian Kolbe writes: A cross consists of two pieces of wood, crossed at one point. In everyday life our cross consists in our will crossing the will of God. In order to remove it, it is necessary to conform ourselves to the will of God.
God is All-Powerful - This means that Nothing can happen except what He wills directly or what He allows, what He permits.
We should change for the better all that is imperfect, underdeveloped, or bad, that is within our power and responsibility – beginning with ourselves.
· And it is a good thing to persevere through hardships to accomplish something good.
· Like Therese we should fight for the good and resist evil – even to the point of death – that is the spirit of the warrior and the martyr.
· But it is bad to force something that is not the will of God.
· It is futile to try to fix or change what you cannot.
The cross comes when my will contradicts the will of God; when I want something different from God.
This is where I struggle. I fight to accomplish my will and I often resist the will of God. I find myself often fighting God.
This is when we should surrender.
To surrender means to stop fighting against God. Surrender is to say yes to God, choosing to accept His will - SO that HE can Fight in and through you. This is the most powerful way to fight – let the All-Powerful God do the fighting for you. This is the secret of the Little way of St Therese.
By accepting what we cannot control or change we conform our will to the will of God. That removes the cross. All that is left is the will of God. And since, in His will is our peace, that which was once felt as a painful cross now becomes pure delight.
FIVE
When we refuse to accept God’s permissive will, those things we cannot change or control, we are like a child who resists being carried by a parent – we must learn to give in and let God carry us.
I have always wanted to be a saint. Alas! I have always noticed that when I compared myself to the saints, there is between them and me the same difference that exists between a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds and the obscure grain of sand trampled underfoot by passers-by. Instead of becoming discouraged, I said to myself: God cannot inspire unrealizable desires. I can, then, in spite of my littleness, aspire to holiness. It is impossible for me to grow up, and so I must bear with myself such as I am with all my imperfections. But I want to seek out a means of going to heaven by a little way, a way that is very straight, very short, and totally new…We are living now in an age of inventions, and we no longer have to take the trouble of climbing stairs, for, in the homes of the rich, an elevator has replaced these very successfully. I wanted to find an elevator which would raise me to Jesus, for I am too small to climb the rough stairway of perfection. I searched, then, in the Scriptures for some sign of this elevator, the object of my desires, and I read these words coming from the mouth of Eternal Wisdom: “Whoever is a LITTLE ONE, let him come to me.” And so I succeeded. I felt I had found what I was looking for. … The elevator which must raise me to heaven is Your arms, O Jesus! And for this I had no need to grow up, but rather I had to remain little and become this more and more.