Thérèse
of Lisieux
is one of the patron saints of the missions,
not because she ever went anywhere,
but because of her special love of the missions,
and the prayers and letters she gave in support of missionaries.
Missionary
to the World
Even as a child, Thérèse Martin was fascinated
by the missions. She lived at a time of epic missionary
expansion, which saw hundreds of young priests and nuns
leaving for Africa, South America, China and the South Seas...
When, on their
journey to Italy, Celine brought her some missionary journals,
Thérése refused to read them: she was too
eager to travel to other countries herself to preach the
love of Jesus. She felt drawn to the Carmel as a way of
doing this, working through prayer and the gift of herself
-like her "Spanish Mother", Saint Teresa of Avila
- for the conversion of others. Like Teresa, too, "she
would have given a thousand lives to save a single soul".
When she entered
the Carmel, she said: "I came to save souls and especially
to pray for priests". By praying for priests (she had
discovered on her Italian pilgrimage that even the holiest
priests needed the constant prayers of others), she wanted
to become an "apostle of apostles" and so make
herself an even more effective missionary.
Increasingly,
the whole purpose of her life became "to love Jesus
and make Him loved".
She was delighted when she was given two "spiritual
brothers" and asked to help them in their ministry:
Father Maurice Belliére later became a White Father
and missionary in Africa; Father Adolphe Roulland, of the
Paris Foreign Missions, went to China. Thérése
wrote to them until she died and, in so doing, extended
her vision of salvation to embrace the whole world.
This desire for
the missions continued until she was on her very deathbed,
culminating in the hope that she would become an even greater
missionary in the life to come. She wrote to Father Roulland
: "I will not be inactive in heaven, my desire is to
continue working for the Church and souls. I ask this of
the Good Lord and I am sure He will grant me this wish.".
She repeatedly
promised her sisters "I will return...", "I
will come down..." The most astonishing thing of all
is that, in 1927, the Church actually proclaimed her Universal
Patron Saint of the missions.
When her faith
was being tried for the last time, she came to realize that
her own darkness could bring light to "unbelievers".
This was why Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris - deeply
distressed at the general decline of religious faith in
France - founded the seminary of the Mission of France in
Lisieux in 1941.
Thérése,
the patron saint of missions abroad and at home, never left
her cell, but she put so much of the Trinity's Love into
her own daily life that she made God's Merciful Love illuminate
the world.
