Thérèse of Lisieux: Session 3
Summary
This video explores St. Teresa of Lisieux's devotion to the 'Holy Face' of Jesus, interpreting it as a profound experience of God's presence. It delves into how love allows us to see the soulful presence of others, mirroring how Jesus sees the divine in us. The discussion highlights themes of hiddenness, suffering, the 'dark night of the soul,' and the transformative power of love, even in death, drawing parallels between Christ's suffering and human experience.
Key Insights
Love allows us to see the soulful, unexplainable presence behind the beloved's visible face.
When we love someone very much, father, mother, sister brother grandmother grandfather lover spouse brother sister, whatever. When we look at their face, we see the face that everybody sees. But in our love for them, when we see their face, we really see in their face their soulful presence for which we are immensely grateful is in our life. It is a soulful presence that we see in the face of the beloved as the context of understanding where Teresa's inviting us to go in our own understanding of God's presence in our life.
Jesus sees our face as God the Father eternally contemplates it within the divine Trinity.
Now what's interesting then we might say for Therese, steeped in the scriptures, is if this is the context for the face of Jesus, who does Jesus see when he looks at our face? Who did Jesus see when he looked at her face, looks at our face? Poetically, it was kind of the direction we're headed in. Who Jesus sees when he sees our face in the inter-divine life of God. When God the Father in the Trinitarian unity of God, when God the Father expresses himself as the word, when God infinitely expresses the infinity of himself as the word, and then contemplates himself in the word, he then contemplates in the word we might say the face of himself completely poured out as the face of the word in trans-subjective communion. And here's the thing, that when Jesus sees our face, Jesus sees the face of who God the Father eternally contemplates in him before the origins of the universe. That God didn't have to try to imagine what your face might look like, but your face in the inter-divine life of God is the face that God the Father eternally contemplates in Christ. And since everything in God is God, he contemplates the divinity of your face.
The hidden life of fidelity, like Teresa's, profoundly impacts the world in unseen ways.
Or to console you I want to live unknown on earth. What if Therese was never asked to write the story of her soul? We wouldn't know anything about her. And since she was cloistered she was hidden. So Thomas Merton lived in a cloistered monastery hidden no active ministry hidden. He has insomnia and he says suddenly the bed becomes an altar and in a distant city somewhere someone's able to pray. The cloistered life that she lived I lived it in the monastery too is the hidden life but it's fidelity to this hidden life is the life that touches the whole world in ways we don't understand. It just so happens that through God's providence she was led to write this and that's how we know about her. But what do we know? What we know about her is her hiddenness because she reveals our hiddenness and the hiddenness is the hiddenness known only to God is present throughout the whole world with efficacy it has efficacy in the world. She has a subtle mystical insight about how we're woven into the lives of everyone on earth woven into the life of God woven into us this way hiddenly.
Teresa's spiritual guidance comes through subtle, inexplicable inner knowing, not solely from books.
Your beauty which you know how to veil. I'd like to talk about this. This is on page 187. It isn't just that she's hidden on this earth but she also reveals to us that she's hidden from herself. And also the face of the Christ that she's beholding is hidden from her and reveals itself to her as hidden. Here's the subtle text on how she practices Lectio Divina. What we might also suggest is the text by which we sit with her in Lectio Divina because we go crazy trying to figure it out. You know what I mean? It's it's a non-linear intimate immediacy what we can't be explained and she never lets up and she invites us to stay there and be with her. Here's the text. Do not believe that I'm swimming in consolations. This is page 187 of um the story of a soul which is the beginning of manuscript B which is the second manuscript that she wrote sharing with her the insights she had on this retreat sharing it with the prioress who happens to be also her older sister. Do not believe I'm swimming in consolations. Oh no my consolation is to have none on earth. Without showing himself without making his voice heard Jesus teaches me in secret. It is not by means of books for I do not understand what I'm reading. So she's in Lectio Divina reading her spiritual book but she doesn't understand it. Sometimes a word comes to console me such as this one which I received at the end of prayer after having remained in silence and aridity. So she reads it she doesn't understand it. She's sitting there in aridity that is emptiness and she's sitting there in silence about what she doesn't understand and she hears these words. Here is the teacher who I'm giving you. He will teach you everything that you must do. I want to make you read the book of life where it is contained the science of love. The science of love with a capital L. Ah yes this word resonates sweetly in the ear of my soul and I desire only this science having given all my riches for it. And it just so happens that quote is from Margaret Mary Alacoque who is the nun who in ecstasy at night she's a cloistered nun at the visions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Behold this heart with flames of love coming out crowned with thorns and they found the her actual copy of that in the monastery library that she read. So it's interesting that in the words of a mystic what she reads and doesn't understand but then sitting with it it like rains down on her incomprehensibly and is given to her as a kind of unexplainable clarity. And I think she's inviting us it is not what we comprehend but in the inability to comprehend it incomprehensibly realize in our heart and she's inviting us to go there because she lived there because that's where the presence of Jesus is in the face of Jesus non-distinct from her face and our face.
