Therese of Lisieux: Far From Spiritual Childhood

Joann Wolski Conn

Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, Volume 6, Number 1, Spring

2006, pp. 68-89 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/scs.2006.0029

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/197102

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]
 rereading spiritual classics

Thérèse of Lisieux: Far

From Spiritual Childhood1
Joann Wolski Conn

68
I have been reading Thérèse of Lisieux for over fifty years. In elementary
school during the 1940’s, her biography was one of my favorite “library
books.” When I entered the convent in 1954, we were directed to bring
Thérèse’s autobiography, The Story of a Soul. By 1976, as a feminist theolo-
gian living in Paris for the summer with my husband, I tried reading Thérèse in
the original language wondering if I could still learn from this woman who
seemed to be so stereotypically “feminine.” This led to my discovery of the
new research and controversial questions discussed at the 1973 centenary of
her birth, and to my finding a new Thérèse who was the author of her own
point of view.2
More recently, my questions about Thérèse and her work have come to
focus on practical issues of spiritual formation. Having been a spiritual
director for thirty years and a teacher of students preparing to be pastoral
counselors and spiritual directors has convinced me of the importance of
models of spiritual-psychological development of self. In Spirituality and
Personal Maturity I argued that spiritual and psychological development
should be seen not as identical but rather as inseparable and mutually support-
ive if one interprets them in terms of the same meaning of maturity: a process
of differentiation for the sake of relationships that are ever more inclusive,
complex, and mutual.3 Because spiritual growth involves choices to “die to
self,” meaning die to the kind of self that resists choosing deeper relationship
with God and others, the only kind of psychological pattern compatible with
this growth is one in which development is not steady and inevitable but is the
fruit of choices producing growth beyond autonomy to a capacity for self-
surrender. Therefore, I adopted a structural-developmental framework for
interpreting spiritual growth and transformation. In that book, the starting
point was spiritual and the search was for a psychological model that could
demonstrate the psychological maturity intrinsic to such classical traditions as
Ignatian and Carmelite spirituality. However, as Sandra Schneiders reminds us,
spirituality as experience is not generic but concrete; it is embodied in specific
persons.4 So I want to explore here the particular way Thérèse of Lisieux
reveals this pattern of integrated maturity.

SPIRITUS | 6.1 Spiritus 6 (2006): 68–89 © 2006 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
 Appreciating what Thérèse calls her “little way” as a pattern of spiritual-
psychological development presents serious challenges. For some people,
Thérèse is the last person they would look to for spiritual advice because she is
identified not with maturity but with “the way of spiritual childhood” (a
phrase that Thérèse herself never used). Understood as abandonment to God,
this image could suggest maturity on condition that one “has” a self to surren-
der rather than “being” part of undifferentiated relationships. Popular piety,
however, has so widely presented Thérèse as submissive, as relying on little
sacrifices to the neglect of any reliance on her own experience or creative self-
direction that she actually arouses repugnance among some adults I teach. For
other people I have spoken with, Thérèse is their primary spiritual advisor 69
because “she is so ordinary; she never did anything heroic; she loved, and I can
do that.” Again, this is all true on some level, but the issue is: on what level? In
other words, Thérèse has been promoted, some would say “sold to the pub-
lic,” in ways that reinforce a spirituality of conformity and fear of autonomy
or complexity.5
Even for feminists aware of how Thérèse resisted her culture’s view of a
judgmental God and rejected reliance on merit to earn divine favor, there is
still the difficulty of her constant emphasis on weakness. This can sound to us
like self-pity or unnecessary helplessness. Why does she want to “remain
little”? How does this become an active and highly mature spiritual practice
for Thérèse?
In order to make Thérèse’s “little way” a resource for contemporary
spiritual formation I will situate it within the context of structural develop-
mental psychology, and examine Thérése’s original texts in that light.6 After
briefly indicating structural-developmental criteria of maturity I will point out
early signs of maturity evident in Thérèse’s process of claiming what she calls
her “little way.” Then, because her language in this description—“remaining
little” and having God’s motherly action save her from strenuous activity—
could be interpreted developmentally as a childish spirituality of fusion rather
than an adult spirituality of interindividual relationship, I will present evidence
of Thérèse’s maturity in the years she claimed this “little way,” 1894–1897.
Finally, I will be able to show how her “little way” is far from spiritual child-
hood and valuable for adult spiritual formation.

STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENTAL MATURITY

Structural development of self is distinguished from “life-span development,”
made famous by Erik Erikson, by the fact that life-span development is rooted
in tasks that arise inevitably, such as identity and intimacy, whereas advances
in structural development may not happen at all. In a structural framework,
development is a process of detaching oneself from embeddedness in restrictive

Conn | Thérèse of Lisieux: Far From Spiritual Childhood

 relationships in order to love with more realistic self-knowledge and self-
donation. In this perspective maturity is not the same as holiness. To be holy is
to love God and neighbor with one’s whole heart, with the fullness of whatever
developmental stage one has reached. Thus, one can be holy in a more or less
mature way. Nevertheless, the great spiritual teachers promote cooperation
with grace by choices for greater self-knowledge, and surrendering love, all of
which also characterize this model of psychological maturity and reinforce the
mysterious working of grace with nature.7 Each phase of development is a
process of making the meaning of self and others through balancing the two
basic human longings for independence and attachment. It is not a matter of
70 either autonomy or attachment but of how the balance of both will tilt
through our choices in each of these different “stages” or ways of viewing
reality. The stages where most adults cluster are named Conformist, Conscien-
tious, Individualistic (a transitional stage), and Interindividual.8
To make a reasonably accurate estimate of Thérèse’s development involves
several steps.9 First, identify data that reveal not what happened to her but
how she thinks and feels about what happened. Thérèse’s three autobiographi-
cal manuscripts, 181 letters written in the last five years of her life, along with
her poetry, prayers and plays contain this data.10 Second, determine a stage the
person has attained by looking for its characteristic conscious pre-occupations,
impulse control, as well as cognitive and interpersonal styles. Third, if a broad
range of these characteristics appear with some regularity, one may conclude
that the person responds to life out of at least this developmental stage. This
method assumes that stages build on the previous one, appear invariantly from
simple to complex, and are available to one who habitually operates at a more
complex stage. It is important to note that even though a series of developmen-
tal stages are presented here, the evidence for each stage is not always from
writings of the time of a stage’s first occurrence but rather often from later
sources in which Thérèse is writing retrospectively about various periods of her
life.11

THÉRÈSE CLAIMS HER “LITTLE WAY”: CLUES TO HER MATURITY

In June–July 1897, dying of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four, Thérèse
writes the third part of her autobiographical remembrance of God’s work. She
recalls her search, in 1894, for a way to sanctity that can support her own
sense of self. Her account of her 1894 search suggests that at that time she had
developed at least to the level of the Conscientious self: one sees in her writing
evidence for the presence of self-evaluated standards, long-term goals, mutual
relationship, concern for communication, differentiated feelings and motives,
self-respect, and conceptual complexity.12

