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THAT Christian tradition of the spiritual life which has
been specially developed within the religious orders — with
its definite objective, its methodical training in self-conquest
and the art of prayer — is often regarded as a mere survival
of medievalism, lingering in odd corners but having no points
of contact with our modern world. Yet this tradition lives
now, as surely as in the days of St. Gertrude or St. Teresa.
It continues to exercise its mysterious attraction; transmuting those who give themselves to its influence, and producing that special type of character and experience which
is so clearly marked in the histories of the Catholic saints.
In a world of change, this has hardly altered. Within the
contemplative convents there obtains that same scale of
values, that same contempt for the body and undivided
attention to the interests of the soul, that same avoidance of
all comfort or pleasure and eager acceptance of pain, which
is revealed in the standard writings of Christian asceticism.
In these houses, mysticism is still a practical art: the education there given represents the classic spiritual discipline of
the west, and still retains its transforming power. Through
it, souls obtain access to a veritable world of spirit; and
apprehend under symbols eternal values, which are unperceived by their fellow men. By it they are supported through
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the difficult adjustments of consciousness and sublimation
of instinct, which are needed when the centre of life's interest
is shifted from physical to supernal levels. This is a fact
which students of psychology, and especially of religious
experience in its intensive form, should not ignore. They
need not go to the Middle Ages for their examples of the effect
of ascetic training and contemplative practice, or for characteristic specimens of the "saintly type"; for these may be found
within our own period, and studied in their relation to our
modern world.
Those who regard this saintly type as a hot-house plant,
raised under conditions which appear to defend it from the
temptations and distractions of ordinary existence, can have
little acquaintance either with cloister ideals or with cloistered
lives. A thoroughgoing monastic discipline is the most
searching school of virtue ever invented. It withers easygoing piety and "other-worldliness" at the root. It confers
a robust humility which is proof against all mortifications
and disappointments. It leaves no room for individual tastes
and preferences, religious or secular. Its pupils must learn
to resent nothing, to demand nothing; to thrive on humiliations, to love and serve all without distinction, without
personal choice; even to renounce the special consolations
of religion. The common idea of the cloister, as providing
a career of impressive religious ceremonial varied by plain
sewing, pious gossip, and "devotionettes" is far from the
truth. On its external side, a well-ordered convent provides
a busy, practical, family life of the most austere kind, with
many duties, both religious and domestic, countless demands
upon patience, good-temper and unselfishness, and few
relaxations. On its hidden side, it is a device to train and
toughen the spirit, develop its highest powers, and help it to
concentrate its attention more and more completely on
eternal realities. That training is still given in its completeness; and the classic, saintly character is still being produced,
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with its special cultivation of love, meekness, and self-sacrifice,
balanced by energy, courage, and strength of will.
Sanctity is the orientation of the spirit towards supreme
Reality. To the believer in any theistic religion, no attitude
of the soul could be simpler, more natural than this. There
is nothing about it which deserves to be called abnormal,
archaic, or fantastic. The complications with which it is
surrounded, the unnatural aspect which it wears for practical
men, all come from its collision with the entangled interests
and perverse ideals of the world. Thus, retreat from this
tangle of sham interests, the building up of a consistent
universe within which the self can develop its highest powers
and purest loves, is felt to be imperative for those selves in
whom this innate aptitude for God reaches the conscious
level. In these spirits, the "vocation" for the special life
of correspondence with the supersensual reproduces on a
higher plane the vocation of the artist or the poet. All the
self's best energies and desires tend in this direction, and it
will achieve harmonious development only by unifying itself
about this centre of interest, and submitting to the nurture
and discipline which shall assure its dominance. The symbols
with which the universe of religion is furnished, the moral
law which there obtains, are all contributory to the one end;
and find their justification in its achievement.