Death is a gateway to heaven, and the ultimate goal is to 'die of love' into God's presence.
But, notice we're not used to seeing things this way. Like, blood. Oh, glory, I'm dying. You know, you know what's strange about that? I mean, it's understandable in a way. We already know that life on this earth is fleeting. It's fragile. And we already know that really we're on this earth for a short time to learn how to love. And we know the love is present veiled. And efficacious under holiness through our insights in our mind, in our memory, by how mysteriously we've been awakened to God's presence in our life, by our will and our desire for God, which is given to us by God as an echo of God's desire for us, in our emotions as consolations and stirrings and awakenings, and so on. But, when we die and cross over, it'll be unveiled eternally, forever, in God. To be as one with God as God is one with God, because the generosity of God is infinite, and we are the generosity of God. We're the song that God sings. We know it now in a veiled way, but then it's unveiled. And even though it's true, death is something we're ambivalent about it. Do you know what I mean? It's so strange, we're so bound. It's understandable, we're human. But, she's inviting us to be kind of sensitive that death is the gate of heaven. And what she's really asking in this, through the whole manuscript, is it possible to die of love to the point that nothing will be left in me but love. And in so far as nothing's left in me but love, even though I'm still on earth, I've already crossed over, so that when I biologically die, nothing will happen, cuz I've already crossed over into the infinite union with infinity of life given to me, but it's obscure. It's hidden, but it's intimately known, and it's to that hidden place that her poetic sensitivity invites us to go. We somehow unexplainably know what she's talking about. And by sitting in her presence, we can become more habitually established in it.
The story of Veronica's Veil illustrates Jesus finding tenderness in sorrow and revealing the believer's own face.
Another thought I think with Therese, we all have moments. She's sharing them when she sees the blood. I mean, a certain moment. She talks about the way she walks. So, what we're really talking about is true that it flashes forth here and there like glimmers. But, how can we be healed from what hinders us from being more habitually established in this oneness with this? It's really And this is where I'd like to share the story that she was certainly familiar with, the story of Veronica's Veil. Veronica's Veil in the 1700s, by the Pope, was made as a universal the Stations of the Cross, as a universal practice in Catholic churches. So, there's 14 Stations of the Cross. Each one depicts a moment in the the crucifixion and the death of Jesus. So, it's a devotional practice, the practice of Stations of the Cross. And sometimes it's done liturgically in Lent, but you can go on your own and just practice. Stand before each station. We love thee, O Christ, and we bless thee, because by thy holy cross thou has redeemed the world. We can meditate on the cross. When I was in high school, the trauma was going on. I'd walk down to the church to make the Stations, and I was consoled by the Stations that I was not alone in my suffering. And she's consoled by the cross of Christ and the suffering of Christ this way. The one station that's not in the Gospels is the story of Veronica. It was a very early kind of poetic image in the life of the early church. And the story of Veronica is Jesus is going by carrying the cross, falling down, and and some people cheering and yelling and so forth. And Veronica is there, and she's moved by love to step out and offer to Jesus the only thing she can offer. And it was risky, too, to even admit that you knew Jesus, cuz they might do to you what he did to him. She offers her veil. It says that Jesus takes his her veil, closes his eyes, and buries his face in her veil. The softness of her veil was the only tenderness he could find in a life turned harsh. And notice, if you close your eyes and put your face in your hands, the world disappears. So, when he closed his eyes and put his face in the veil, it disappeared. And in that moment that it disappeared, Jesus, without going anywhere, in the midst of his agony, dropped down in the oceanic merciful tenderness of God. And Veronica dropped down with him. And all the people cheering on the side, they dropped down with him. And we dropped down with him, because it's celestial, heavenly place. Because when he lifted his face and gave it back to her, he went on to be executed. But, when she looked at the veil, she saw his face on the veil. At least in the piety of the church, in the Vatican in Rome, there is that veil. And one day in Lent, they take it out and show for the veneration of the faithful. Whether it's historically the veil or not, but it in the devotional sincerity is the is the face of Jesus. I have a icon here that I have, which is modeled after that face, the face of Jesus. But, here's the real question. When you look at the veil, this is the heart of Therese, whose face is it? It's Jesus' face, but it's yours. Because the faces are interposed. Because the face that Jesus sees is the face that God saw in Jesus. This is the face of love crucified, which is you, because you're walking your walk on your way to your own death. So, there is that face in you that's growing older by the minute and will die. But, the face that the one who loves you sees is the face of the beloved that never dies, because you're eternal. And love is eternal. And that's the mystery of the face of Christ.