SPIRITUS | 6.1
 First of all, Thérèse trusts her own desires and experience. Addressing the
prioress, she states, “You know, my Mother, I have always desired to be a saint
. . . ”(C, 2v).13 Desire is the key word here. The standard translation reads:
“always wanted.” 14 This allows readers to miss the allusion here to John of the
Cross’s teaching that the more God desires to give, the more God makes us
desire.15 Having read John of the Cross intensively at age seventeen and
eighteen,16 Thérèse tested this teaching against her own experience (A, 71r) and
now trusts her desires as reliable indications of God’s invitation.
Also, Thérèse squarely faces the challenge of self-awareness. For many
years she struggled with scruples because her early religious education stressed
human weakness and the difficulty of avoiding sin. As late as 1893, the year 71
before claiming her “way,” she needed reassurance from a Jesuit adviser that
she could not commit a mortal sin without knowing it (LC 151).17 Yet she
accepts herself without discouragement and decides to think creatively about
what would suit her own reality:

. . . alas! I have always affirmed, when I compared myself to the saints there is
between them and me the same difference that exists between a mountain whose
summit is lost in the heavens and the obscure grain of sand trampled under the feet
of those passing by; rather than being discouraged, I said to myself: the Good God
would not know how to inspire unrealizable desires. I can surely, despite my
littleness, aspire to sanctity; to grow big, is impossible, I must support myself such
as I am with all my imperfections (C, 2v).

Her curiosity and determination move her beyond conventional patterns of

sanctity accepted in her Carmel such as counting one’s acts of self-denial or
making oneself a holocaust of reparation to God’s Justice. Rather, Thérèse
wants to search (a word that appears 121 times in her writings) for “a little
way entirely new. We are in a century of inventions,” she says, “now there is
no longer the strain to climb the steps of a staircase, among the rich an eleva-
tor helpfully replaces it. For myself I would like also to find an elevator to raise
me all the way to Jesus, for I am too little to climb the rugged stairway of
perfection” (C, 2v–3r). Although Thérèse adheres to John of the Cross in
making love the standard for judging the worth of all things, she does not
hesitate to separate herself from his image of spiritual growth as climbing a
mountain.
Instead, Thérèse searches the Old Testament—not a common resource in
her Carmel—seeking legitimation of her desire for a way that fits her own self-
understanding. Not having the full Bible available for private reading, she took
advantage of the notebook of Old Testament quotations copied out by her
sister, Céline, who brought it along when she entered the Lisieux Carmel in
September, 1894.18

Conn | Thérèse of Lisieux: Far From Spiritual Childhood

 Therefore I sought again in the holy books the indication of the elevator, object of
my desire, and I read these words coming from the mouth of The Eternal Wisdom:
If anyone is entirely little, he may come to me. Thus I succeeded, fathoming that I
had found what I searched for . . . (C, 3r).

As Thérèse read Proverbs 9:4 it said “Si quelqu’un est tout petit, qu’il vienne á
moi.” (If anyone is entirely little, let him come to me.) “Entirely little” matches
Thérèse’s self-image. If (impossibly) she had been able to read La Sainte Bible
(1955) it would have been a different story, for it says “Qui est simple? Qu’il
passe par ici!” (Who is simple? Let him pass through here!) Although simplic-
ity and littleness have something in common, it was the exact match between
72 “tout petit” and Thérèse’s self-image that caught her imagination.19
Her curiosity not fully satisfied, Thérèse pursues yet another theological
question. After examining twenty-six more pages in Céline’s notebook she
finds a revelation of God that satisfies her:

. . . wanting to know . . . what you would do to the entirely little who responded to
your call I continued my research and here is what I found:—As a mother caresses
her infant, so I will console you, I will carry you on my bosom and I will balance
you on my knees! Ah! never had words more tender, more melodious, come to
rejoice my soul, the elevator which must raise me to Heaven, is your arms, O Jesus!
For that I have no need to grow bigger, on the contrary it is necessary that I remain
little, that I become so more and more (C, 3r).

Her high Christology leads Thérèse to collapse the motherly image of God in
Isaiah 66 with Jesus, the primary focus of her affective life. In the end, then,
Jesus is the way. And littleness is Thérèse’s language for shaping herself, as it
were, to fit into Jesus’ arms.
This language emphasizes the question of Thérèse’s maturity. Because
speaking about remaining little and feeling relief that an elevator saved her
from strenuous spiritual activity could so easily be misinterpreted as promoting
a Conformist spirituality of resistance to self-direction, and attachment to
security and certitude, I want to delineate carefully Thérèse’s full development.
For it is only by comprehending her mature transformation that one can
adequately interpret the meaning of her “little way.”

DEVELOPMENTAL CONTEXT FOR THE “LITTLE WAY”

I want to present both Thérèse’s transitional Individualistic stage and her way
of being in the stage named Interindividual because this latter stage is enriched
by relationships toward others allowed to be “other” with all the mystery and
ambiguity that involves. Although most authors consider these mature stages
unlikely before mid-life, I judge that Thérèse reached these stages before her
early death because she not only had responsibility for others’ spiritual forma-

SPIRITUS | 6.1
tion but also endured profound spiritual darkness in a prolonged dying
process, and most of all because she manifested the inner life that characterizes
them.

Individualistic Transition
Thérèse demonstrates the strengths of the transitional Individualistic stage20
first by differentiating inner reality from outer appearances. She affirms that if
one were to judge by appearances, she would be considered immature and
consoled in prayer. However, the inner reality was that she possessed wisdom
beyond her years and was actually suffering profound spiritual darkness (C,
4r-4v, 26v). She is keenly aware of how individuals differ in significant ways, 73
recalling how, in her first years in Carmel, her own struggle for a detached
relationship to the prioress differed from her companion who followed the
prioress around “in a physical way as a dog.” (C, 21v). She finds creative
reasons for the diversity of ways God deals with all souls (A, 2v; C, 12r). This
differentiation between inner reality and outer appearance allows more
attention to the process of the spiritual journey than to the outcome. In 1894
she searches for her unique “way” and searches again in 1896, this time for
her particular vocation within the Body of Christ. Searching for a way to fulfill
her desire to see herself somehow in all the members of Christ’s mystical Body,
Thérèse creatively combines images from 1 Corinthians, chapter 12 concerning
different members of the Body with ideas from chapter 13 concerning love,
and exclaims, “in the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be Love. Thus I
shall be everything, and thus my dream will be realized” (B, 3v)!
Another transitional strength is recognition that emotional dependence can
coexist with independence in other facets of life. Thérèse constantly expresses
her emotional dependence on the mercy of God, all the while demonstrating
her independent views on consecration to God’s mercy rather than to divine
justice (B, 3v). While constantly professing love for her family, community and
prioress, Thérèse nevertheless negotiated an early independence from the
prioress who knew her from childhood (C, 21r-21v), created an appropriate
distance-closeness relation to her blood sisters (C, 8v), and volunteered to
move away from family and France altogether, to join the Saigon Carmel in
French colonial Vietnam (C, 9r-9v).
Another indication of this transition is recognition of broad social issues
and attempts to take a stand. This, of course, must be interpreted within
Thérèse’s nineteenth-century, French bourgeois, Catholic Carmelite milieu.
Moving beyond a focus on nuclear family or her Carmelite community’s
general concern for needs of the church would, for Thérèse, be broadening her
social horizon. Although she lives in a Carmel that includes three blood sisters
and a first cousin, her social awareness is broadened not only by living closely

