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Welcome to St. Thérèse

from Fr. Gabriel O'Brien, O.Carm

We welcome the relics of St. Thérèse, The Little Flower, to Ireland next year. These relics are what is left of the mortal remains of this great Saint. They are to be revered and reverenced as the vehicle through which Thérèse sometimes communicated her love of God and for others during her gifted lifetime. They are also the instruments through which God grants favours to us who are still on our Pilgrim Way. We are hopeful then, that the coming of these relics to Ireland will be a time of grace, a surge of hope and an inspiration to the New Millennium.

The relics of St. Thérèse invite us to revisit her life, and especially her teaching: a teaching that is as old as the Church herself. It is essentially about God’s love for us, and our response to that love. From her earliest childhood, Thérèse fell in love with Jesus. No wonder her eldest sister Marie who was also a sister in the Convent at Lisieux could say of her and to her “You are possessed by God. Yes, possessed as some people are possessed by the devil (Autobiography). This was not a ‘felt’ love, still less a ‘sentimental’ one. It was a firm act of will, begun as a child and developed under grace into her young adult life, not to refuse or deny Jesus anything. Sometimes painful, always demanding sacrifice, it sought to keep God’s commandments in the most perfect possible way.

Her understanding of the ‘Great Commandment’ (John 15 v12, v17) and the practical living of it in the Community at Lisieux provide a model for all of us, lay, as well as religious and priests, to follow. It sets a headline for inter-personal relationships in the Christian mode. It involves patience, tolerance and the acceptance of people as they are. It follows the paradigm of God’s mysterious love for us.

Words like ‘littleness’, ‘weakness’, ‘surrender’, ‘Fatherhood’, ‘childhood’, form the vocabulary of St. Thérèse and her friends. ‘Simple’ in her language does not mean easy. It represents her uncomplicated acceptance of God’s love for her -- a love that she could not earn or deserve -- a love that was in fact a complete gift. It was accepted with the guilelessness, trust, vulnerability and simplicity of a little child.

She mocks by her very simplicity, our vain efforts to seek reasons why God loves us, and would disarm us completely by the childlike charm of her reply to our questions. She would say, sure “God is love” (1 John 4 v8, v16) and it’s his nature to love. He simply can’t do otherwise. No matter how often we have offended him, he still loves us, and has never stopped loving us.

One last word before I say farewell: do yourself a big favour, buy a copy of ‘Story of a Soul’ the autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux and read it for your family and yourself. You will find that the children will love it, and will want to read it again and again. With this prayerful preparation may we not expect a ‘shower of roses’ -- Irish roses, during the precious months of the visit of these venerable relics.