Sections
Introduction to Teresa's Devotion to the Holy Face
St. Teresa of Lisieux chose two devotional names: Teresa of the Child Jesus and Teresa of the Holy Face.
When Teresa entered the monastery, she followed the custom of keeping her baptismal name but taking two devotional names. They would kind of embody her way of experiencing the presence of Jesus in her life. One name was Teresa of the Child Jesus. The other devotional name she chose was Teresa of the Holy Face.
The 'Holy Face' refers to the presence of Jesus, inviting a deeper experience of God's presence.
By the Holy Face, she's referring to the Holy Face of Jesus. And that's what we're going to be reflecting on here. What she saw in her devotional sincerity to the Holy Face, the face of Jesus, by following her, how it might help us in devotional sincerity to deepen our own experience of God's presence in our life. And I'd like to proceed with this in a kind of a poetic experiential way that will lead directly into kind of the the in- to the interiority of how of where her mind is where she helps us go there too within ourselves. And I'd like to suggest first that the the face of Jesus really the context with the meaning of the face of Jesus is the presence of Jesus. That's what she's really talking about and I would like to start there. On a reflection on the presence of God revealed to her in the presence of Jesus as the context for the face of Jesus.
Experiencing the Beloved's Presence Through the Face and Voice
Love allows us to see the soulful, unexplainable presence behind the beloved's visible face.
When we love someone very much, father, mother, sister brother grandmother grandfather lover spouse brother sister, whatever. When we look at their face, we see the face that everybody sees. But in our love for them, when we see their face, we really see in their face their soulful presence for which we are immensely grateful is in our life. It is a soulful presence that we see in the face of the beloved as the context of understanding where Teresa's inviting us to go in our own understanding of God's presence in our life.
The voice of a loved one can reveal the depth of their soul, much like their face.
There's an Irish singer that I like very much, Finbar Furey. And he has a song Sweet 16. It's about a young man being smitten by this girl that he sees on the village green. Finbar Furey says, 'When I saw the love light in your eyes, the world held but none but joy for me.' So, it's almost he just lights up inside. It's seeing the love light in her eyes, which is seeing the beauty of her soul as the beloved. And so then we're looking then to look at this presence of our soul that shines out through our face. I'd like to get another image of this where Teresa's really trying to help us. Sometimes it's not the face but the voice. And I'm sure this image that when Maureen died, I was used to seeing images of her face. I have them here in the living room. I was used to that. But then in a drawer, I found a video tape of of the day we got married at Holy Spirit Retreat House. I even forgot that we did it. And when I heard her voice pronounce the wedding vow, I cried. Cuz the voice is the depth of her soul.
Love unravels us, rendering us whole and grateful for the beloved's presence revealed in their face.
So what we really mean by the face is that in the beauty of the presence of the beloved that unravels us. But it unravels us in a way that we're so grateful for being rendered strangely whole and being unraveled by love. And this is where Teresa's going here with us.
Reciprocal love allows individuals to see and reveal the depth of each other's souls.
And by the way, I want to say something too with love for each other. That when we see through love the presence of the soulful presence of the beloved shining out in their face, if they return the favor and they love us, they reveal us to ourselves. And that they see in our face through their love for us the depth and beauty of our own soul. That their love for us allows them to see and each unto each, then we reveal ourselves to each other in a kind of reciprocity. And this is providing then a kind of within ourselves kind of sacramental sensitivity to how she's leading up to how this is with Jesus and with God.
Jean-Luc Marion describes the face of the beloved as 'saturated phenomena' with unobjectifiable presence.
A thinker that I mentioned before that I like so much, Jean-Luc Marion, teacher at the University of Chicago, Catholic theologian, in his book Givenness and Revelation, he says the face of the beloved is saturated phenomena. By that, the face of the beloved is saturated with unobjectifiable, undefinable, unexplainable presence. So the face is saturated with the unexplainable this way. It's our love for the person that is the saturated state of consciousness that allows us to see the saturated state of phenomena as a depth of presence.
Martin Buber's 'I-thou' relationship signifies a boundless presence of the beloved, embracing one's entire being.
Martin Buber, Jewish philosopher and mystic, Martin Buber, talks about I-it and I-thou. And he said that the I-it is what's definable, objective. So when you see the face of the beloved, that's it. I-thou, he says, fills the entire horizon of your being. That is it's a lovely poetic say that like the boundary-less state of the presence of the beloved that their face embody. And when they then in turn return and see that in your face, again another layer of this reciprocity.
Jesus' Vision of Our Divine Faces
Jesus sees our face as God the Father eternally contemplates it within the divine Trinity.
