Heather King - Shirt of Flame: A Year with Saint Therese of Lisieux

A Year with Saint Thrse of Lisieux

SHIRT of FLAME

A Year with Saint Thrse of Lisieux

SHIRT of FLAME

HEATHER KING

Shirt of Flame: A Year with St. Thrse of Lisieux

2011 First Printing

Copyright 2011 by Heather King

ISBN 978-1-55725-808-3

Scripture quotations are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

King, Heather, 1952

Shirt of flame : a year with St. Thrse of Lisieux / Heather King.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ).

ISBN 978-1-55725-808-3 (paper back)

1. Thrse, de Lisieux, Saint, 1873-1897. I. Title.

BX4700.T5K56 2011

282.092dc23

2011022594

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete Press

Brewster, Massachusetts

www.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America.

For Alfred Leroy Davis III

The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one discharge from sin and error.

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre

To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove.

We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.

T.S. ELIOT, from Four Quartets

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

ST. THRSE OF LISIEUX lived only twenty-four years, from 1873 to 1897. She was the youngest of five daughters, all of whom eventually became nuns. When Thrse was four, her mother died. From the age of nine she had a vocation. When the Carmelite convent where she longed to make her home said they couldnt take her until the standard age of twenty-one, she badgered her father to take her to Rome so that she could appeal, in person, to the Pope. In 1888, at the age of fifteen, she entered the cloister. Her life in the convent was unremarkable. She did not distinguish herself spiritually or in any other way with her fellow nuns. But inside her soul, a conflagration raged. Inside she was on fire with love.

Inside, she consented to wear the intolerable shirt of flame (see the passage from T.S. Eliots poem on page vii) that can either purify or destroy, redeem or eternally torment. Inside, she allowed her heart to be consumedinvisibly, in obscurityby the cleansing blaze of Christs love. So vivid was the phrase from Eliots poem, so beautifully did the image evince Thrses inner life, struggles, and spiritual evolution, that I chose Shirt of Flame as the title of this book.

In fact, Thrse must have exhibited some small outward spark. For in the winter of 1894, under orders from her second-oldest sister Pauline (Mother Agnes of Jesus, at that time prioress of the convent), who in turn had been urged of most editions of her autobiography, Lhistoire dune me (The Story of a Soul).

She completed the rest of the book in stages. A letter written to Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart while on retreat in September 1896 became Manuscript B, comprising of The Story of a Soul and including, among other things, the Divine Elevator passage and an explication of Thrses little way. Full of charity and good cheer to the end, she died in agony, with no pain medication, on September 30, 1897, crying: I love You!

The Story of a Soul, published posthumously and heavily edited by Pauline, became an immediate bestseller. The entire world seemed to respond to the simple, childlike nun who was nicknamed The Little Flower. In an unusual move, Pope Benedict XV waived the usual fifty-year beatification requirement. Though others had waited centuries to become saints, Thrse was canonized a mere twenty-eight years after her death.

At first glance, her observations can seem commonplace: At each new opportunity to do battle, when my enemies come and provoke me, I conduct myself bravely [SS, p. 238]. God wouldnt know how to inspire desires that cant be realized [SS, p. 230]. Now I no longer have any desire, unless its to love Jesus passionately [SS, p. 201].

This deceptively simple book, and the inner journey it describes, however, continue to instruct, confound, and inspire. As writers from Father Ronald Rolheiser to Dorothy Day have noted, Thrse was a mass of contradictions: pampered child, yet with a will of iron; possessed of a lifelong, innate, and in the end conscripted loneliness, yet able to embrace the whole world; essentially unschooled, yet one of only three women (along with St. Teresa of Avila and St. Catherine of Siena) made by papal decree a Doctor of the Church; a spiritual giant whose philosophy has come to be known as the little way.

I think we all heave a sigh of relief when we hear the little way. When we try to practice it, though, we tend to find that the way is not so little, or rather not so easy. We see that the little way is grounded in great paradox, great complexity, and great labor. Thrse tells in The Story of a Soul, for example, of the nun who sat behind her in choir who made a supremely annoying noise, like two shells rubbing together. Thrse trained herself, literally breaking into a sweat from the effort, to refrain from turning around and giving the woman a nasty glare. Try that next time someone jumps the line at the bank, or cuts you off as you try to merge onto the freeway, or insinuates that youre not working hard enough! Begin to ponder the years of discipline, prayer, and the turning of the will toward God required for such a tiny taming of the instincts.