Brown robe, white cape, armful of red and pink roses: The far-too-serene and all-knowing face framed by a black veil seemed to grace an alcove in every parish I entered. Then, too, the frontispiece of most “Saints for Girls” books bore her image and told the same story: unrelatable, unapproachable, very goody-two-shoes etc., etc.
I am sad to admit that this was my initial perception of the greatest Saint of modern times (as Pope Saint Pius X called her)! I know I am not alone in such an impression, yet what a grace it is when God strips away this self-imposed false façade so that we can discover the true Thérèse!
And since then, I’ve learned the key to life from the Little Flower.
After college, as I embraced a quiet, mundane routine while my freelance path took off, I read a secret in the gentle smile that Thérèse radiated in all the holy card photos around my room: The small things matter. You are much more than what you do; it is who you are that truly counts. This reality flies in the face of what society tells us, but it has led me to discover a new intellectual resonance in Saint Thérèse.
The Lord raises up Saints tailored to their time, and I believe He knew what He was about with Thérèse. God gave us this one Little Flower to take the modern world by absolute storm, in particular through how her childlike spirituality challenges three false philosophies of recent times.
His Mercies Are New: Thérèse vs. Jansenism
Many years ago, I read in Father Michael Gaitley’s 33 Days to Merciful Love that Saint Thérèse conquers heresy. Jansenism, an incorrect theological movement prominent in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, taught that man is unworthy and incapable of earning salvation. The result? Rigorous self-doubt, scrupulosity, and fear of God’s severe justice.
Jansenism directly affected the spiritual atmosphere in which Thérèse was raised, causing the already-sensitive little girl to worry intensely about the merits of her prayers and sacrifices and grow anxious at her smallest faults. Thérèse overcame these struggles, however, and championed an authentic belief in God's mercy.
Thérèse’s writings reveal an unshakeable confidence in God’s promised mercy and the reality and attainability of Heaven. She approached God as a little daughter who is not afraid that her Father will meet her with severity, but rather secure in His love and ready to let Him love her. She teaches us to do the same.
My God’s Not Dead: Thérèse vs. Nietzsche
So, Thérèse’s teaching is a weapon against bad theology . . . but that’s not all. In college, I learned that she also crushes the dangerous philosophy of one of her contemporaries. In 1887, one Paris hotel hosted two very different travelers at the same time: a German philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche and a young French woman––you guessed it, Thérèse Martin, traveling at the time with her father and sister. Nietzsche asserted in his work The Joyful Wisdom that “God is dead” (source). This probably meant that, for him, God was never alive. His radical nihilistic philosophy evidently stemmed from deep loneliness and despair.
Saint Thérèse also fought a strong temptation to nihilism. Everything inside her soul was utter darkness for most of her religious life, especially during the illness that took her from earth. She felt completely abandoned by the God Whom she loved with all her soul, to Whom she had given her entire self in bridal union. Yet rather than despairing amid this severe trial of faith and hope, she continued to believe in love.
Where Jansenism proclaimed that God’s justice prevails, Thérèse declared that his mercy endures forever. As Nietzsche planted nihilism, Thérèse proved herself a prophetess of hope.
The Apostolate of Being: Thérèse vs. Hustle Culture
Last but not least, Thérèse models a humility subversive to the modern world’s priorities. Here’s what I mean.
Today’s society has been hijacked by hustle culture. It’s a fast-paced rhythm in which the key performance indicators of our success are our influence, career drivenness, or resume strength. An addiction to busyness has crept in to steal our peace. We must take care not to equate productivity with self-worth or to succumb to the pressure to “keep up” (yet with whom or what?) and to be always doing something.
Saint Thérèse shows us that humility and simplicity counteract this frenetic pace of the modern world. She’s our Saint because she followed what Catholic philosophers Dietrich and Alice von Hildebrand called, in one of the latter’s essays, “‘The apostolate of being’—the gentle radiation of peace and joy that is the secret of the saint.”
In her brief life of twenty-four years, Saint Thérèse did not do great things––and in one of God’s perfect paradoxes, she is the patroness of missions despite never leaving her Carmelite cloister. She simply was, and her being became a powerful apostolate of its own because she lived the peace and joy of her Little Way for the praise of God’s glory.
Certain seasons of our lives may not hold much more than the work of cooking, washing clothes, being fully present to the smallest persons, and a little beneficial reading. Sometimes doing the quiet and simple thing well is actually the harder task. We can live Thérèse’s Little Way both in a corporate office and at the kitchen sink, but most importantly, the responsibilities that feel most insignificant can lead us to greater union with God.
When we get lost in the mundane or try to measure the outcomes of our work, Thérèse smiles knowingly and beckons us back. She shows us the remedy: embracing our own “apostolate of being” by doing all for love and living for the praise of God’s glory. This is more than enough.
Little Saint, Big Combat
There’s a little legend (so it may or may not be true) that the bishop Saint Nicholas got into a fist-fight with Arius who was promoting a heresy at the Council of Nicaea. I think this tale has found its modern-day counterpart: Thérèse is a spiritual champion against heretics and pernicious ideologies, not with physical blows, but by her loving littleness and luminous faith in the power of God.
Another great “Early Church Father moment” makes me think of Saint Thérèse. A phrase circulated about the fourth-century bishop Saint Athanasius because he stood for the orthodoxy of the faith in a time of confusion: “Athanasius contra mundum,” Athanasius against the world. Like him, Thérèse of Lisieux’s spirituality and witness stands counter to the spirit of the times. Yet the good God knew that little Thérèse was precisely who the modern world needed. In His strength, her sanctity truly stands contra mundum.
Leila Joy Castillo calls Florida home but left her heart in hill country long ago. An alumna of Ave Maria University, she freelances in Catholic communications and is a published writer, primarily on Blessed is She and Ascension. When not dabbling in the multitudinous Google docs of her articles, Leila delights in music, personalist philosophy, quality time with her younger siblings, and her literary trifecta: Austen, Lewis, and Dante. You can find her on Instagram @leila_joyinthejourney or follow her personal site here.
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