Conn | Thérèse of Lisieux: Far From Spiritual Childhood

 with orphans and women with severe emotional problems (C, 22v–23v), but
also by assuming responsibility for the spiritual formation of novices, including
her older sister, Céline.21 Receiving two missionary priests as spiritual brothers
and letter-writing companions concretized her desire for connection to the
wider world. Thérèse’s identification as the heart in the Body of Christ reveals
expansive concerns and, as her body diminishes in death, she desires fruitful,
contemplative presence to the world.22
How to value both self-fulfillment and self-sacrifice and find a realistic
standard for combining these two apparently contradictory values is difficult
in this transitional stage. Integration of both characterizes the next develop-
74 mental stage in which Thérèse comes to experience the way self-transcendence
is the fulfillment of her most inclusive human capacity.

Interindividual Life
Affirming Thérèse’s maturity at the Interindividual level requires evidence
about her cognitive style, conscious preoccupations, impulse control, and
interpersonal style. My aim here is simply to present some examples in order
to support my contention that if Thérèse herself is far from spiritual childhood,
then her “little way” invites the choices that maturity requires: choices for
both differentiation and surrender of the differentiated self.
At this stage, the dominant characteristic is ability to grasp paradox and
tolerate ambiguity.23 Describing her sudden plunge into spiritual darkness, the
most graphic example of immersion in ambiguity and paradox,24 Thérèse
begins by noting how deceptive appearances can be. Though seeming to be
consoled by divine love, she had in fact been enduring for eighteen months a
torment of doubt (C, 4v). On Good Friday, 1896, she coughed up blood and,
assuming this signaled death and thus the arrival of Jesus, she was filled with
consolation. “At this time I was enjoying such . . . a clear faith, that the
thought of heaven made up all my happiness, and I was unable to believe there
were really impious people who had no faith. I believed they were . . . speaking
against their own inner convictions when they denied the existence of heaven .
. . where God Himself wanted to be their Eternal Reward (C, 5r–v).
On Easter, “Jesus made me feel that there were really souls who have no
faith. . . . [God] permitted my soul to be invaded by the thickest darkness. . . .
[It is as though] I was born in a country that is covered in thick fog” and only
heard stories of “the sun” (C, 5v). When she considers trusting her intuition
about this other country she feels a sudden blow and the “fog that surrounds me
becomes more dense, it penetrates my soul” so that it is “impossible to dis-
cover within it the sweet image of my Fatherland; everything has disappeared”
(C, 6v)! Any attempt to recover earlier memories only makes matters worse:

SPIRITUS | 6.1
 When I want to rest my heart . . . by the memory . . . my torment redoubles; it
seems to me that the darkness, borrowing the voice of sinners, says mockingly to
me: “You are dreaming about the light . . . about the eternal possession of the
Creator of all these marvels; . . . that one day you will walk out of this fog that
surrounds you! Advance, advance; rejoice in death which will give you not what
you hope for but a night still more profound, the night of nothingness” (C, 6v).

The mild psychological phrase “tolerate ambiguity” hardly does justice to the
depth of disaffection and challenge to faith Thérèse describes.25
Her fivefold response to this darkness bears the marks of Thérèse’s mature
integration. Accepting the feelings of confusion and torment, she opens her
heart, identifies with those she earlier refused to believe even existed, prays for 75
their good, suffers in paradoxical peace and joy, and engages in active combat.
Thérèse identifies with unbelievers to the degree of naming them “brothers”
and volunteering to sit at the table with them until God wills otherwise.
Thérèse maintains her open stance by making “more acts of faith in one year
than during all my life,” and by not wasting energy giving direct “regard” to
her foe; rather, she runs to face Jesus (C, 7r).26 Lest her poetry that sings of the
possession of God deceive her reader into judging her trial as other than what
it is, she declares her poems are “what I want to believe” behind “not a veil
but a wall” of darkness (C, 7v).
Another cognitive sign of this stage is ability to communicate simulta-
neously with other persons and oneself, to have “dialogical knowing.” Thérèse
recognizes her novices’ temptations through awareness of her own, and
hearing other sisters repeat her insights as their own wisdom awakens her to
the freedom she feels as a result of her detachment from these spiritual gifts (C,
19r–20v). Thérèse’s autobiographical manuscripts are simultaneous conversa-
tions with herself, with Jesus, and her prioresses (MSS A, C) or her sister,
Marie (MS B). Discerning and responding to God becomes more complex
because the range of alternatives and implications increase. By searching for a
way to exercise all the gifts and ministries needed in the church and world she
discovers her call to be the heart in Christ’s mystical body (B, 2v–3v).
The second dimension of this stage, one’s conscious preoccupation,
includes four aspects.27 First, deepened inner life results in vivid feelings
including humor at the follies of human existence and sorrow over the out-
comes of human blindness. Though dying, Thérèse can joke about being
“embalmed with charity” as she is inundated, even numbed, by interruptions
from chatty well-wishers as she tries to write her memoir (C, 17r–17v).
Thérèse’s heart aches at seeing how many people still fear rather than trust
God (C, 6r). Sexual feeling arising from mutual relationship is another charac-
teristic preoccupation at this stage. I see evidence of “sexual feelings,” inter-
preted as energy directed toward sharing intimate desires and some physical

Conn | Thérèse of Lisieux: Far From Spiritual Childhood

76

Visage de Thérèse de Lisieux, Office Central de Lisieux, photo 43A.

contact, in Thérèse’s letters to her two missionary brothers in which she

receives and gives confidences regarding desires, concerns, and her agonizing
darkness.28 In a gesture of affection, Thérèse asks each man for two things that
allow physical connection: a lock of hair and a list of significant dates so that
on the anniversary of those events she could remember them. Thérèse testifies
to the emotional renewal she felt through these relationships. They “gave birth
. . . to a joy . . . as that of a child . . . not for years had I experienced this kind
of happiness. I felt . . . as if someone had struck for the first time musical
strings left forgotten until then”(C, 32r). These are the first and only men
Thérèse ever related to with a measure of mutuality, that is, in a way other
than as to father, uncle, confessor, or physician.
Other preoccupations include reexamination of all former commitments
and choices, along with openness to be grasped anew by the symbols of these
life choices. Thérèse’s commitment to Carmelite life, now reclaimed in a more
expansive vision, becomes her cry, “ . . . my vocation, at last I have found it . . .
In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be Love” (B, 3v). Now she
perceives her commitment to charity as too interior and needing more direct

