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Why
I love You, O Thérèse. At
the beginning of the month of July 2005, Bishop Guy
Gaucher became emeritus bishop of the Diocese of Bayeux
and Lisieux; that is to say, having reached the age of
seventy-five, the age at which bishops submit their
resignation to the pope, he retired from the position he
held in the diocese and also the position he held at the
Lisieux Pilgrimage Centre, both of which he had served
for eighteen years. Several
gatherings marked his departure, one with the diocesan
priests at Caen, on Thursday 16th June, and
another on Sunday June 19th in the basilica
of Lisieux, in the presence of Pierre Pican, Bishop of
Bayeux and Lisieux. During
that thanksgiving service, Bishop Guy Gaucher gave the
homily which is reproduced here. Guy
Gaucher’s life was influenced by Thérèse of Lisieux,
whom he made known through many lectures, articles and
works, the most important of which being “Story of a
Life” (Cerf). The
enormous involvement that Guy had as a Carmelite, before
he became bishop, continued throughout his Episcopate.
This, plus the support and energy he gives the
Lisieux Pilgrimage Centre, the talent with which he
presents the Theresian message, and the friendship that
he shares with everyone, can all be seen in a concise
form in his letter to Thérèse.
The Rector of Lisieux Pilgrimage Centre is
pleased to share this fiery testimony of love with all
those who love Thérèse, and for whom Bishop Guy
Gaucher has been, and continues to be, a guide to make
her known. Thank
you, Guy. Bernard
Lagoutte Rector St.
Thérèse Shrine, Lisieux. Brothers
and Sisters in Christ For
this thanksgiving service, allow me for once, not to
ponder exclusively upon the Word of God. In
this Basilica where I celebrate my farewell Eucharist to
the Diocese of Bayeux and Lisieux, and to the Lisieux
Pilgrimage Centre, I would like to share with you one
more time what I owe to Sister Thérèse of the Child
Jesus of the Holy Face. Of
course, every thanksgiving goes first and foremost to
the Triune God. It
is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the beginning and
the end of everything, who lead the Church, who lead the
world, who lead each one of us.
But God’s grace goes through intermediaries,
mediators. Thérèse
Martin is one of these favoured ones. Now
that I am going to practice my Episcopal ministry in a
different way – for the mission continues – I would
like to give thanks for this young woman, this “beacon
of our century” as P. Congar said, by way of a
meditation, a testimony, which one could entitle “Why
I love you, O Thérèse”. Like
so many others, at first I experienced only
indifference, if not scorn, towards you, Thérèse.
Your statue in my parish, the ‘Orphelins
d’Auteuil’, held hardly any attraction for me.
At the age of twenty-two, I passed through
Lisieux without bothering to visit your Carmel.
Everything seemed to distance me from you: these
countless merchants who offered your honeyed image,
which was ugly because too “pretty”; the little –
very little – I knew about you: your Catholic
environment which had turned in on itself, your
collectively canonizable family, your ‘Belle Epoque’
which exasperated me with its narrow moralism, its
conformist art, its naïve confidence in Progress; your
pious language, your “angelic” life at the Carmel,
with its strange rules, its black veils and grilles,
your romantic death as “young girl of the rose” «de
jeune fille á la rose» As
for those who sung your praises, they irritated me even
more. Truly,
you had everything against you. These
difficult situations quite suit you; you love a fight.
How are you going to go about moving us deeply,
“catching” us, penetrating our lives like a burglar
yet without imposing your presence.
Sometimes you strike like lightening, sometimes
you take your time.
Often you need only reveal your true face.
Who can resist your secret charm?
Those who do not receive this Theresian grace.
Because, of course, there has to be grace there.
Grace which annihilates, as if playing a game,
the wall of obstacles that has been built up at whim.
So that if you ask me why I love you, I can only
reply—because it’s you. Which, obviously, doesn’t explain anything.
However, I have been asked to give reasons.
So, let us look for them. I
love you because you remain constantly surprising, an
elusive, puzzling personality.
