Filled with zeal for the salvation of souls, Saint Thérèse left us valuable teachings in her letters, which are fortunately preserved by history.
Newsroom (07/07/2023 09:00, Gaudium Press) One of the desires of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus was to be a missionary and to preach the Gospel throughout the world, even to the most distant islands. Now, since the vocation of this soul of fire was to live in the seclusion of Carmel and to make her heroism shine only in the eyes of the Angels and Blessed in Heaven, the Good God, who “would not be able to inspire […] unfulfillable desires”, reserved for her a palpable and sensitive participation in such an enterprise.
Two “brothers” sent by God
One day, while working in the laundry, the Carmelite St. Therese was called aside by Mother Agnes of Jesus, who read her a letter that had just arrived. It was from a young seminarian who, “inspired, he said, by Sr. Teresa, […] came to ask for a sister who would dedicate herself in a special way to the salvation of his soul, and help him with prayers and sacrifices, as a missionary, so that it might be possible for him to save many souls“. In return, he promised to always remember her in the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice, as soon as he was ordained.
At the end of the reading, what a joy! Mother Agnes revealed to Sr. Therese that she was the one chosen to help the future missionary! Although she felt unworthy of this task, she readily accepted it.
From then on, St. Thérèse began to contribute to the fidelity of Maurice Bellière, then a seminarian and aspiring missionary, who, on the eve of her death, embarked for Algeria.
But after a few months, Mother Mary of Gonzaga made her a second proposal: to also take charge of the spiritual and apostolic interests of another seminarian and future missionary, named Adolphe Roulland. Exultant with joy, Saint Thérèse gained a new “brother”!
A union sealed years before
The union between Therese and Roulland, however, already had a very beautiful antecedent.
On 8 September 1890, Therese had definitively left this world and by her religious profession had become the spouse of the King of Heaven. On that day, with all confidence, she asked her Divine Spouse particularly for an apostolic soul, because, not being able to become a priest, she wanted a priest in her place, who shared her thirst for souls, to receive special graces.
Years later, the then Fr. Roulland told the Carmelite Saint that just on the date of his profession he had had doubts about his vocation and entry into the major seminary. While he was praying in the Chapel of Our Lady of Livramento, he suddenly and definitively set himself on the path to the priesthood.
And so, a tip of the mysterious veil that hides the secrets of eternity was then lifted: Therese found the one for whom she had ardently prayed and could, united to him in a concrete way, set out to conquer souls. As she herself would later affirm, in this union Fr. Roulland played the biblical role of Joshua, who led the fight on the field, while she rejoiced in being his little Moses, whose arms and heart, sustained by Christ, were continually turned towards heaven in order to obtain victory.
In fact, as soon as she received the news that Fr. Roulland, newly ordained, was destined to evangelize the province of Su-Tchuen in China, the Carmelite fixated a map of the Chinese territory on the wall of the room where she worked, so that she would never forget her part in this work.
In her letters
Therese’s friendship with these two priests, which was entirely supernatural, took deep root in her soul, and was nourished by the frequent letters they exchanged. These have fortunately been preserved by history and constitute treasures of holy teaching.
When writing to Fr. Roulland, the Carmelite sought to encourage him to bear the sufferings of apostolic labor, which ranged from physical ailments to persecutions, always pointing out to him, with the wisdom proper to the humble, the high designs of God hidden behind such circumstances. Sometimes she would not hesitate to tell her brother missionary about some fact of her life or of her conviviality in the Carmel of Lisieux, and she would also make some unusual requests, such as sending her a lock of his hair, to be kept as a relic when he received the palm of martyrdom?
However, even more touching are the letters to Fr. Bellière. Since he was very weak and frail, he did not hesitate to entrust himself entirely to the direction of Sr. Therese. She, in her turn, noticing this disposition of soul and knowing deeply the interior life of her “little brother” while he was still a seminarian, made him follow the dictates of her little way.