SPIRITUS | 6.1
action; so she reappropriates it as “loving [my neighbor] as He, Jesus, has
loved him,” seeing others’ faults yet loving them precisely as they are; what is
more “Your Will is to love in me all those You command me to love (C, 11v–
12r)! Heaven, previously seen as the delayed reward for suffering endured,
now becomes a memory that is nothing but torment (7v). Nevertheless, it is
grasped anew through abandonment to God.
A third aspect of this stage is her impulse control.29 Thérèse manifests an
impulse to be both self-directed and willing to surrender her carefully con-
structed self-image and world. Her self-direction appears in her claim that
“Jesus was my Director” (A, 71r; 80v), meaning she trusts her own intuitions
and desires. Yet when misunderstood, she feels so detached from her self-image 77
that she praises the Lord’s goodness, giving her wings (C, 15r). While the
foundational meaning of her world is mocked as “the night of nothingness”
(C, 6v), she responds by identifying with the unbelievers whom she earlier
refused to believe even existed!
I wonder whether Thérèse’s work with the novices and her letters to her
missionary brothers led to adjusting another ideal. Prior to these new responsi-
bilities, Thérèse’s self-ideal had been one of being “hidden.” “Cacher” appears
thirty-five times in manuscript A; then Thérèse’s later memoirs never refer to
her as hidden. Was she tempered by this new experience of revealing her inner
self to persons beyond her family and religious superiors? Did she come to see
the positive results in others’ lives of not being “hidden”?
Another aspect of impulse control is the ability to integrate “negative”
feelings previously banned from consciousness.30 Thérèse can express frustra-
tion with her sister when, three times in the same letter about her spirituality,
she cries to Marie, “I beg you, understand” (LT 197). She admits and combats
agonizing religious doubts (C, 5v).
Because Christian maturity is essentially a matter of relationships, I want
to consider finally Thérèse’s interpersonal style. She recognizes that autonomy
is mutual; therefore, she cultivates relationships that are interdependent, that
promote mutual candor, that honor with compassion the limitations of others,
that resist superficiality while inviting, not insisting on mutual self-disclosure.31
For example, the sixty-four year old newly elected prioress confided to the
twenty-three year old Thérèse her sorrow and resentment over the
community’s hesitation to reelect her. In an allegorical letter about a Shepherd-
ess, Thérèse speaks not as subject to superior but as adult child to Mother
Marie de Gonzague, advising her to appreciate the spiritual potential embed-
ded in this situation (LT 190). Candor also marks Thérèse’s manner with the
novices. “They tell me all the struggles I give them . . . they are under no
restraint . . . they know they give me pleasure when acting in this way” (C,
27r). She cultivates an affirming relationship with her sister Léonie, awkward
and manifestly scrupulous (LT 186, 191). With her sister Marie, who feels

Conn | Thérèse of Lisieux: Far From Spiritual Childhood

 herself incapable of Thérèse’s kind of holiness, Thérèse cultivates the same
sense of worth (B, 1v). A theme in letters to her missionary brothers in China
is their sister-brother partnership in evangelizing (LT 247, 254, 258). When
questions arise from groups whose values are antithetical, at this stage of
development the issue becomes one of learning from different viewpoints.32
The most serious question for Thérèse arises from unbelievers and she lives her
last eighteen months struggling with this impasse.33 Within Thérèse’s culture
and theological range of awareness, she desires to be contemplatively present
to the “other,” that is, to non-Christians and unbelievers; but she does not
appear to learn from them or gain critical perspective on the French colonial
78 presence in Vietnam, where she longs to go. Moving to honest acknowledg-
ment of sincere unbelievers marks a significant development for her. Learning
to deal compassionately with “another point of view” comes from relating to
the novices who, though older, manifest far less self-awareness.
Thérèse deals with the apparent tension between self-donation and self-
fulfillment by discovering self-fulfillment precisely through self-donation.
Fulfillment of her most inclusive and complex human capacity for love comes
through self-forgetfulness and self-surrender. Spiritual freedom comes through
detachment from any self-image other than herself as imperfect yet infinitely
loved by God who desires to give her precisely what she desires. Does Thérèse
relish God as free to be profoundly beyond her capacity to comprehend? This
is the core of the final transformation of her “little way.”

MATURITY OF THE “LITTLE WAY”

Within four years (1894–1897) Thérèse’s “little way” underwent profound
transformation. Through all the changes, it remains Jesus, “it is your arms, O
Jesus” (C, 3r). However, evolving from a focus only on what Jesus does, the
way becomes also what, in Jesus, Thérèse does. Beyond the Interindividual
mutuality of human intimacy, “the little way” becomes fruitful union with the
Trinity, in Jesus, born of Thérèse surrendering her “true self” in the darkness
which is the divine embrace. Her transformation moves from desiring to be a
saint (C, 2v), through exhaustion at the urgency of her desires to be all the
ministries of Christ’s Body (B, 2v–3r), to, finally, “the only favor I desire is that
[my life] may be broken through love”(C, 8v). In the end, Thérèse’s way truly
becomes the “desert” that she had embraced at the time of her entrance into
Carmel (A, 26r), that interior place in which there is no way except, with
“confidence . . . throw myself into Jesus’ arms . . . ”(C, 36v).

From Focus on What Jesus Does to What, in Jesus, Thérèse Also Does
Although Thérèse always relates to Jesus as the primary mover in their rela-
tionship, in 1893, prior to any mention of a “little way,” she claims the