Now what's interesting then we might say for Therese, steeped in the scriptures, is if this is the context for the face of Jesus, who does Jesus see when he looks at our face? Who did Jesus see when he looked at her face, looks at our face? Poetically, it was kind of the direction we're headed in. Who Jesus sees when he sees our face in the inter-divine life of God. When God the Father in the Trinitarian unity of God, when God the Father expresses himself as the word, when God infinitely expresses the infinity of himself as the word, and then contemplates himself in the word, he then contemplates in the word we might say the face of himself completely poured out as the face of the word in trans-subjective communion. And here's the thing, that when Jesus sees our face, Jesus sees the face of who God the Father eternally contemplates in him before the origins of the universe. That God didn't have to try to imagine what your face might look like, but your face in the inter-divine life of God is the face that God the Father eternally contemplates in Christ. And since everything in God is God, he contemplates the divinity of your face.
Jesus's gaze reveals the divine face we possess, which sin has obscured from our own sight.
So when Jesus then walks this earth and looks at the face of each person, he sees that face. He also sees that we don't see that face. And that's the fall, that's the fallen state. So Jesus comes for Therese. Jesus comes to walk this earth so that in his presence we might see reflected in his eyes the face that he sees, which is the face of the unborn divinity of ourself hidden with Christ. And so for Therese, then these are the poetic connotations, or sensibilities, that's so um evocative for her. What's so strange about it is she's so intimately experiential in the depth of the exploratory sensitivity. So as we listen to her, she gently guides and lures us into this sensibility. And the pedagogy is kind of being followed by her in the intonations of her voice revealing to us to our own face.
Jesus is the image of the invisible God, as St. Paul describes in Colossians.
You know in scripture, chapter 1 of the Paul's letter to the Colossians, verse 15, he says Jesus is the image of the invisible God. It's a very evocative metaphor to be the image of the invisible God. And she's inviting us to see that.
Teresa saw Christ's incarnate face reflected in the love shared between her family members.
What's very interesting for Therese also is she saw this face revealed in the face of her sisters and her mother and her father in their love for each other. See, it's in our love for each other, in her love she saw incarnate the face of Christ incarnate in their face that they saw in their love for each other.
Seeing the face of Christ in others, especially those who love us, reveals our own divine self.
Likewise, we might say for us, when people don't love us and they don't see us, that I'm not who my father saw me to be, I'm not who my mother's Insofar as they failed to see the preciousness of who I am. And insofar as I've internally traumatized, that's So I become blind to my own face as I'm also not who I think I am. But insofar as I can see in those who love me, father, mother, where would we be without the people in our life who is able to see in us this value, we see that's the face that we are and that's the face that Jesus saw in everyone that he saw. When Jesus said, 'What you do to the least of the least of my brethren, you do unto me.' And so we're to see the presence of Christ in the presence of each other.
Teresa's Act of Oblation expresses her desire for God to be her holiness due to her own helplessness.
Toward the end of her life, she wrote an act of oblation to merciful love. It's on page 276 of The Story of a Soul. She wrote this oblation to mystical love when she was 23 years about a year before she died and in the first paragraph to this oblation I desire to be a saint but I feel my helplessness and I beg you oh my God to be yourself my sanctity. So how could she say I feel my helpless I want to be a saint but I feel my helplessness to be a saint and so I want to count on you to be my holiness and she can say that because in Jesus Jesus God gives to us God's own holiness present to Jesus given to us and taking on the human nature that is her own human nature. So God is our holiness given to us in Jesus and that's who she saw in the presence of Jesus and that's what she sees in the face of Jesus.
Poetic Reflection on Teresa's Poem to the Holy Face
Jesus's ineffable image is a guiding star that makes the believer ineffable to themselves.
Jesus your ineffable image is that star that guides my steps. So your image is ineffable in that it's sweetly unexplainable. The face of the image of the invisible God is ineffable. It's saturated phenomena out of a divinity revealed as the love of God incarnate in you incarnate in giving yourself to me. Your ineffable image is that star that guides my steps and that is to say since your face is the star that guides my steps I've become ineffable to myself. I can no longer comprehend myself. I have become my own day-by-day walk has become a self-ineffable. You know I think this is an important thing about Therese and about all of us too. This is very close in understanding of solitude. Like the solitude of Therese or the solitude of ourself. We may say that solitude is a transformative process in love in which we're less and less able to explain to anybody including ourself what's happening to us because it's infinite. Matter of fact it's an infinite love that's given to us in our littleness and in our nothingness without God and she said this is what guides my steps. This is the walk that I walk.
The beloved's 'sweet face' is heaven on earth, reflecting God's eternal contemplation and acceptance.