… a treasure of good advice!
On one occasion, this future priest, already aware that his spiritual sister had fallen seriously ill and was soon to leave for Heaven, told her of a difficulty he was facing: without the contact he had with her, he would find himself without the support he needed to persevere on the difficult way of the cross. “When I am in port, I shall teach you, dear brother of my soul, how to navigate the stormy sea of the world with the abandonment and love of a child who knows that her Father adores her and that he would not leave her alone in the hour of danger.”
Transcending the limits of time, these words of St. Thérèse also teach us how necessary it is to have a filial and almost childlike trust in our Divine Redeemer. From this trust springs that serenity which our soul so greatly needs in order to overcome the hardships of life, and if we have it, even without human help, we have nothing to fear.
On another occasion, the seminarian Bellière confided to the nun that he had wasted “the beautiful years” of his youth, “those that Jesus loves above all”, devoting to the world and to its follies the talents that God had lent him. Only at the age of eighteen had he received the grace of conversion. Because of these past faults, the future priest had a certain difficulty in believing in the merciful love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which makes Him forgive and forget our sins.
This feeling transpires in several of his letters. In one of them, while making an act of faith that, from the heavenly glory, St. Thérèse would be at his side, he made the following reservation: “Unless Jesus, irritated by my complaints, does not want it.” In later correspondence, moreover, he expressed the fear that in Heaven Our Lord would tell Thérèse of all his miseries and the griefs he had caused her, thus diminishing the Blessed Virgin’s tenderness for him.
Lack of trust in God’s mercy tormented the young seminarian’s spiritual life. Now, this disastrous defect often affects our souls as well. How often do we not linger in lamentations for the sins we committed in our past life, or even for our present faults, giving ourselves up to despair or discouragement… If such temptations are assailing us, perhaps the same words which animated Fr. Bellière can console us:
“I suppose that a father has two mischievous and disobedient children and that, coming to punish them, he sees one who trembles and turns away from him with dread, having, however, deep in his heart, the feeling that he deserves to be punished; and that his brother, on the contrary, throws himself into his father’s arms saying that he is sorry to have saddened him, that he loves him very much and that, as proof, he will be well-behaved from now on. Then, if this child asks to be punished with a kiss, I do not think that the heart of the happy father can resist the filial trust of his son, whose sincerity and love he knows. […] [He] is not unaware that the son will more than once fall into the same faults; nevertheless, he is ready to forgive him always, if the son always captivates his heart…”
In the same way the Good Jesus acts with the miserable but sincerely contrite soul, trusting and abandoned in his fatherly arms. “He is not always scolding, nor is his resentment eternal. He does not treat us according to our sins, nor punish us in proportion to our faults, for both the heavens are far removed from the earth and His mercy is great to those who fear Him; both the east is far removed from the west and He removes our sins from us. As a father has mercy on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him” (Ps 102:9-13).
And if the dread of our faults still persists, let us remember that Mary Most Holy is our Mother. Even if we have the misfortune to fall into grave sin, making us despised by all, to the point that even insensitive creatures, like fire, air and earth, want to punish us in defiance of the honour of their Creator, if we have recourse to Our Lady we shall find the most welcoming, safest and most maternal refuge and the surest path to reconciliation with God.
In a struggle for souls, eternally!
Therese’s edifying letters ceased to be handwritten on 30 September 1897, and were dictated directly to the hearts of her devotees from the highest Heaven. There, very close to her Divine Jesus, she continues forever her mission of winning souls, favoured with a special power granted by Holy Church, which has proclaimed her Patroness of the Missions and Missionaries.
As for us, let us not hesitate to place ourselves under the protection of the great St. Therese of the Child Jesus. Let us earnestly ask her to win our souls completely for Our Lord and to teach us to be like children in her hands, true heirs of the heavenly Kingdom (cf. Mt 19:14)!
Text adapted from the magazine Heralds of the Gospel n. 246, June 2022
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm
