The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Âme): The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux: With Additional Writings and Sayings of St. ThérèseThérèse, de Lisieux, Saint
Religion
The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Âme): The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux: With Additional Writings and Sayings of St. Thérèse
Thérèse, de Lisieux, Saint
Christian saints -- France -- Lisieux -- Biography; Lisieux (France) -- Biography; Thérèse, de Lisieux, Saint, 1873-1897
With the brother of Zelie Guerin the reader will make acquaintance
in the narrative of Therese. He was a chemist in Lisieux, and it
was there his daughter Jeanne Guerin married Dr. La Neele and his
younger child Marie entered the Carmel. Our foreign missionaries
had a warm friend in the uncle of Therese--for his charities he
was made godfather to an African King; and to the Catholic
Press--that home missionary--he was ever most devoted. Founder, at
Lisieux, of the Nocturnal Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and
a zealous member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, he was
called to his abundant reward on September 28, 1909. Verily the
lamp of faith is not extinct in the land of the Norman.
The Father of Therese, after the death of his wife, likewise made
his home in the delightful town which lies amid the beautiful
apple orchards of the valley of the Touques. Lisieux is deeply
interesting by reason of its fine old churches of St. Jacques and
St. Pierre, and its wonderful specimens of quaint houses, some of
which date from the twelfth century. In matters of faith it is
neither fervent nor hostile, and in 1877 its inhabitants little
thought that through their new citizen, Marie Francoise Therese
Martin, their town would be rendered immortal.
* * * * * *
"The cell at Lisieux reminds us of the cell of the Blessed Gabriel
at Isola. There is the same even tenor of way, the same
magnificant fidelity in little things, the same flames of divine
charity, consuming but concealed. Nazareth, with the simplicity of
its Child, and the calm abysmal love of Mary and Joseph--Nazareth,
adorable but imitable, gives the key to her spirit, and her
Autobiography does but repeat the lessons of the thirty hidden
years."[2]
And it repeats them with an unrivalled charm. "This master of
asceticism," writes a biographer[3] of St. Ignatius Loyola, "loved
the garden and loved the flowers. In the balcony of his study he
sat gazing on the stars: it was then Lainez heard him say: 'Oh,
how earth grows base to me when I look on Heaven!' . . . The like
imaginative strain, so scorned of our petty day, inhered in all
the lofty souls of that age. Even the Saints of our day speak a
less radiant language: and sanctity shows 'shorn of its rays'
through the black fog of universal utilitarianism, the materiality
which men have drawn into the very lungs of their souls."
This is not true of the sainted authoress of the chapters that
follow--"less radiant," in the medium of a translation. In her
own inimitable pages, as in those of a Campion or an Ignatius, a
Teresa of Avila, or a John of the Cross--the Spirit of Poetry is
the handmaiden of Holiness. This new lover of flowers and student
of the stars, this "strewer of roses," has uplifted a million
hearts from the "base earth" and "black fog" to the very throne of
God, and her mission is as yet but begun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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