You know your sweet face is for me heaven on earth. This echoes again what we were saying earlier that your sweet face is the face that God the Father eternally contemplated before the origins of the universe giving the infinite love of the Father away as you and also it is my face that God the Father contemplated anew before the origins of the universe and that's why it is for me heaven on earth because my earthly day-by-day face is the face that you saw before I was born in you and through your love you're helping me to see it too.
Contemplating Christ's sorrow through tears reveals the profound mystery of love crucified.
My love discovers the charms of your face adorned with tears. I smile through my own tears when I contemplate your sorrow and here she's starting to illumine the cross of Christ in the cross which is the foreshadowing of her own approaching death.
The hidden life of fidelity, like Teresa's, profoundly impacts the world in unseen ways.
Or to console you I want to live unknown on earth. What if Therese was never asked to write the story of her soul? We wouldn't know anything about her. And since she was cloistered she was hidden. So Thomas Merton lived in a cloistered monastery hidden no active ministry hidden. He has insomnia and he says suddenly the bed becomes an altar and in a distant city somewhere someone's able to pray. The cloistered life that she lived I lived it in the monastery too is the hidden life but it's fidelity to this hidden life is the life that touches the whole world in ways we don't understand. It just so happens that through God's providence she was led to write this and that's how we know about her. But what do we know? What we know about her is her hiddenness because she reveals our hiddenness and the hiddenness is the hiddenness known only to God is present throughout the whole world with efficacy it has efficacy in the world. She has a subtle mystical insight about how we're woven into the lives of everyone on earth woven into the life of God woven into us this way hiddenly.
Teresa's spiritual guidance comes through subtle, inexplicable inner knowing, not solely from books.
Your beauty which you know how to veil. I'd like to talk about this. This is on page 187. It isn't just that she's hidden on this earth but she also reveals to us that she's hidden from herself. And also the face of the Christ that she's beholding is hidden from her and reveals itself to her as hidden. Here's the subtle text on how she practices Lectio Divina. What we might also suggest is the text by which we sit with her in Lectio Divina because we go crazy trying to figure it out. You know what I mean? It's it's a non-linear intimate immediacy what we can't be explained and she never lets up and she invites us to stay there and be with her. Here's the text. Do not believe that I'm swimming in consolations. This is page 187 of um the story of a soul which is the beginning of manuscript B which is the second manuscript that she wrote sharing with her the insights she had on this retreat sharing it with the prioress who happens to be also her older sister. Do not believe I'm swimming in consolations. Oh no my consolation is to have none on earth. Without showing himself without making his voice heard Jesus teaches me in secret. It is not by means of books for I do not understand what I'm reading. So she's in Lectio Divina reading her spiritual book but she doesn't understand it. Sometimes a word comes to console me such as this one which I received at the end of prayer after having remained in silence and aridity. So she reads it she doesn't understand it. She's sitting there in aridity that is emptiness and she's sitting there in silence about what she doesn't understand and she hears these words. Here is the teacher who I'm giving you. He will teach you everything that you must do. I want to make you read the book of life where it is contained the science of love. The science of love with a capital L. Ah yes this word resonates sweetly in the ear of my soul and I desire only this science having given all my riches for it. And it just so happens that quote is from Margaret Mary Alacoque who is the nun who in ecstasy at night she's a cloistered nun at the visions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Behold this heart with flames of love coming out crowned with thorns and they found the her actual copy of that in the monastery library that she read. So it's interesting that in the words of a mystic what she reads and doesn't understand but then sitting with it it like rains down on her incomprehensibly and is given to her as a kind of unexplainable clarity. And I think she's inviting us it is not what we comprehend but in the inability to comprehend it incomprehensibly realize in our heart and she's inviting us to go there because she lived there because that's where the presence of Jesus is in the face of Jesus non-distinct from her face and our face.
The Mystery of Suffering, Death, and Love
Teresa's experience of blood at her lips symbolized her impending death and a call from Christ.