Within the Christian Church, and especially in that which
is technically called the "religious life," these symbols and
this law have not varied for many centuries; nor has the type
of personality which they develop changed much since it
first appeared in monastic history. The sharp sense of close
communion with, and immediate responsibility to, a personal
God possessing human attributes; the complete abandonment
of desire, combined with astonishing tenacity of purpose;
contempt for the merely comfortable either in spiritual or
physical affairs; a glad and eager acceptance of pain — these
arc the qualities of the Christian saint, and these are still
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fostered in appropriate subjects by the cloistered life. These
facts have been abundantly demonstrated during the last
thirty years in a group of French Carmelite mystics, of whom
the best known is Thérèse Martin, already the object of a
widespread cultus under the name of Soeur Thérèse de l' Enfant
Jésus. Others who will repay study are Elizabeth Catez,
or Soeur Elizabeth de la Trinité (1880–1906) and Mère Marie-Ange de l' Enfant- Jésus (1881-1909). It is clear that we have
in these young women — for they all died before they were
thirty years of age — a genuine renaissance of traditional
Catholic mysticism. Their experience exhibits many close
correspondences with that of the great mystics of the past;
the same development of the interior life can be traced in
them, and they knew at first hand some at least among those
forms of spiritual consciousness which are described by
Ruysbroeck, Angela of Foligno, St. Teresa, and St. John of
the Cross.
The first in time and in importance — for the others depended
to a greater or less degree on her influence and example —
was Thérèse Martin, who was born at Alençon in 1873 and died
in 1897. The last nine years of her life were spent in the
Carmelite Convent of Lisieux in Normandy; and she there
wrote the spiritual autobiography, L'histoire d'une âme, which
has since been translated into every European language. In
her life — which shows with exceptional clearness the reality
and driving power of that instinct which is known as religious
vocation — and in the incidents connected with her death and
cultus, we find many suggestive parallels with the histories
of the historical saints. These parallels often help us to determine the true meaning of statements in those histories;
indicating the possible origin of much that now appears
extravagant and abnormal, and restoring to their real position
in the human race men and women who dropped their
living characteristics in ascending to the altars of the
Church.
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We notice first in Thérèse the extent to which heredity and
environment contributed to the formation in her of an
exclusively religious temperament. She inherited from both
parents an ascetic tendency. Her father, as a young man, had
sought without success to become a novice at the Great
St. Bernard; her mother had wished to be a Sister of Charity.
Their marriage had the character of a religious dedication;
and their one wish was for children who might be consecrated
to the service of God. Nine were born, of whom four died in
infancy. The five girls who survived all entered the cloister,
for which indeed their whole life had been a perfect preparation. The idea of marriage seems never to have occurred to
any member of the family. Hence Thérèse , the youngest
child, grew up in a home which was a veritable forcing-house
of the spiritual life, though full of happiness and warm affection; and by it was moulded to that puritanism and otherworldliness which is characteristic of real Catholic piety.
There the conception of earthly existence as a "school for
saints" was taken for granted, and the supremacy of religious
interests never questioned: all deeds and words, however
trivial, being judged by the grief or pleasure they would give
to God. Even as a tiny child, she was given a string of beads
to count the "sacrifices" made each day. The Martin
family lived, in fact, within a dream-world, substantially
identical with the universe of mediæval piety. It was peopled
with angels and demons, whose activities were constantly
noted; its doors were ever open for the entry of the miraculous,
its human inhabitants were the objects of the Blessed Virgin's
peculiar care, every chance happening was the result of
Divine interference. For them this universe was actual, not
symbolic. Their minds instinctively rejected every impression that conflicted with it; and its inconsistencies with the
other — perhaps equally symbolic and less lovely — world of
our daily life were unperceived. The most bizarre legends
of the saints were literal facts; all relics were authentic, and
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most were full of supernatural power. The Holy House of
Loretto, the face of St. Catherine of Bologna still marked
by the kiss of the Infant Christ, found in them willing and
awestruck believers. Yet these crude symbols, thus literally
understood, became for them the means of a real transcendence. The dominant interests of the home were truly
supersensual; a vigorous spiritual life was fostered in it,
marked by humility and love, true goodness, complete unselfishness, a courageous attitude towards misfortune and
pain.