SPIRITUS | 6.1
possibility of “doing” something to sustain their relationship. While feeling
incapable of prayer, she both affirms that Jesus “can do it alone” and claims
that she can do something, namely “maintain love,” by searching for “noth-
ings” which pleases Jesus more than martyrdom. For example, she seeks to
offer “a friendly word when I would want to say nothing . . . ” and do these
things not for merit, just to “please Jesus. . . . I am not always faithful, but I
never get discouraged: I abandon myself into the arms of Jesus” (LT 143).
Thérèse passionately chooses what mature relationship requires and rejects
merit—acts done for the sake of spiritual reward. Knowing merit is a value for
her sister Céline, Thérèse invites her into a more mature way by redefining
merit as being “called by Jesus Himself His mother, His sister . . . to please 79
Jesus . . . one has only to love Him, without looking at one’s self, without
examining one’s faults too much . . . my director, who is Jesus, teaches me not
to count up my acts . . . do all through love” (LT 142).
Using structural development as the heuristic tool, the model which defines
maturity as growth beyond Individualistic differentiation, enables Thérèse’s
self-forgetful love to stand out. It emerges as that kind of union with God, that
structure of relationship with God in which one’s Individualistic self is “lost,”
in both a New Testament and a psychological sense, and a new way of loving
is found: self-forgetful surrender which is the meaning of “to remain little.”
This thematic phrase “to remain little” appears first not in the context of
childhood but of the desire to fit inside Jesus’ embrace. In 1893, Thérèse
concludes that because Jesus is the “lily of the valley not the mountain” (Song
2:1), a small flower, she must “remain little” in order to fit into his arms (LT
141).
Tracing the meanings of “to remain little” through letters, poetry, and
plays written between 1893 and 1897 reveals a rich and practical theology of
how to live maturely in Jesus. Love requires littleness because through love
Jesus became a little infant (LT 162). Littleness also involves conviction that
generous desires grasped as “spiritual riches” would render her “unjust” (LT
197). It means valuing her spiritual imperfection in hope that God “will use
this weakness even to carry out His work, for the strong God loves to show his
power by making use of nothing” (LT 220). Insisting to a spiritual brother that
she is not a great soul, rather “entirely little,” she can nevertheless claim that
the “great things done in me” by God, namely her “combat, exploits” of self-
donation accomplished in the solitude of Carmel are like Joan of Arc crowning
a king (LT 224). Feeling nothing, she concludes that the littleness that makes
possible Jesus’ work in the soul is Jesus’ own creation, what He is “more
proud of . . . than creating . . . the heavens” (LT 227). Writing to her sister
Léonie, now living in the Visitation monastery at Caen, on December 27th,
1893 (LT 154), Thérèse asks for prayers that she may “remain entirely little,”

Conn | Thérèse of Lisieux: Far From Spiritual Childhood

 meaning to have humility—echoing Léonie’s preferred virtue as a Visitandine
daughter of Jane de Chantal and Francis de Sales who value what they call
“the little virtues” of humility and gentleness.
For her sister Pauline’s first feast as prioress, January 21, 1894, Thérèse
wrote a play, “The Mission of Joan of Arc,” in which Joan—played by Thérèse—
proclaims her desire “to remain always quite little . . . humble in order to
resemble Jesus and deserve that he makes his dwelling in me” (RP 1, 12v).
Reversing her usual image, now Thérèse makes space for Jesus’ dwelling in her.
At the end of 1894, after she has explicitly claimed her “little way,” Thérèse
wrote two poems that associate “remaining little” with “hiding” either in Jesus
80 or under the shelter of Mary’s veil (PN 13, 5), then the phrase does not occur
again until two years later when she is submerged in spiritual darkness.

Visage de Thérèse de Lisieux, Office Central de Lisieux, photo 29A.

SPIRITUS | 6.1
 By 1896 Thérèse links her intention to “remain little” with the agony of
the cross, hell, and spiritual fecundity. Poem 31 speaks directly to Jesus, “my
supreme Love,” asking for guidance to be as He is: “I want to stay little . . .
forgetting myself. . . . You live in me, my Prisoner . . . You repeat: ‘I thirst . . . I
thirst for Love!’” Then, claiming the mutuality of love, Thérèse cries to Jesus,
“I am also your prisoner, And I want in turn to repeat Your tender, divine
prayer: ‘My Beloved, my Brother, I thirst for Love!’ . . . Jesus, make me die Of
Love for You!!! . . . ” To “remain little” is to embrace the exhaustion, the
torment of faith-denying voices which paradoxically act as fuel for firing her
burning desire to have every dying breath be one with Jesus’ own desires on
the cross. Another play, “Triumph of Humility,” contrasts the humility of Jesus 81
and Mary with the frustrated pride of Lucifer. Good angels advise the
Carmelite community that their desire to gain hearts for Jesus requires them to
“remain always little” because “Humility makes hell angry” (RP 7, 5v). To
“remain little” is to cooperate with Jesus’ saving work; therefore, it frustrates
the forces of evil.
Near death, Thérèse writes “My Joy” (PN 45), a poem full of her para-
doxical experience of joy arising in the midst of struggling in dark faith.
Handing it to Pauline, Thérèse said, “My whole soul is in that.” 34 Like the
psalms, this poem expresses parallel meanings through parallel phrases. Thus,
if joy is “to stay little,” and joy is “to stay in the shadow,” then “to stay little”
is to love suffering, to hide oneself, to stoop low. It is to live without fear, to
love night as much as day, to hide tears, to struggle without ceasing in order to
bring forth spiritual children. From the first use to the last, “to remain little”35
hardly alludes to childhood; rather, coming as it does from Manuscript C
written in 1897, it appears to emanate from an even more mature period of
reflection on her 1894 discovery of the “little way,” and signifies an active
process of self-emptying in order to allow deeper transformation into Jesus.

Transformation of Desire
This transformation into Jesus is a transformation of desire.36 Whereas in 1894
Thérèse’s “little way” is “desire to be a saint” through Jesus lifting her to
heaven, in 1897, the year she died, Thérèse’s desire becomes identification with
Jesus the priest caring for all for whom she is responsible.
When Thérèse claims her “little way” in 1894, the first and only time she
uses that exact phrase, there is no mention of care for others. Within a year she
becomes aware of a paradoxical tension between her human limits and her
infinite desires. She decides to trust her desires and in June, 1895 boldly offers
herself to be consumed by Divine Merciful Love convinced that God himself
would be her holiness. In this consecration Thérèse’s focus remains primarily
on her own relationship to God. She asks God to take possession of her soul,

Conn | Thérèse of Lisieux: Far From Spiritual Childhood

 purify her of imperfections, enable participation in the Cross and, finally, save
souls who will love God eternally.37
Soon after taking official responsibility for others, Thérèse begins to speak
of human affection as a mode of experiencing divine love. She marks Marie of
the Trinity’s profession of vows by creating a memento-card featuring an image
of John of the Cross and a careful selection of his sayings.38 Inscribing the front
with a modified version of John’s maxim, “to suffer and be despised,” making
it “[t]hrough love, to suffer and be despised,” on the reverse she quotes John
affirming that human affection and loving God can grow together (LT 188). To
her spiritual brothers she maintains that love at the mature level of self-
82 forgetfulness, love that seeks no gratification, is a form of emptiness that God
loves to fill in order to generate new life in the world (LT 220, 221).
By September 1896 Thérèse has such urgent desires for fruitful ministry
that she feels exhausted and finds relief only by discovering her new vocation
to be the heart of Christ’s body (B, 3r–3v). By 1897, sure that she is dying,
Thérèse identifies with Jesus’ priestly prayer on the night before he died. Not
content simply to repeat the New Testament word for word,39 she carefully
chooses phrases that apply to her and omits what could only be attributed to
Jesus. She even changes the endings of some words from masculine to femi-
nine, so closely does she claim this prayer as her own.40 Concerned for all she
is responsible for in her ministry of spiritual care and formation, she loves her
own even unto the end, thirsting for the transformation of others, praying for
their flourishing after she is dead, surrendering in darkness to God’s merciful
love (C, 34r–34v).
Enduring the ravages of tuberculosis41 as well as tormenting doubt,
without morphine, Thérèse declares, “I no longer have any great desires except
that of loving to the point of dying of love” (C, 7v). Her last letter to Adolphe
Roulland confides her exhausted yet persistent desire to be consumed by love:
“What attracts me to . . . heaven is . . . the hope of loving Him finally as I have
so much desired to love Him, and the thought that I shall be able to make Him
loved by a multitude of souls . . . ” (LT 254). Her death-memento uses John of
the Cross to reinforce that her only desire is the “smallest movement of pure
love [that] is more useful to the Church than all other works put together” (LT
245)!
In the end, Thérèse’s “little way” develops from being a way, to being no
way at all. Initially she seeks a way that is straight, short, and new. Finally, her
“way” becomes union with Jesus hidden in a life that has become a desert, a
raging storm, a thick fog. Here there is no way, no sure path, only confidence
and love (C, 36v–37r).