You are nothing like the wooden image that I
pictured before. You
surprised even yourself by the contrasts in your
character. It
is true, I believed you to be vapid even though your
intuitive mind never rests.
You are always searching, never satisfied with
your discoveries. You
always want to go further, especially where God is
involved. But you also know how to weigh up those around you.
You are not taken in by those who try to impress. Sometimes
you are gentle, shy, sometimes you are a virgin warrior
hungry for glory, fascinated by your sister, Joan of
Arc. Persistent,
bold, daring, you pursue your goal: to die for love. At
first I took you for a pious little girl, a young lady
from a good family, an exemplary nun yet passionately in
love with Jesus, your Beloved, using the informal
‘tu’ form to address him in private.
For him, you risk everything: you run down the
street after your bishop so that he move forward the
date of your first communion; you go to see him at
Bayeux (hair tied back to make you look older) so that
he would agree to let you enter the Carmelite Order at
fifteen; you appeal to the Pope for the same permission.
You were so sure of yourself.
For love alone, you became “delirious” in
September 1896, suffering infinite desires that burdened
your heart: you want to be a Priest, a Doctor of the
Church, a missionary, a martyr…is this reasonable?
No. You
know that but you don’t give up.
You have to find a solution and you will find it. Unassuming,
quiet and yet brave (much more so than your sister Céline),
you proceed alone along unfamiliar paths. “And
my own folly is this, to trust…”.
Your youth and your littleness is your strength. I
love you because your “little way”, your brilliant eureka, rediscovers the heart of
the Gospel at a time when Christians were torn apart by
a multitude of obligations, duties, and practices often
out of fear, obsessed with the Justice of God.
You go right to the fundamental issue with clear
simplicity, inflexible as steel.
“As for
me, I no longer find anything in books, with the
exception of the Gospel.
The Gospel is enough”. I
love you because you remained a child, or rather, you
rediscovered all the graces of a child at maturity, a
privilege so rare.
At twelve or thirteen you must have been
unbearable with your endless tears; your looks of
Magdelene who “would
cry because she had cried”.
What a contrast with the maturity you had in
later years (when you were a little over twenty),
something that senior Carmelites came to you searching
for. I
love you for your sense of humour, you have no illusions
about yourself or those around you. You love the saints who joke, who are always cheerful, who
are very fond of their family.
That is also why we love you.
When you reach maturity, around 1895, it seems to
me you are finally completely yourself, you breath life,
you freely love nature, flowers, animals, the sky, the
stars…but first and foremost you love mankind,
especially the poor in your community.
In your vocation of solitude – o paradox –
your feminine nature blossoms.
Your feelings at first so disrupted (you had a
rough start in life: the loss of successive mothers,
your serious illness, your scruples, the “sorrows of
your soul”, your excessive sensitiveness) stabilised,
and you loved all your sisters, and your two spiritual
brothers though they were young.
You moved with astonishing ease through the
pettinesses and misunderstandings of a cloistered life,
without despising anyone, taking care of each one and
loving them just as they were. I
love you because you are true, love truth, fight for it,
mercilessly tracking down the prevarications, the small
“pious” hypocricies.
You preferred to be sent away from the Carmel
than let Sister Marthe, your companion through
noviciate, become attached to Mother Marie Gonzague “like
a dog to its master”.
You like clarity.
How you must have suffered when you found
yourself at the centre of the influences of all your
Mothers, who wanted to model you according to their
ideal. You knew how to escape them, be steadfast on your road of
freedom, and surrender yourself to God alone, to follow
your path, inspired by the Holy Spirit.
You do not want to seem but to be.
Too bad if that displeased them. I
love you because at the end of your life you entered
darkness and took your place at “the
table of sinners”.
You left the Catholic ghetto which looked down on
those “great sinners” from atop its clear
conscience. You
go to seek your “first
child” in prison where he awaits the guillotine.
Henri Pranzini will die forgiven without knowing
what he owes you, but you, you will never forget him.
Among your companions, we note also Hyacinthe
Loyson, former provincial of the Carmelites, married,
who rebelled against papal infallibility: you consider
him your “brother”. Confined to your sickbed you offer your last communion for
him and your suffering for René Tostain, that morally
irreproachable atheist who married your cousin
Marguerite Maudelonde.