I now like to turn to these allusions in the poem at the end of the first stanza of your face adorned with tears I smile through my own tears when I contemplate your sorrow. And here is an allusion to the cross of Christ. And here she's very close to Julian of Norwich and the mystery of love crucified. But also to her own approaching death. How is love present in in suffering and in death? At the very end of that first manuscript on the child Jesus as she was ending that she had an experience of blood coming up into her mouth. And in the second manuscript she describes this experience to the prioress her sister and so I want to read you the passage of this turning point in her life. This is at the end of Lent. It was during Holy Week. It was on Good Friday night. So symbolically it's symbolically on the night that Christ died that she unexpectedly has this experience. This is on page 210 the last paragraph beginning God granted me this last year the consolation of observing the fast during Lent in all its rigor. As she was pleased in her frailty that she was able to observe the rigors of Lent with extra fasting and and so on the time of penance. Never had I felt so strong and the strength remained with me until Easter. On Good Friday however Jesus wished to give me the hope of going to see him soon in heaven. Oh how sweet the memory really is. After remaining at the tomb she's referring to one of the rituals of prayer in the monastery the ritual. After remaining in the tomb until midnight I returned to our cell but I had scarcely laid my head upon the pillow when I felt something like a bubbling stream mounting to my lips. I didn't know what it was, but I thought that perhaps I was going to die, and my soul was flooded with joy. However, as our lamp was extinguished, I told myself I would have to wait until morning to be certain of my good fortune. For it seemed to me that it was blood I'd coughed up. The morning was not long in coming. Upon awakening, I that I had to learn. And so, I went to the window. I was able to see that I was not mistaken. Ah, my soul was filled with a great consolation. I was entirely persuaded that Jesus, on the anniversary of his own death, wanted me to hear his first call. It was like a sweet and distant murmur that announced the bridegroom's arrival.
Monastic obedience and communal life meant lying in darkness and silence, even during personal trials.
I'd like to reflect on this. Why is it so she gets in bed, blows out her candle, her little lamp. She's lying in the darkness and this blood comes up into her mouth. She says, 'But, however, since the lamp was extinguished, I'd have to wait till morn to see what it was.' Why does she say that? Because in monastic life, I want to say what it was like for me at the monastery. We all went to bed at 7:30, and you went to your cell, you closed a little curtain on your cell, and laid on your straw mattress, and went to bed. It wasn't an option. You You couldn't say, 'I think I'll stay up and read a little bit.' You went to your cell and closed the curtain whether you wanted to or not. The common life. Likewise, if you had insomnia, you couldn't get up and go down and read for a bit. You had to lie there in the dark to live the common life. And when the bell rang at 2:30 in the morning for vigils, you said, 'I don't feel up to it this way. I think I'll sleep in.' You weren't allowed to sleep in. And that's why she couldn't light the lamp to see what it was. That's obedience.
Death is a gateway to heaven, and the ultimate goal is to 'die of love' into God's presence.
But, notice we're not used to seeing things this way. Like, blood. Oh, glory, I'm dying. You know, you know what's strange about that? I mean, it's understandable in a way. We already know that life on this earth is fleeting. It's fragile. And we already know that really we're on this earth for a short time to learn how to love. And we know the love is present veiled. And efficacious under holiness through our insights in our mind, in our memory, by how mysteriously we've been awakened to God's presence in our life, by our will and our desire for God, which is given to us by God as an echo of God's desire for us, in our emotions as consolations and stirrings and awakenings, and so on. But, when we die and cross over, it'll be unveiled eternally, forever, in God. To be as one with God as God is one with God, because the generosity of God is infinite, and we are the generosity of God. We're the song that God sings. We know it now in a veiled way, but then it's unveiled. And even though it's true, death is something we're ambivalent about it. Do you know what I mean? It's so strange, we're so bound. It's understandable, we're human. But, she's inviting us to be kind of sensitive that death is the gate of heaven. And what she's really asking in this, through the whole manuscript, is it possible to die of love to the point that nothing will be left in me but love. And in so far as nothing's left in me but love, even though I'm still on earth, I've already crossed over, so that when I biologically die, nothing will happen, cuz I've already crossed over into the infinite union with infinity of life given to me, but it's obscure. It's hidden, but it's intimately known, and it's to that hidden place that her poetic sensitivity invites us to go. We somehow unexplainably know what she's talking about. And by sitting in her presence, we can become more habitually established in it.
Thomas Merton's longing for solitude and disappearance into God resonated with the speaker's own youthful desire.
I'd like to share with you um for me, she wants us to be personal. What's an experience where you experienced this? So, I want to share with you an experience how I experienced it. So, maybe as you sit with it poetically, how have you experienced it? Where you gotten like a glimmer of it? And I put this in in my memoirs. When I was 14 years old, I was in the ninth grade at a Catholic high school, and the instructor in the religion class mentioned monasteries and Thomas Merton. And this is where the trauma was really horrible at home. It was just like a It was a nightmare, actually. And he mentioned uh Thomas Merton. So, that day at the end of school, I went up to the school library. And in the school library, they had one book by Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas, which is a journal that he kept in the monastery. It was very interesting. The same edition that I opened from the high school library is the edition that I have now. It's the same cover and everything. I opened up to the very first page. This is December the 10th, 1946 of his diary. And Thomas Merton says this, 'For my cell, I have only one desire, and that is the desire for solitude, to disappear into God, to be submerged in his peace, and to be lost in the secret of his face.' And at 14, I didn't know what it meant, but something in me said, 'Me, too.' Because I think by the vulnerability of his longing, it accessed and awakened a longing in me. And I would suggest this helps taste the essence of Therese's teachings. It's the intimacy of it, a longing that we quietly sit with and rest in it and learn to live by it.