Thus from birth Thérèse was protected from all risk of
intellectual conflict, and surrounded by harmonious contributory suggestions all tending to press her emotional life into
one mould. Such a nurture could hardly fail to create either
the disposition of a rebel or that of a saint: but there was in
Thérèse no tendency to revolt. Her temperament — ardent,
imaginative, abnormally sensitive, and psychically unstable —
inclined her to the enthusiastic acceptance of religious ideas,
and even in childhood she showed a fervour and devotion
exceeding that of her sisters. When she was still a little girl,
the two eldest left home one after the other, in order to become
nuns in the Carmelite convent of Lisieux. The departure of
the first, Pauline, was a crushing grief to Thérèse , at that time
about nine years old; and was apparently the beginning of
her own desire to be a nun. She told the Superior of the
convent that she, too, intended to be a Carmelite, and wished
to take the veil at once. The Reverend Mother, a woman of
kindness and good sense, did not laugh; but advised her to
wait until she was sixteen, and then to try her vocation.
There is less absurdity than at first appears in this childish
craving; for the religious type is often strangely precocious.
As the tendency to music or painting may appear in earliest
childhood, so the sense of vocation may awaken, long before
the implications of this mysterious impulse are fully understood. Thus Elizabeth Catez, afterwards Soeur Elizabeth de
[page 205]
la Trinité, determined to be a nun when she was seven years
old, and began at this age to govern her inner life. She and
Thérèse help us to understand the stories and of the visions
and self-dedication of the little St. Catherine of Siena; or
those of St. Catherine of Genoa and Madame Guyon, who
both wished at twelve years old to enter a religious order.
We are faced in all such cases by the strange phenomenon of
accelerated development: strongly marked in the case of
Thérèse, who undoubtedly had, in spite of the great
simplicity of her nature, a real genius for the spiritual
life.
She had, too, and in a marked degree, the peculiarly sensitive psychic organization which is observed in many of the
historic mystics. A long and severe nervous illness had followed her sister's departure for the cloister. It was cured
by a form of auto-suggestion for which many parallels can be
found in the history of adult religious experience; though
few in that of children of her age. This incident Thérèse has
described in her memoirs with great clearness and honesty.
At a crisis of the sickness, when she was reduced to utter
misery and weakness and tormented by hallucinations and
fears, her three sisters came to her room and knelt before
the statue of the Blessed Virgin, praying for her cure. The
sick child, praying too as well as she could, suddenly saw
the statue take life and advance towards her with a smile.
Instantly the prayer was answered, her pains and delusions
left her, and she was cured. The " vision " being told — and
of course accepted at face-value as a supernatural grace —
marked Thérèse from this time as a privileged soul. It certainly indicated in her an abnormal suggestibility, comparable
with that which is revealed by the somewhat similar incident
in the life of Julian of Norwich, and was not without importance
for her future development.
The religious transformation and exaltation so often
experienced in adolescence is seen in Thérèse in its most
[page 206]
intense form. It was initiated when she was thirteen by
another nervous illness, apparently brought on by a morbid
brooding on her own supposed imperfections — the spiritual
ailment well known to religious directors as "scrupulosity" —
and it was from this period that she afterwards dated the
beginning of her real spiritual life. The childish determination to become a Carmelite had now grown in strength, and
when she was fourteen she broke to her father her own violent
consciousness of vocation; a certitude which nothing could
shake. Her inner life was at this time astonishingly mature.
She was not a prig, but a sensitive and affectionate little girl;
yet her autobiography is full of sayings which surprise us by
their depth and wisdom, when we remember the age of the
child who thought and said them. By the constant practice
of small renunciations, self-denial was now habitual to her;
for it was by that which she called the " little pathway" of
incessant but inconspicuous sacrifices and kind deeds, and
not by any abnormal austerities or devotions, that her character
was formed. Though perfectly free from all spiritual pride,
she was, moreover, quite certain of her own communion with
the Divine order, and of the authority of the impressions which
she received from it.
" En ce temps-1à, je n'osais rien dire de mes sentiments
interieurs; la voie par laquelle je marchais etait si droite, si
lumineuse, que je ne sentais pas le besoin d'un autre guide
que Jesus . . . je pensais que pour moi, le bon Dieu ne se
servait pas d' intermediaire, mais agissait directement."