SPIRITUS | 6.1
CONCLUSION: CHILDHOOD AND FAR FROM CHILDHOOD
Although Thérèse never used the phrase, “way of spiritual childhood,” it has
become emblematic of her and, I believe, a barrier to understanding her
spiritual development.42 Associating Thérèse’s self-forgetful love and trusting
surrender primarily with childhood blocks attention to central aspects of her
maturity: passionate choices, in step with Teresa of Avila and John of the
Cross, for self-appropriation, then movement beyond differentiation to self-
surrender. One can see an example of this in the recent film “Thérèse,” which
presents her way as little things done anonymously with no portrayal of either
Thérèse’s determined search for her own version of Carmelite tradition or her
responsibility for novitiate formation. 83
“Childhood” and “child” surely permeate Thérèse’s autobiographical
manuscripts; these words appear 157 times in 127 pages. There it means the
relationship of an offspring to God as loving parent, with emphasis on atti-
tudes of confidence, even audacity, along with loving abandonment. In her
letters, the image of childhood conveys Thérèse’s theology of the gratuity of
salvation and the uselessness of concern for merit. “Going to heaven” is like
being a child because children cannot “pay their way” to travel (LT 191).
Children never did any dazzling actions yet in heaven they are with martyrs
(LT 195). Thérèse created a holy-card for her breviary, pasting on the front
small images of her dead baby brothers and sister photographed on their
mother’s lap.43 On the reverse she copied biblical texts confirming salvation
without works. She meditated on her siblings, dead before they had time for
“merit,” and like them wanted to present herself to God with empty hands.44
While Thérèse savors being a child of God, it is profoundly ironic to
identify her with childhood when her focus, like that of her mentor John of the
Cross, is on moving away from infantile spirituality.45 She understands “being
carried by Jesus” as an antidote to the fear and infantile need for certainty
inherent in scruples, a condition that plagued Thérèse even into her sixth year
in Carmel.46 Writing to a Carmelite companion whose scruples were evident in
her fear, insomnia, and desolation in prayer, Thérèse prescribes this mature
medication: “abandon self . . . leave far behind the empty fear of being un-
faithful. . . . [I am] happy [you are] deprived of consolations too infantile and
unworthy of a missionary and a warrior” (LT 205–06). Close to death,
Thérèse speaks explicitly of “leaving childhood” in order to “equal strong
men,” as her foundress, Teresa of Avila, advised her Carmelite daughters (LT
201). As a Carmelite Thérèse was a hermit-in-community, absorbing the desert
tradition of staying in one’s cell, especially that inner cell where she struggled
and grew to embrace her vulnerability as an opening to union with God.
Abiding in the cell of her “true self” she surrendered to Merciful Love.47

Conn | Thérèse of Lisieux: Far From Spiritual Childhood

 On the one hand, Thérèse’s “little way” is analogous to childhood. It is
trusting based on a relation to God as our reliable parent, to Jesus as motherly
in his acceptance of all persons in their human frailty. It affirms that anyone
can be a saint; one “need not do anything great.” It proclaims that life in Jesus
is what provides the power to effect one’s desire for holiness. That is, one is
dependent on the generosity of another to bestow the grounding relationship.
And, Thérèse’s “little way” was discovered through persistent questioning, the
learning process characteristic of children.
On the other hand, the “little way” is far from childhood. It is the out-
come of decisions through which Thérèse, cooperating with grace, created a
84 freer self to be given away, of struggle in darkness to surrender to Love,
choices far beyond the capacity of childhood. It moves beyond “our family” to
“sitting at the table with” persons whose views are profoundly different.
Though at first the “little way” seems to espouse a romantic notion of child-
hood free of effort, on closer inspection this way emerges as the fruit of painful
discernment, daring self-awareness, and generous self-donation.
Why do we need to discover this full maturity of Thérèse’s “little way”?
First, we need Thérèse’s witness to the way holiness itself involves choosing to
“sit at the table” with those we assume are wrong or misguided. What new
ways of peace and justice could flow from sustained dialogue rather than
condemnation or exclusion? Also, we need Thérèse’s testimony to the insepara-
bility of vulnerability and spiritual maturity. Development into deeper relation-
ship with God and others requires the vulnerability of letting go of autonomy
and opening to human mutuality, even to union with God. How much corro-
sion has seeped into communities because people could not admit their vulner-
ability, or even covered up their church’s weakness and thus perpetuated the
corrosion? Finally, Thérèse’s way confirms the need to embrace not only
ambiguity but also unknowing. Opening ourselves to God’s ways that are
“beyond our ways” requires something other than submission to absolutes. It
requires education for darkness, for the transformation of desire over a lifetime
until one’s only desire is “to be broken [open] by love” (C, 8v).48

SPIRITUS | 6.1
APPENDIX
MILESTONES OF POSSIBLE SELF DEVELOPMENT
Adapted from Elizabeth Liebert, Changing Life Patterns (St. Louis: Chalice
Press, 2000), 212–14, using Jane Loevinger. Ego Development (SanFrancisco:
Jossey-Bass, 1976), 24–25 and Robert Kegan, The Evolving Self (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1982), 86–87.

