Much has been written and broadcast about the historic visit of the relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux. The Most thought-provoking piece I have read so far was written by my friend Bess Twiston-Davies, a Catholic journalist who works for The Times. The piece appeared as a guest blog in “Articles of Faith” - the popular blog by Ruth Gledhill, the well-known Religion Correspondent of The Times. Bess and Ruth have kindly allowed me to reproduce the piece in full. This is Catholic journalism at it very best.
Bess Twiston-Davies writes:
I haven’t always been a huge fan of the “little flower”, as Thérèse of Lisieux is sometimes known, I must admit.
When I was younger, I found her sentimentality distasteful, even gushy, and once penned a sarcastic review for The Catholic Herald of a book on Thérèse in which full of teenage narcissism she described, much to my irritation, the snow in the convent garden the day she had entered as “being white – like me”.
I was always surprised to hear other Catholics talk of her in such affection – perhaps, I pondered, there was something I had missed. Especially when they spoke of Thérèse’s little way, of holiness achieved not through great heroic martyrdoms or actions but of trying to carry out the most everyday humdrum chore – like washing the dishes – with a spirit of love.
That to me, in the struggles of my everyday life, made sense.
Because I find that trying to live out the Christian ideal – to love others as God loves us – a wonderful idea, and a tough call. Often, a brutal reality check. Any honest attempt to do that soon brings up, in my experience, my own flaws and imperfections and usually a heightened sense of the faults of others.
Offering unconditional love where you accept another person just as they are, without demand ing they change, without judgement, is virtually impossible, at least without Grace.
Which is where, for me at least, Thérèse has an enormous amount to teach. She yearned for a life on the mission: her reality was the struggle of daily life in a convent packed with women who had just as many flaws and imperfections as she had.
It is what Therese did with that, very ordinary situation of living with people she found often hard, rude or difficult, that makes her special, utterly unique.
Instead of complaining, she accepted all the hardships, the slights, the rudeness of others that came her way with thanks to God. Instead of taking offense or trying to hurt those who had hurt her, she offered it all, in a spirit of sacrifice to God, to whom she was immensely grateful for his unconditional love.
This is what appeals to ordinary Catholics – the fact that the way Therese lived, in total openness to God, with a spirit of redemptive sacrifice offers a blue-print to us in our everyday struggles.
We believe that the struggle to give and to receive love despite our own flaws and the flaws of others can purify our flawed human ego. Sanctification they call it. A process that brings you daily closer to God.
Thérèse perfectly embodies this. That is why I shall be joining the hordes to venerate when she arrives in London this October. That is why she is held by many in such high esteem.
But there is more: I want to actually be in the presence of her relics, Therese’s remains. Because in my experience, holy people, holy places meaning those touched by God, can have a special presence, convey a sense of peace for which words alone are simply inadequate.
I have encountered this at least twice, once in Lourdes, the Marian shrine to the Virgin Mary in South West France, and once, more unexpectedly, in the presence of some other relics, of a 4th century martyr, a Roman saint.
Some decry relics as “idolatry” or “medieval superstition.”
The Catholic belief is that relics are a sign of God’s presence in the physical world, and His ability to touch and transform into His image the ordinary believer, like Thérèse. Underpinning this is a belief in the incarnation, that God through Jesus Christ is literally “the word made flesh.”
All Catholic teaching from the Eucharist to Contraception has this basic philosophy that God longs to be present in all aspects of human life and – with our co operation – transform them into an image of perfect love. Relics and their veneration are not a custom pulled out of thin air. They derive from Scripture. In the Old Testament miracles were reportedly worked through the cloak of the prophet Elijah (2 Kg. 2:14) and the bones of his follower Elisha (2 Kgs. 13:21), The Gospel of Luke tells the story of a woman healed when she touched the hem of Jesus’ garment (Luke 8: 40 – 49). Later, in the New Testament, there are accounts of healings linked to handkerchieves that had been in contact with the body of St Paul (Acts 19:12).
“Accounts of St Peter speak of people bringing their sick out into the street in the hope that Peter’s shadow would be cast over them and bring healing” says Fr John Udris, a member of the organising committee for the tour of St Thérèse’s relics. He believes that Therese as someone deeply touched by God has the ability to touch the hearts and lives of those who come into her presence. That is where faith and reality meet – not in some abstract intellectual argument about the existence or non-existence of God, but in the pain, the struggle of daily life. It is an encounter: to be experienced, to be felt, to be lived.