These are bold words for a young girl who had been reared
in the most rigid provincial piety, and had been taught to
distrust private judgment and regard her director as the
representative of God. In them we see the action of that
strong will, power of initiative and clear conception of her
own needs and duties, which redeem her often emotional
religious fervour from insipidity. It is true that she can and
does express that fervour in the sentimental language which
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is the least attractive element in French piety. The sense of
a special relationship and special destiny which more and more
possessed her, far exceeded her powers either of realization
or of expression; and unfortunately impelled her to describe
herself as the "fleurette," the "petite fiancée," even the "jouet" of Jesus, and to note in too many casual happenings
evidence of "les delicatessen du bon Dieu pour moi." Yet we
cannot forget that similar declarations, equally offensive to modern taste, abound in some of the greatest historical mystics,
and that their full unpleasantness is only mitigated to us by
the quaint and archaic phrases in which they are expressed.
Whilst no doubt these declarations represent the invasion of
human desires and instincts into the field of spiritual experience, its natural craving for protection and personal love;
they also witness to the mystic's intense personal consciousness of close communion, a consciousness which far transcends
the poor vocabulary and commonplace symbols through which
it must be told.
Therefore we cannot dismiss Thérèse Martin as a mere
victim of religious emotionalism, because her mental equipment is inadequate to her spiritual experience. When, moreover, we remember the amazing vigour and tenacity of purpose
with which, when barely fifteen, this gentle and home-loving
child, driven by her strong sense of vocation, planned and
carried through a lifelong separation from the father she
adored and the world of nature she loved, we are bound to
acknowledge in her an element of greatness, a strong and an
adventurous soul. With a certitude of her own duty which
nothing could shake, Thérèse interviewed on her own behalf
the Superior of the order, who snubbed her, and the Bishop
of the diocese, who was kind but prevaricated with her;
demanding from them permission to take the veil at once,
instead of waiting till the usual age of twenty-one. Further,
being taken by her father to Rome with a party of French
pilgrims, when they were all received by the Pope she had
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the courage to address him directly — although the priest in
charge of the pilgrimage forbade it — and asked for his support.
The end of it was that she at last convinced the authorities
of her special vocation, and was allowed to become a postulant
in the most austere of all religious orders at the unheard-of
age of fifteen.
Her career as a Carmelite was far from being the succession
of mystical enjoyments, the basking in divine sunshine, which
some imagine the contemplative life to be. She now experienced the common lot of the "proficient " in the mystic
way; paying for her religious exaltation by reactions, long
periods of aridity, which were doubtless due in part to psychic
exhaustion. Then, in addition to the perpetual little sacrifices,
self-deprivations, and penances which she imposed on herself,
she seemed, as she says, to be plunged in a "terrible desert,"
a "profound night" of darkness and solitude; and prayer
itself became dreary and unreal. "Tout a disparu . . .
ce n'est plus un voile, c'est un mur qui s'eleve jusqu'aux
cieux et couvre le firmament etoile." But an inner life
which was nourished on the robust doctrine of St. John of the
Cross could bear this deprivation with fortitude, and make
of inward poverty itself a gain. Outwardly, too, her life was
difficult. Her superiors seem at once to have perceived in her
that peculiar quality of soul which is capable of sanctity;
and since it is the ambition of every community to produce
a saint, they addressed themselves with vigour to the stern
task of educating Thérèse for her destiny. Still a child,
sensitive and physically delicate, she was spared no opportunity of self-denial and mortification. Her most trifling
deficiencies were remarked, her most reasonable desires
thwarted, her good points ignored. When her health began
to fail under a rule of life far beyond her strength, and the
first signs of tuberculosis — that scourge of the cloister —
appeared in her, the Prioress, in her ferocious zeal for souls,
even refused to dispense the ailing girl from attendance at
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the night-office. "Une âme de cette trempe, disait-elle, ne
doit pas être traité comme une enfant, les dispenses ne sont
pas faites pour elle. Laissez-là. Dieu la soutient."
This drastic training did its work. Thérèse had a heroic
soul, though her courage and generosity found expression
for the most part in small and obscure ways. She has said
that she felt in herself the longing to be a soldier, an apostle,
a martyr; and within the limits of the cloister, she found
means of satisfying these desires. "Elie accomplissait simplement des actes heroiques," said the Superior after her death.