The story of Veronica's Veil illustrates Jesus finding tenderness in sorrow and revealing the believer's own face.
Another thought I think with Therese, we all have moments. She's sharing them when she sees the blood. I mean, a certain moment. She talks about the way she walks. So, what we're really talking about is true that it flashes forth here and there like glimmers. But, how can we be healed from what hinders us from being more habitually established in this oneness with this? It's really And this is where I'd like to share the story that she was certainly familiar with, the story of Veronica's Veil. Veronica's Veil in the 1700s, by the Pope, was made as a universal the Stations of the Cross, as a universal practice in Catholic churches. So, there's 14 Stations of the Cross. Each one depicts a moment in the the crucifixion and the death of Jesus. So, it's a devotional practice, the practice of Stations of the Cross. And sometimes it's done liturgically in Lent, but you can go on your own and just practice. Stand before each station. We love thee, O Christ, and we bless thee, because by thy holy cross thou has redeemed the world. We can meditate on the cross. When I was in high school, the trauma was going on. I'd walk down to the church to make the Stations, and I was consoled by the Stations that I was not alone in my suffering. And she's consoled by the cross of Christ and the suffering of Christ this way. The one station that's not in the Gospels is the story of Veronica. It was a very early kind of poetic image in the life of the early church. And the story of Veronica is Jesus is going by carrying the cross, falling down, and and some people cheering and yelling and so forth. And Veronica is there, and she's moved by love to step out and offer to Jesus the only thing she can offer. And it was risky, too, to even admit that you knew Jesus, cuz they might do to you what he did to him. She offers her veil. It says that Jesus takes his her veil, closes his eyes, and buries his face in her veil. The softness of her veil was the only tenderness he could find in a life turned harsh. And notice, if you close your eyes and put your face in your hands, the world disappears. So, when he closed his eyes and put his face in the veil, it disappeared. And in that moment that it disappeared, Jesus, without going anywhere, in the midst of his agony, dropped down in the oceanic merciful tenderness of God. And Veronica dropped down with him. And all the people cheering on the side, they dropped down with him. And we dropped down with him, because it's celestial, heavenly place. Because when he lifted his face and gave it back to her, he went on to be executed. But, when she looked at the veil, she saw his face on the veil. At least in the piety of the church, in the Vatican in Rome, there is that veil. And one day in Lent, they take it out and show for the veneration of the faithful. Whether it's historically the veil or not, but it in the devotional sincerity is the is the face of Jesus. I have a icon here that I have, which is modeled after that face, the face of Jesus. But, here's the real question. When you look at the veil, this is the heart of Therese, whose face is it? It's Jesus' face, but it's yours. Because the faces are interposed. Because the face that Jesus sees is the face that God saw in Jesus. This is the face of love crucified, which is you, because you're walking your walk on your way to your own death. So, there is that face in you that's growing older by the minute and will die. But, the face that the one who loves you sees is the face of the beloved that never dies, because you're eternal. And love is eternal. And that's the mystery of the face of Christ.
Teresa's final 18 months involved intense physical suffering from tuberculosis and spiritual trial during the 'dark night of the soul'.
She's talking about we have to talk to the anguish that she went through. Tuberculosis was a horrible disease. And what's so horrible about it is you can't breathe. You know, today, when people can't It's a terrible feeling when you can't breathe. So, people they put people on a respirator. There was no respirators. And so, Mary Frohlich, on page 23, she's 24, she's commenting how Therese ended her life. These profound insights and aspirations were born all the days of grace and pain which she had lived up to that point were to be radically put to the test by the events of the last 18 months of her life. This went on for 18 months. On the night between Holy Thursday and Good Friday, she coughed up a large quantity of blood. People of that era, in which tuberculosis was rampant, knew from experience this was a sign that the disease was far advanced and by an agonizing death was probably not far off. Perhaps it was exactly because they knew this so well that they tried to deny it as long as possible. Therese wanted to continue carrying out all her normal obligations, and her prioress concurred. Meanwhile, she received very little treatment for her disease, and none that was at all effective. And I should add too, the reason none were effective is that there was no treatment. It was a terminal illness, and a very painful way to die, actually. You know. Mary Frohlich continues, 'At the same time, her intensifying physical suffering was compounded by even more profound spiritual trial. For on Easter Sunday, she was suddenly overtaken by a complete loss of the consoling sense of God's presence. The dark night of the soul.' And that went on for months. So, it's like the essence of desolation, physical. And that's how she died. She kept saying, 'I still hold to the truth of the Jesus, but I can't feel it.' She's like a patron saint of the dark night. She said, 'There is no way to explain to you the nightmare that I live in.' Also, they gave her no morphine. They believed in to monastic custom they shouldn't give her anything. Just before her death, they gave her some morphine. And so, she died really a life of anguish. So, not only was she dying in agony, but she also had lost God.