Stage Impulse Interpersonal Conscious Cognitive

control Style Preoccupation Style
85

1 Impulsive Fear of retaliation Dependent, Bodily feelings, Stereotyping,

exploitative sexual, aggressive conceptual
confusion
2 Self-Protective Fear of being Manipulative, Protect self,
Imperial (Kegan) caught, blaming exploitative trouble,
advantage

3 Conformist External rules, Belonging, Appearance, Conceptual

Interpersonal shame niceness acceptance, simplicity,
(Kegan) banal feelings stereotypes,
clichés

3/4 Self- Differentiation Helping, aware Adjustment, Multiplicity

aware of norms, goals of self in relation problems,
to groups reasons,
opportunities
(vague)

4 Conscientious Self-evaluated Responsible, Differentiated Conceptual

Institutional standards, self- mutual, concern feelings, motives, complexity,
(Kegan) criticism, long for communica- self-respect patterns
term goals tion

4/5 Individualistic Add: respect for Add: dependence Add: differenti- Add: distinction
individuality as emotional ate inner/outer, of process/
problem development outcome

5 Interindividual Add: coping w/ Add: respect Vivid feelings, Complex

conflicting inner autonomy, self-fulfillment, patterns, tolerate
needs, toleration interdependence roots of ambiguity,
behavior, self in objectivity,
social context broad scope

6 Integrated Add: reconcile Add: cherish Add: identity

inner conflicts, individuality
renounce the
unattainable

Conn | Thérèse of Lisieux: Far From Spiritual Childhood

 NOTES
1. I am grateful to colleagues who offered questions, criticism and suggestions for earlier
drafts of this essay: Constance FitzGerald, O.C.D., Eileen Flanagan, Elizabeth Liebert,
Vilma Seelaus, O.C.D., Maria Traub, Mary Jo Weaver, and an anonymous reviewer of
the draft submitted to the journal. I am especially grateful to Walter E. Conn for
creative and editorial support. Finally, I thank my administration at Neumann College,
Doctors Rosalie Mirenda, Joseph Gillespie, Len DiPaul, for granting time for research
and writing.
2. Thérèse Martin (1873–1897) entered the Carmelite monastery of Lisieux in 1888,
eventually living there with three other Martin sisters (Marie, Pauline, Céline) and a
first cousin. In 1925 she was canonized a saint and in 1997 declared a Doctor of the
Universal Church. For issues raised at the centennial of her birth see Thérèse de Lisieux:
Conférences du Centenaire 1873–1973, special issue of Nouvelles de l’Institut
86 Catholique de Paris (May, 1973) which includes comparisons of original photographs
of Thérèse with those that were “retouched” until 1961. For a feminist perspective see
Joann Wolski Conn, “A Feminist View of Thérèse,” in Carmelite Studies V: Experienc-
ing Thérèse Today, ed. John Sullivan (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1990), 119–
39, 201–03; Joann Wolski Conn, “Thérèse of Lisieux from a Feminist Perspective,”
Spiritual Life 28 (1982): 233–39. For attention to issues in spiritual direction see Joann
Wolski Conn, “Conversion in Thérèse of Lisieux,” Spiritual Life 24:3 (Fall 1978): 154–
63.
3. Joann Wolski Conn, Spirituality and Personal Maturity (New York: Paulist Press, 1989;
reprint, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996). Elizabeth Liebert agrees with
this assumption regarding the integration of spiritual and psychological developmental
perspectives in her Changing Life Patterns: Adult Development in Spiritual Direction
(New York: Paulist Press, 1992; expanded edition, St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2000).
4. Sandra M. Schneiders, “Religion vs. Spirituality: A Contemporary Conundrum,”
Spiritus 3:2 (Fall 2003): 164.
5. For identification of Thérèse with “the way of spiritual childhood” in scholarly sources,
see Conrad De Meester, The Power of Confidence: Genesis and Structure of the “Way
of Spiritual Childhood” of St. Thérèse of Lisieux (New York: Alba House, 1999); and
in popular sources, see the website of Society of the Little Flower or sample some of the
572,000 entries for “Thérèse of Lisieux” in Google. For the contention that Thérèse
was “sold to the public” in sentimentalized ways that distorted her message see Jean–
François Six, Light in the Night: The Last Eighteen Months in the Life of Thérèse of
Lisieux (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 10–14. Biographical and
historical studies include Guy Gaucher, The Passion of Thérèse of Lisieux (New York:
Crossroad, 1990) and The Story of a Life (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1987);
Ida F. Goerres, The Hidden Face (New York: Pantheon, 1959); Patricia O’Connor,
Thérèse of Lisieux: A Biography (Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, 1983);
Jean-François Six, La Veritable enfance de Thérèse de Lisieux: névrose et sainteté (Paris:
Éditions du Seuil, 1972) and Thérèse de Lisieux au Carmel (Paris: Éditions de Seuil,
1973). Although Jean-François Six has been consistently ostracized by Lisieux “insid-
ers” because of what has been called his “negative attitude” toward Mother Agnes
(Thérèse’s older sister, Pauline, who re-wrote much of Thérèse’s texts), his writings
played a significant role in restoring my interest in Thérèse in the 1970s by demonstrat-
ing that a critical historical perspective helps to illuminate the way spirituality, as
experience, is concrete and Thérèse’s holiness is influenced by limits as well as strengths
of all in the Lisieux Carmel.
6. Research for this essay is based on the recent one-volume version of the critical
“Nouvelle Edition du Centenaire” (1971–1992) of Thérèse’s complete writings (Texts
and Last Conversations): Sainte Thérèse de l’Enfant-Jesus et de la Sainte-Face, Oeuvres