Determined, in her own metaphor, to be a "victime d'amour,"
her brave spirit never faltered in its willing acceptance of pain.
She hid her mental and physical sufferings, fought her increasing weakness, ate without hesitation the rough food which
made her ill, refused every comfort and amelioration. By
this hard yet humble way she rose in a few years to the
heights of perfect self-conquest and moral perfection: passing
through suffering to a state in which love, and total self-giving for love, was realized by her as the central secret
of the spiritual life. "La charite me donna la clef de
ma vocation. . . . Enfin, je l'ai trouvée. Ma vocation, c'est
l' amour."
In this completed love, stretching from the smallest
acts of service to the most secret experiences of the soul,
she found — as every mystic has done — that unifying principle
of action which alone gives meaning to life. In its light
all problems were solved, and the meaning of all experiences was disclosed. So Julian of Norwich, fifteen years after
her first revelation, was "answered in ghostly understanding:
"Wouldest thou wit thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Wit it
well, Love was his meaning. Who showed it thee? Love.
What showed he thee? Love. Wherefore showed it he?
For love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt wit and know more
in the same; but thou shalt never know nor wit therein
other thing without end." To live in this supernatural charity
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is to introduce into the world of succession the steadfast
values of eternity; hence this quality, so simple yet so difficult
of attainment, is the one essential character of the saints. "Pour atteindre a la vie idéale de fame," said Elizabeth
Catez, who so greatly exceeded her fellow-Carmelite in philosophic grasp, though not in moral beauty, " je crois qu'il
faut vivre dans le surnaturel, prendre conscience que Dieu
est au plus intime de nous, et aller a tout avec lui: alors
on n'est jamais banal, meme en faisant les actions les plus
ordinaires, car on ne vit pas en ces choses, on les dépasse.
Une âme surnaturelle ne traite pas avec les causes secondes,
mais avec Dieu seulement . . . pour elle, tout se reduite a l' unité."
Thérèse de l'Enfant-Jésus came to this consummation by
way of a total and generous self-abandonment in all the daily
incidents of life; a love which consecrated " les actions les
plus ordinaires." She took as her favourite saint the Curé
d'Ars, because "he loved his family so deeply, and only did
ordinary things." This was the "little pathway" to the
heart of Reality, on which, she thought, all might travel
and none could miss the road. "Aux âmes simples, il ne
faut pas des moyens compliqués." Though the unquenchable
thirst of her ardent nature for more suffering and more love
did more than once express itself by way of ecstatic experience, she repudiated all abnormal "graces" and special contemplative powers. "Je ne suis qu' un pauvre petit oiseau
couvert seulement d'un leger duvet; je ne suis pas un aigle,
j'en ai simplement les yeux et le coeur." Her spiritual practice became simplified as she grew in understanding. In the
last years of her life the Gospels were her only book of devotion,
and her prayer became "un élan du coeur, un simple regard
jeté vers le ciel." Yet the love thus expressed was no mere "divine duet." She was not a victim of that narrow fervour
which finds its satisfaction in a vertical relation with the
Divine; her religion was of a distinctly social type. "Le
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zêle d'une Carmelite doit embrasser le monde," she said;
and this zeal showed itself, not only in the passionate love she
gave to her family, but in radiant affection towards all living
beings — the nuns in the convent, some of whom were extremely
tiresome and even unkind, her friends and correspondents in
the outside world, the animals and the birds. She always
had her eye on her fellow-creatures; she wanted to help them,
to show light to them, to save them. The eager service and
voluntary mortifications of her life closed with eighteen
months of great physical suffering. She died in September
1897, at the age of twenty-four.
Thérèse Martin had lived for nine years within the walls of
a small, strictly enclosed convent in a provincial town. This
building and its dreary little chapel formed the setting of
her religious career. There was nothing impressive in her
surroundings, nothing to satisfy those artistic instincts which
she certainly possessed, to hint at the poetry and mystery of
the spiritual life. Her opportunities of action had been
limited on every side; her creative impulse found expression
only in the writing of some conventional religious verse, and
the record of her thoughts and experiences, composed not
for publication, but as an act of obedience to her Superior.
