Fr. Joel Guibert - Abandonment to God: The Way of Peace of St. Therese of Lisieux

FR. JO L GUIBERT

A bandonment
to God

THE WAY OF PEACE OF

St . Th r se of Lisieux

Translated by James Henri McMurtrie

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS
Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright 2019 by Sophia Institute Press

is a translation of (Toulouse: ditions Du Carmel, 2017).

Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

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Scripture quotations have been taken from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (RSV), copyright 1965 and 1966 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.

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Excerpts from the English translation of the for use in the United States of America copyright 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.Libreria Editrice Vaticana. English translation of the copyright 1997, United States Conference of Catholic BishopsLibreria Editrice Vaticana.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Guibert, Joel, 1959- author. | McMurtrie, James Henri, translator.

Title: Abandonment to God : the way of peace of St. Therese of Lisieux /

Fr. Joel Guibert ; translated by James Henri McMurtrie.

Other titles: Abandon a Dieu, un chemin de paix a lecole de la petite

Therese. English

Description: Manchester, New Hampshire : Sophia Institute Press, 2019. |

Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: Explains confidence in

and abandonment to God according to the little way of St. Therese of

Lisieux Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019029024 | ISBN 9781622828340 (paperback) ePub ISBN 9781622828357

Subjects: LCSH: Therese, de Lisieux, Saint, 1873-1897. |

Spirituality Catholic Church. | Spiritual life Catholic Church. |

Christian life Catholic authors.

Classification: LCC BX4700.T5 G82413 2019 | DDC 248.4/82 dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029024

Contents

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Foreword

Saint Francis de Sales said that abandoning oneself to God is everything. As this work amply shows us, a Doctor of the Church does not say anything else.

Father Jol Guibert immerses us here in the concepts of confidence and abandonment, which are like the pillars of this little way, whose uncontested Doctor is Saint Thrse of the Child Jesus. While solidly relying on her doctrine, he invites us to this essential movement of abandonment, without which there is no authentic spiritual life.

The author says in his introduction that God desires to have a relationship of loving abandonment with each of us. In other words, God, who, according to little Thrse, is only Love and mercy does not want to stop creating a filial relationship with each one of us. During his pilgrimage to Lisieux, on the occasion of his apostolic trip to France in June 1980, Pope John Paul II declared that the message of the gospel, as the foundation of the spiritual path of childhood, consisted in believing in Gods fatherhood over us:

Of Thrse of Lisieux, it can be said with conviction that the Spirit of God enabled her heart to reveal directly, to the men and women of our time, the fundamental mystery, the reality of the Gospel: the fact of having really received a spirit of adoption as children that makes us cry out, Abba! Father! The Little Way is the way of spiritual childhood. This way contains something unique that is part of the genius of St. Thrse of Lisieux. At the same time it holds a confirmation and renewal of the most fundamental and universal truth. For what truth of the Gospel message is more fundamental and universal than this: that God is our Father and we are his children?

Father Guibert invites us to plunge into the mystery of divine connection. The first part of his work, which is more theological, looks into the theme of divine providence and invites us to contemplate a divine fatherhood that has nothing to do with the caricatures that we often reduce it to. He shows that, according to the whole great tradition of the Church and particularly to Saint Thomas Aquinas, whom he frequently quotes God has a divine plan for each of us and does not stop pursuing it, in spite of our resistance. He writes that the whole object of this book lies in the response to this question: Can I enter into this very practical plan of love that God has for my life, through a confident and active abandonment?

The confident abandonment to divine providence, therefore, is the underlying theme of this work, since the providential mystery opens the secret to the way of childhood. The movement of abandonment to God that Thrse invites us to, through her life and all her writings, relies on a very positive and thoughtful vision of Gods action in her life and of God Himself. She even declared, at the beginning of her autobiography, that she took her pen to start singing on earth what she will sing eternally: the mercies of the Lord (Manuscript A, 3 r).

To abandon oneself to God is therefore to entrust oneself completely, not to a force that would be hostile to us, but to a personal God and to His omnipotent love. The way, which seems simple, is, nonetheless, not as easy as our author emphasizes; for to abandon oneself to God, we must abandon our pride, which is always ready to overtake Gods love for us. The spiritual way of childhood and its movement of abandonment, which is one of its pillars, along with confidence, proves to be the antithesis of original sin and, at the same time, its surest antidote. For does not the main cause of the first sin, the archetype of all the others, stem from this self-sufficiency and lack of confidence in God, from whom man wants to emancipate himself this God who is the source of his being? Does not its main consequence stem from this fear of God, which is so hard, since the Fall, to uproot from his sinful heart?

As

The total abandonment that Thrse advocates is the way we must take if we want to find the Father, who waits for us in the burning home of the Holy Trinity, our true home. This way requires a great poverty of spirit as well as a confident and audacious faith in the goodness of the Father. According to Thrse, the smallness of childhood becomes an essential disposition of the heart even the blessedness of empty hands and poverty of heart as well as the driving force behind all holiness.

In the school of thought of Jesus, who is the perfect Child of the Father, the Saint of Lisieux invites us to understand that the gate that leads to life is not to be forced open and is not to be won by preliminary merits. Salvation is a grace and an undeserved gift that we must welcome with the confidence and dependence of a child, who receives from his parents everything he needs to live. Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 18:3).