January 22, 2013 Martin Mallon (Ireland) Martin's previous articles
Shirt of Flame:
A Year with St Therese of Lisieux
I
have just finished reading a wonderful book by Heather King,
Shirt of Flame: A Year with St Therese of
Lisieux, Paraclete
This
is an excellent book which, for me, helps to clarify and put into perspective
Therese’s Little Way:
...the
core of Therese’s spirituality is not as much doing little hidden things for
Christ as it is noticing the unnoticed drops of blood within the body of Christ,
that is, noticing and valuing fully the unique and precious quality of other
people’s stories, tears, pains, and joys. Page
122
Paraclete
Press asked Heather to spend a year walking with St Therese and to write about
her journey. In each of the twelve chapters we receive Heather’s reflections
on and insights into a particular aspect of Therese’s life, followed by a deep
and honest appraisal of Heather’s own life and how Therese impacts on it.
In
the introduction Heather writes that “The Scandal
of Christ is that to have a relationship with him means to share in his
suffering.” Interestingly she points out
that “Christ
invites us to share in his suffering consciously...not by taking on extra
suffering but by joyfully participating in the mostly small but myriad instances
of suffering that come to us unbidden each day.” Page
xvi
In
her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, St Therese
of Lisieux,
Yet
I feel the call of more vocations still; I want to be a warrior, a priest, an
apostle, a doctor of the Church, a martyr...If only I were a priest! How
lovingly I would bear You in my hands, my Jesus, when my voice had brought You
down from Heaven. How lovingly I would give You to souls!... page 197
Heather
refers to this on page 50 of her book where she highlights about Therese “even
though she longed to be a priest herself.”
However,
she did not connect Therese’s desire to be a priest, when Heather quotes
Therese on page 115, when writing:
"Jesus
can’t desire useless sufferings for us, and that He wouldn’t inspire in me
the desires that I feel if He didn’t want me to fulfill them”
Therese
is stating clearly that God would not have given her the desire to be a priest
if he did not want her to fulfill that desire. It is the patriarchal,
clericalism ridden, institutional church that prevented Therese from becoming a
priest, not God.
In
the process of Therese’s beatification her sister Celine, also a nun, gave the
following testimony under oath:
...in
1897, but before she was really ill, Sister Thérèse told me she expected to
die that year. Here is the reason she gave me for this in June. When she
realised that she had pulmonary tuberculosis, she said: ‘You see, God is going
to take me at an age when I would not have had the time to become a priest....
If I could have been a priest, I would have been ordained at these June
ordinations. So what did God do? So that I would not be disappointed, he let me
be sick: in that way I could not have been there, and I would die before I could
exercise my ministry’.
(Monica Furlong, Thérèse of Lisieux, Virago, London, 1987. page 95.)
It
is amazing the measures God had to undertake because he was being thwarted by
the institutional church.
At
the end of each chapter Heather writes a prayer of her own, and they are all
moving and beautiful, as well as, if not because of, being down to earth
and realistic. I particularly liked the end of the prayer on page 79:
Help
me to accept myself the way I am, not giving up the idea of healing and growth,
but giving up the idea that I am ever going to reach some future point where I
can rest. I can rest here.
And on page 103:
Lord,
When
I feel like I am being stripped down to nothing, help me to know that you are
especially near.
I
cannot recommend this book highly enough.