Prayer, the teaching of novices, the family life of the community, and a small amount of correspondence with those in
the world, were the only channels through which her passionate
love of humanity could flow. This record may not sound
impressive. Its sequel is amazing. Students of history have
often discussed the stages and the circumstances through which
a simple man or woman, distinguished only by a beautiful
and humble life, has been transformed by the reverence, love,
and myth-making faculty of his contemporaries into a supernatural being endowed with magical powers. This transformation has happened within our own time in the person of
Thérèse de l'Enfant-Jésus. This young girl, whose life was
marked by no bizarre incident, who was brought up in an
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obscure Norman town, and deliberately shut herself up in a
convent of strictest enclosure to remain — as the " healthy-minded" would say — buried alive till her death, is now loved
and invoked wherever the Roman Catholic church is established. Her short and uneventful life has influenced and
comforted countless other lives. Her "cause" has been
introduced, and although she is not yet canonized, she is already
regarded as numbered among the saints. To visit her grave
in the beautiful hillside cemetery outside Lisieux, and watch
the endless stream of pilgrims who come on every day of the
year from all parts of the world to ask her help, to deposit
letters explaining their needs, and lay on her tomb for blessing
the clothes of babies or the food of the sick, is to understand
what the shrine of a medieval saint must have been like. It
is to understand also something of the triumphant power of
character, and of the fact that the enclosing of a radiant personality within the cloister is not burying it alive.
Although the whole of her short adult life had been passed
behind the high garden walls of the convent, and after she
took the veil only the members of her family had seen her —
and this under the most restricted conditions — yet at the time
of her death Thérèse de l' Enfant- Jesus was already known and
valued by the whole town. That death was an event of
importance, evoking an extraordinary demonstration of
affection and reverence. The events which followed it are of
deep interest. Here, in our own day, we have the swift rise
and diffusion of a cultus exactly similar to those which followed the deaths of the great popular saints of the Middle
Ages. Every element is present; the prompt setting up of a
pilgrimage, the veneration of the tomb, the distribution of
relics — at the Lisieux convent cards are sold, bearing splinters
and bits of straw from the cell of Thérèse — countless reports
of visions, conversions, "supernatural perfumes," and
miraculous answers to prayer. The literature of the subject
is already considerable, and a journal is published giving
[page 213]
details of "graces" obtained by her help. The causes which
lie behind such religious movements as this are still obscure;
but we have in the cult of Thérèse Martin a valuable clue by
which to interpret those reported from the past. Her "miracles," in which students of psychic phenomena will find
much to interest them, range from the cure of cancer to the
multiplication of bank-notes, and even include the restoration
of dead geranium-cuttings. Many are obviously explained by
coincidence or hallucination, some are admirable examples of
faith-healing. But a few, apparently supported by good
evidence, seem to defy rationalistic explanation.
The cult quickly lost its local and ultimately its national
character. Though French Catholicism rightly claims Thérèse
as its peculiar possession, and devotion to her is probably more
general in France than elsewhere, yet she is now venerated
in every country in the world, and distributes her favours
without regard to nationality. Scotland and America in
particular have numerous stories of her benevolent intervention, at least as evidential as much that is offered to us by the
exponents of spiritualism. Her legend is in active formation,
and many picturesque incidents were added to it during the
war. She is even said to have appeared at the British Headquarters, and given advice at a critical moment of the campaign. A large proportion of the Catholic soldiers who fought
for France probably placed themselves under her protection,
and attribute their safety to her care.
A little time before her death, she said to her sister Pauline, "Une seule attente fait battre mon coeur; c'est l'amour que
je recevrai et celui que je pourrai donner. . . . Je veux passer
mon ciel a faire du bien sur la terre," and again, " Je compte
bien ne pas rester inactive au ciel, mon desir est de travailler
encore." In these sayings, so unlike in their vigorous activism
the conventional aspirations of the devout, we have probably
the germinal point of her cultus. It has come to be believed
that this simple and loving spirit, who passed from the body
[page 214]
with so many generous longings unfulfilled, is indeed spending
her heaven in doing good; and the deeds attributed to her
are just those practical and friendly acts of kindness, through
which during life she expressed and perfected her spirit of
love.
