St. Therese of Lisieux: Loving the Eucharist in The Little Way
As a child, simple and pure, Jesus humbled himself to be born in a manger. At every Mass, again, he humbles himself to become a small wafer of bread for us in the Eucharist. Humility and Love are the driving pulse at the heart of the Eucharist’s simplicity. For Therese, they were the driving pulse of her Little Way. Naturally, it was in receiving the Eucharist that her world made perfect sense.
Therese understood that she was a bride of Christ communally by virtue of her union with the Church but especially personally through her vows taken at Carmel. She often spoke of Christ as ‘My Beloved’. This mystical and marital union that we enter into in the Eucharist was vividly apparent to her. Looking back on her first Communion she wrote, “Ah! How sweet was that first kiss of Jesus! It was a kiss of love; I felt that I was loved, and I said ‘I love You and I give myself to You forever! There were no demands made, no struggles, no sacrifices; for a long time Jesus and poor little Therese looked at and understood each other. That day, it was no longer simply a look. It was a fusion; they were no longer two, Therese had vanished as a drop of water is lost in the immensity of the ocean”.
Her love of the Eucharist was noted in her Bull of Canonization which spoke of her first Communion. It states…“As soon as she had tasted of the Eucharistic Bread, she felt an insatiable hunger for that Heavenly Food, and, as if inspired, she begged of Jesus,her sole delight, to ‘change for her into bitterness all human consolation.’ Then, all aflame with love for Christ and for His Church, she had a most keen desire to enter among the Discalced Carmelites, so that by her self-denial and continual sacrifices ‘she might bring help to priests and missionaries and the entire Church,’ and might gain innumerable souls for Jesus Christ…It would seem that this first Communion was the starting-point of her apostolic life and her devotion to the sanctification of priests”.
The Little Flower had a fitting role in the local church’s exposition and procession of the Eucharist. “I loved above all the processions in honor of the Blessed Sacrament.What a joy it was for me to throw flowers beneath the feet of God! Before allowing them to fall to the ground, I threw them as high as I could and I was never so happy as when I saw my roses touch the sacred monstrance”. She spoke also of her quiet adoration before the Blessed Sacrament as a child. Out of loneliness at the Abbey, she learned to find consolation before the Lord. “No one paid any attention to me and I would go up to the choir of the chapel and remain before the Blessed Sacrament until the moment when Papa came to get me. This was my only consolation, for was not Jesus my only friend?”.
There was a Marian dimension too in her Eucharistic devotion. Sr. Marie of the Trinity, the favorite novice under St. Therese, once asked her how she prepared for reception of Communion, she explained. “One day I asked her how she prepares for Holy Communion. She said, “I imagine my soul as a child with dirty clothes, and hair in disarray from playing. These misfortunes happen from doing battle with souls. But Our Lady immediately takes charge of me. She takes off my dirty smock, tidies my hair, and puts a pretty ribbon in it. That’s enough to make me sufficiently pretty again to take part in the Angel’s feast without embarrassment”.
Therese saw in Mary a perfect model of receptivity to the eucharistic child, Jesus.“In her union with the eucharistic Jesus, Therese particularly desired to be adorned with Mary’s virtues. In fact, she realized that to be most pleasing to Jesus one must become like the Blessed Mother in such a way that, as she wrote to Mary, ‘when the white Host comes into my heart, Jesus, your sweet Lamb, thinks He is resting in you! She calls this sacramental union a ‘fusion’ where ‘all the joy of Heaven…entered my heart.’ It was a time of loving exchange between her soul and God. It was a time to ‘be his living temple’ like the virgin of Nazareth at the Annunciation”.
As a devotee of Mary, she understood the concept of co-redemption. She knew that all of her little sacrifices could benefit other souls and advance the salvation of others. Therese offered herself to God as a living sacrifice consecrated to him. “Contemplating the Suffering Servant of Yahweh, stricken for the sins of his people, Therese realized that if she united her sufferings to the perfect self-offering of Christ, he would bring many souls to his Father through her”. This is what Francis Mary Kalvelage had in mind when he wrote, “Catholics who follow her ‘little way’ of heroic sacrifice by being faithful in the ordinary things in life- in a spirit of reparation to the rejected love of God are thus fulfilling Our Lady’s plea of participating in the salvation of souls”. As The Little Flower understood, it is only in the context of the Mass that we add to the sufferings of Christ our own small, spiritual sacrifices.
The source of strength, the food that built her up and enabled her to offer her sacrifices was Jesus the Incarnate Word fed to her in both Scripture and the Eucharist.
_____________________________
End Notes:
St. Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, The Autobiography of St.Therese of Lisieux. Third Edition, translated by John Clarke, O.C.D.. ICS Publications, Washington D.C., 1996. P.77
Bird, Msgr. T., St. Therese’s Use of Scripture, St. Therese Doctor of the Little Way, pp 20-30. Park press Inc., Waite Park MN, 1997.p.9
St. Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, The Autobiography of St.Therese of Lisieux. Third Edition, translated by John Clarke, O.C.D.. ICS Publications, Washington D.C., 1996.p. 41
Ibid p.87
Bird, Msgr. T., St. Therese’s Use of Scripture, St. Therese Doctor of the Little Way, pp 20-30. Park press Inc., Waite Park MN, 1997. p.51
Ibid p.120
Ibid p.58)