In suffering and the loss of God, Christ's presence is mysteriously found in our very inability to find Him.
And I think what she saw was this for us. So, what is the lesson of this? And the way I put it poetically is that when Jesus died, see that Jesus lived our life, suffered our suffering, and died our death. And on the cross of Christ, he lost his face. 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' So, that in our loss of faith, and we can't find God, God is mysteriously in present in our inability to find God. And she lived by that, but she says although she couldn't feel it. So, then when they Jesus died, it says they pierced Christ's heart with a lance, and blood and water flowed out, like at the birth of a child. Then poetically, we could say there was no more Jesus left in Jesus. And the only Jesus that was ever really there was manifested throughout the whole world to this day. And Therese gets to the point where there's no more Therese left in Therese. And when there's no more Therese left in Therese, then the Therese the only Therese that's ultimately there is shines throughout the world to this day. And shines this way. And just before her death, at least one account, she went into an ecstasy and fell back and died. And so, literally, it's so mysterious that the death itself is a it's like a whisper. You know, you're going to exhale and not inhale. But the conditions that lead up to death, especially when you see when someone we love dying, it's heartrending. To see sometimes we have to go through. We might hope that we're spared of that. Maybe we are, maybe we won't be. But it's temporary. And also to lose God, what you're really losing is that experiential access to God that's impossible to lose, because God's present in his somehow the infinity of your loss of God. Which is is empathy with those who can't find God throughout the whole world. That our suffering doesn't belong to us.
Teresa's intention to spend her heaven helping others highlights the enduring connection within the communion of saints.
And so then at the very end, she says that when she dies, she's going to spend her whole heaven helping people on Earth. And here's where she discovered in the communion of saints. That in crossing over into death, she's now in heaven. Because in the mystical body, those who we know on Earth that loves and that died, they've crossed over and they got and they still love us. The line between birth and death is ephemeral. So, that the eternity and time and death and life, so we're all woven. And by the way, and we're going to be joining them soon enough. And when we die and cross over, the people we love and love now, we'll still love them, because they're going to cross over and join us. It goes on and on and on. And she saw that.
Teresa saw her father's fading face as reflecting love's enduring nature amidst loss and fading memory.
So I think for Therese then, and our devotion to Therese is so poetically uh dense with simplicity. Mary Frohlich points out, 'And when she sees the suffering in the face of Jesus, it was also the suffering she saw in her father's face, because he died of dementia. She lost her mother to death. And she saw in her own father that the fading away of his face. But in the fading away of his face was the fading away of her father's love for her that would never be lost. And so, she invites us to sit with these things. To sit with them with a kind of a childlike uh tenderness and a childlike delicacy for the mystery of the holy face of Jesus that's now distinguished from our own face in the divinity of our ordinariness. And this is why she calls it the little way. Picking up a pin for Jesus is so little, she says, 'One act of pure love moves throughout the whole world in ways that are greater,' she says, 'even what God achieves in the heart of the one who loves God in the simplicity of love is greater for God for God than the glory of creating the whole universe. So, the incomprehensible stature of the poverty of our heart is celestial.' And so, she invites us to see in our own way how we can live by it and walk by it and we can be so grateful for her presence in our life.
Concluding Meditation and Call to Contemplation
Prayer is the grounding place where we meet Teresa and are invited into God's presence.
So, with that, let's end with meditation. And as always, I'll when we sit in meditation, I'll just sit for 1 minute. But you as you're so inclined can move move as your heart moves you to sit. So, I invite you to uh uh sit straight, so we can ground this in prayer. Cuz that's where we meet Therese. That's where she invites us into God is in prayer. So, I invite you to sit straight and uh fold your hands and bow. And repeat after me. Be still and know I am God. Be still and know I am. Be still and know. Be still. Be.
The video concludes with communal prayer, invoking saints and offering blessings.
And bow. Say the Lord's prayer together. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. Mary, mother of contemplatives, pray for us. Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us. Saint John of the Cross, pray for us. Saint Therese of Lisieux, pray for us. Blessings till next time. Thank you for listening to this episode of Turning to the Mystics, a podcast created by the Center for Action and Contemplation. We're planning to do episodes that answer your questions. So, if you have a question, please email us at podcasts@cac.org, or send us a voicemail. All this information can be found in the show notes. We'll see you again soon.
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