I had no idea that St Thérèse of Lisieux had such a massive band of devotees until the visit of her relics in 2001. A headline in this newspaper at the end of the tour’s first week reported that 100,000 people had turned out in the South East.
I was travelling a lot that summer and had no chance to witness the phenomenon until the final days of the visit when I drove to Waterford, one of the last stops. The crowds and the queues were impressive, but most striking was the atmosphere of stillness, peace and calm in the cathedral that night. It was otherworldly; something I have never encountered since.
I was thinking of that experience recently after reading an account of St Thérèse’s popularity among the soldiers fighting in the trenches of World War I, the centenary of which is being marked at the moment.
Thérèse had died only 17 years before the outbreak of the war and already had a loyal following. Soldiers regarded her as “my little sister of the trenches” and “the shield of soldiers”. Poignantly, one soldier wrote: “I think of her when the cannon thunders with great roar.”
The soldiers could easily relate to her and perhaps the availability of photographs of Thérèse, as distinct to artists’ portraits, helped. Her sister – Celine – also a Carmelite, had taken over 40 photographs of The Little Flower in the convent. These now familiar photos show the face of a young woman who knows suffering, but there is also strength in her eyes; eyes which seem to be able to see beyond this world.
Some of the popular devotion to Thérèse can be sentimental, but perhaps it was this quiet strength and resolve which the soldiers were able to identify with as they lived through the daily hell of the trenches.
I was talking about these photographs recently with Sr Monica and Sr Gwen at the Carmel in Delgany, Co. Wicklow. They pointed out how radical it was for a camera to have been allowed into a convent in those days.
Thankfully, those photos were taken and have survived, helping to ensure that Thérèse, in the words of Pope St John Paul II, “remains young, despite the passing of years”.
Our Lady of the smile
I joined the Carmelite community at Clarendon St for vespers recently and, as I took my seat, was handed a well-thumbed, leather-bound breviary. A little card fell from inside the back cover: It was a prayer to ‘Our Lady of the Smile’ – a devotion I hadn’t heard of before.
As a 10-year-old child, Thérèse lay on her sickbed and noticed the face of a nearby statue of the Blessed Virgin exuding “an inexpressible kindness and tenderness” and a “ravishing smile”. She derived comfort from it and recovered from her ailment.
Catholicism is often caricatured as a religion of harsh rules and regulations. Frequently forgotten is the rich tradition of tenderness with devotions such as this which have consoled and comforted many people.
A papal rose
Pope Francis is a devotee of St Thérèse and follows the well-known tradition of asking her to send a rose as a sign that a particular petition is receiving heavenly attention.
He was photographed smiling broadly during his recent flight from Sri Lanka to the Philippines after a journalist handed him a framed carving of Thérèse. He appeared genuinely delighted and later explained why: “I have the habit, when I don’t know how things will go, of asking St Thérèse of Lisieux to help me and to show up in the shape of a rose. I asked for it for this trip, too: this time she came to me in person. St Thérèse of Lisieux came to visit me in person!”
In 2013, he described the happy surprise of receiving a freshly-picked white rose from a gardener in the Vatican. He had turned to the ‘Little Flower’ during a moment of worry only the day before.
When he has a problem, he explains: “I ask the saint not to solve it, but to take it into her hands and to help me accept it and I almost always receive a white rose as a sign.”
Apparently, he also kept a framed portrait of St Thérèse alongside a vase of white roses in his office in Buenos Aires.