You experienced the trials of faith confronted by
God’s silence, by giddy calls to “nothingness”, by
temptations to suicide, moral and physical sufferings in
many forms. Through
all that you kept the hope of a bold young woman
gambling her whole life on love, without ever paying the
stoic, staying little and vulnerable. I
love you because you revealed to me the spirit of the
Carmel and because through you, God has inspired
numerous people to surrender themselves to Love in the
heart of the Church, by way of freely given, silent
prayer. World
patron of missions, you are the proof of the mysterious
efficiency of this concealed prayer.
All your posthumous life shows this, proclaims
it. Little
unknown Carmelite, you inspired Vatican II, you are a
teacher of life for all generations, in all walks of
life. You
democratised holiness by living faith, hope, and love,
in everyday life, the life of many people. I
love you because, cheerful and daring little girl, you
overturned the heavy ecclesiastical apparatus.
Grave investigators wanted to make you fit a
model of a definable sanctity.
You foiled all their plans and for you it was
necessary to shorten the time regulations.
That was easy, all the popes were your friends.
You showered the world with countless miracles,
sometimes novel ones in which your sense of humour could
be seen. I
love you, finally – I should stop the litany – as a
sign, a reflection, a proof (what world shall I use?) of
the Merciful Love of the Father manifested to the world
through Jesus and the Holy Spirit which blows where it
wants to. If
the Trinity made you a “masterpiece of nature and
grace” we must give thanks in adoring silence.
“For you God, even silence is praise” (Ps.
64) I
love you because you are a brave and intrepid missionary
of Jesus in our secularised world.
During my seventeen years here at Lisieux I was
able to see, through contact with crowds from all over
the world, the power of your action on their hearts, on
people from all classes of society, all countries, all
languages. I
was also blessed to observe the incredible impact of
your travels across the world.
Since 1994, your Relics have reached the five
continents, I have seen it with my own eyes: in Italy,
Belgium, New York, the Philippines, Hong-Kong, Canada,
Russia, Ireland, Lebanon, Benin, Poland…You are truly
a sister to the world. I
love you because everything you wrote is true, and you
always keep your promises, this one among others; “I
will spend my heaven doing good on Earth until the end
of the world”. I
love you finally – I really have to stop – because
one of your promises was fulfilled on Octo ber 19th
1997, one hundred years after your death: “Ah!
In spite of my littleness, I would like to enlighten
souls as did the Prophets and the Doctors…” (Ms B, 3 r°) Here
I would like to include in my thanksgiving Pope John
Paul II. All
of my episcopate took place during his pontificate. Now,
if Thérèse was declared a Doctor of the Church at the
age of 24, the youngest in 2000 years; it’s really
thanks to him who wanted it, overcoming every obstacle,
realising that her “feminine
genius” made a major contribution to the “Science
of Divine Love”. (Title of his Apostolic letter 19/10/1997). This
is also a good opportunity to give thanks to John Paul
II, another mediator of divine grace for our world.
How can we doubt that, since the proceedings for
his Beatification open, exceptionally, next June 28th,
he will soon join his friend Thérèse as a canonised
saint? *** “Our Church is the
Church of Saints”
wrote Bernanos. Let
us praise God for his Saints, give thanks for their
existence: they are signs for the world that the Gospel
is alive everywhere, in all walks of life. They are our guides, our teachers, our friends; they help us
along our way. They
are God’s family.
Thérèse said “Who
could have invented the Blessed Virgin?”.
One could say “Who
could have invented Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus
of the Holy Face?” at the same time so near and so
far away, so ordinary and so extraordinary, this little
Norman woman, loved in all the world, whom we think we
know and who always escapes us, because the last word of
her being expresses something of the unfathomable
mystery of the Love of God.
Yes, thank you Lord for having given us Saint
Therese of Lisieix.
Praise be to you for this young woman who fully
answered the call of your Merciful Love. Those
are some reasons why I love you, O Thérèse. Bishop
Guy Gaucher, odc |
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