SPIRITUS | 6.1
 complètes (Paris: Éditions du Cerf/Declée de Brouwer, 2004). Unless otherwise noted
the quotations from Thérèse’s autobiographical manuscripts A, B, C (together making
up Story of a Soul) and prayers are from Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St.
Thérèse of Lisieux, trans. John Clarke (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996),
hereafter cited by manuscript letter and page, for example, C, 2r; letters are from
General Correspondence, trans. John Clarke, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: ICS Publica-
tions, 1982, 1988) cited as LT with number; poetry is from The Poetry of Saint Thérèse
of Lisieux, trans. Donald Kinney (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996) cited as PN
with number. These standard English translations are numbered to correlate with the
pagination of Thérèse’s handwritten manuscripts and with the order of letters and
poems in the critical French edition. Some scenes from Thérèse’s two plays about Joan
of Arc are available in English in St. Thérèse of Lisieux: Essential Writings, ed. Mary
Frohlich (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2003); quotations from plays in this essay are
my translations and are cited as PR with numbers. 87
For structural developmental theory I rely chiefly on the work of Robert Kegan,
James Fowler, and Carol Gilligan as detailed in my Spirituality and Personal Maturity.
7. On grace integrated with nature, especially from a psycho-dynamic psychological
perspective see W. W. Meissner, S.J., M.D., Ignatius Loyola: Psychology of a Saint (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).
8. My summary of structural development and criteria for evaluating Thérèse’s maturity
relies on Elizabeth Liebert’s creative synthesis of several theorists, principally Jane
Loevinger and Robert Kegan, in her Changing Life Patterns. The chart in the Appendix
presents an overview of possible milestones of self development along with characteris-
tics of each stage.
Studies of Thérèse from other psychological frameworks include Constance
FitzGerald, O.C.D., “The Mission of Thérèse of Lisieux,” Contemporary Carmelite
Women, The Way Supplement 89 (Summer 1997): 74–96; Marc Foley, O.C.D., “St.
Thérèse: Psychological and Spiritual Perspectives on Her Childhood Illness, Parts 1–2”
(Washington, DC: ICS Publications Cassettes, no date); Robert J. Giugliano, “Separa-
tion, Loss, and Longing in the Infancy and Early Childhood of St. Thérèse of the Child
Jesus and the Holy Face,” Studies in Spirituality 14 (2004): 225–53.
9. I am grateful to Elizabeth Liebert for suggesting this succinct method. See Elizabeth
Liebert, “The Thinking Heart: Developmental Dynamics in Etty Hillesum’s Diaries,”
Pastoral Psychology 43:6 (July 1995): 393–410.
10. I exclude the so-called “Last Conversations” because they were written and re-edited
several times between 1897 and 1927 by Pauline (Mother Agnes), who also changed the
autobiographical manuscripts, thus preventing a completely accurate edition from
appearing until the 1956 facsimile edition. The Introduction to this Manuscrits
autobiographiques de sainte Thérèse de l’Enfant-Jésus, ed. François de Sainte-Marie, 3
vols. plus facsimiles (Lisieux: Office Central de Lisieux, 1956) notes that “of all the
original notes taken by Rev. Mother Agnes of Jesus, only a fragment remains on paper
difficult to read dated 11–12 July 1897. More copies of these notes were made later.
Most have unfortunately disappeared” (30). Steven Payne, O.C.D., Saint Thérèse of
Lisieux: Doctor of the Universal Church (Staten Island, New York: Alba House, 2002),
63–72, summarizes the struggle for a critical edition of Thérèse’s complete works.
11. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer of a late draft for clarifying the “synchronic”
and “diachronic” aspects of my methodology.
12. Liebert, Changing Life Patterns, 213.
13. Translation of C, 2v–3r is mine.
14. Clarke translation, C, 2v (see no.6 above).
15. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and
Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991), 750.

Conn | Thérèse of Lisieux: Far From Spiritual Childhood

 16. See Guy Gaucher, John and Thérèse: Flames of Love, The Influence of St. John of the
Cross in the Life and Writings of St. Thérèse (Staten Island, New York: Alba House,
2000).
17. Letter from Almire Pichon, S.J., 20 January 1893, LC 151.
18. De Meester, The Power of Confidence, concludes that Thérèse must have found her
“little way” using Céline’s notebook of Old Testament quotations because the transla-
tion of Proverbs and Isaiah that are quoted in C, 3r are word-for-word as Céline’s
notebook had them and differ from the Old Testament translation used in the Lisieux
Carmel.
19. For contemporary evidence of Thérèse’s discovery of the “little way,” see two letters to
her sister Léonie, LT 173 of November 1894, where Thérèse begs for prayers that she
be “la plus petite,” and LT 175 of February 1895, where she begins to refer explicitly to
herself as “toute petite.” I appreciate an anonymous reviewer’s suggestion to insert
88 contemporary references at this point.
20. Liebert, Changing Life Patterns, 120.
21. The U.S.A. film “Thérèse” (A Leonardo Defillippis Film, 2004) omits entirely this adult
responsibility from the story of her life thus reinforcing the association of Thérèse with
childhood.
22. For an expansion of this theme see Constance FitzGerald, “Contemplative Life as
Charismatic Presence,” Contemplative Review 11: 4 (Winter 1978): 34–48.
23. Liebert, Changing Life Patterns, 121–22.
24. The debate over the exact character and significance of Thérèse’s “night,” in particular
the connection she makes between her own experience of darkness and the reality of
people who have no faith, is synthesized and related to postmodern culture in Mary
Frohlich, “Desolation and Doctrine in Thérèse of Lisieux,” Theological Studies 61:2
(June 2000): 261–79.
25. Reminder from Constance FitzGerald in personal correspondence, 2005.
26. In the midst of his rich theology of salvation rooted in the meaning and implications of
“facing,” David Ford devotes one chapter to Thérèse of Lisieux concluding that “the
self of Thérèse is most adequately understood as formed through a lifetime of facing
Jesus Christ in faith.” See David Ford, Self and Salvation (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), 240.
27. Liebert, Changing Life Patterns, 122–23.
28. See, LT 189, 193, 226, 254 to Adolphe Roulland and LT 198, 213, 220, 221, 224, 244,
247, 253, 258 to Maurice Bellière.
29. Liebert, Changing Life Patterns, 123.
30. Liebert, Changing Life Patterns, 123.
31. Liebert, Changing Life Patterns, 124.
32. Liebert, Changing Life Patterns, 124.
33. On impasse see Constance FitzGerald, “Impasse and Dark Night,” in Joann Wolski
Conn, ed., Women’s Spirituality: Resources for Christian Development (New York:
Paulist Press, 1986), 287–311; also in Women’s Spirituality, rev. ed. (New York: Paulist
Press, 1996), 410–35; and in rev. ed. reprint (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2005),
410–35.
34. The Poetry of Saint Thérèse, 184.
35. The phrase, “rester petite,” is translated by Clarke in Story of a Soul as “remain little”
and by Kinney in The Poetry as “stay little.”
36. On transformation of desire in John of the Cross’s writings see FitzGerald, “Impasse
and Dark Night,” and her “The Spiritual Canticle of John of the Cross As the Story of
Human Desire” (Canfield, OH: Alba House Cassettes, 1988).
37. This prayer is incorporated into Story of a Soul, 276–77.
38. See photographs in Pierre Descouvemont and Helmuth Nils Loose, Sainte Thérèse de
Lisieux: La vie en images (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1995), 353.

SPIRITUS | 6.1
39. Story of a Soul, 255, includes verses from John 17 that are not in the French text of C,
34r–34v.
40. Donné (given) becomes donnée (feminine form), and envoyé (sent) becomes envoyée (C,
34r–34v).
41. For a medical perspective on her death see Gaucher, The Passion of Thérèse of Lisieux,
102–09.
42. Robert Ellsberg, in his highly praised Blessed Among All Women: Women Saints,
Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time (New York: Crossroad, 2005), 109, continues
the inaccurate assumption: “She also called her Little Way the way of spiritual child-
hood.”
43. See photographs in Descouvemont and Loose, Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, 396–97.
44. See Conrad De Meester, With Empty Hands: The Message of Thérèse of Lisieux, rev.
ed. (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2000).
45. See Colin Thompson, St. John of the Cross: Songs in the Night (Washington, DC: 89
Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 18.
46. See the 1893 letter (LC 151) from Almire Pichon, S.J. in which he commands Thérèse
to banish her worries that she could have committed a grave sin without knowing it—
something she was taught to believe during her childhood catechesis for the sacraments.
47. Identification of Thérèse’s hermit cell as the cell of the “true self” came from correspon-
dence with Vilma Seelaus, O.C.D.
48. On education for darkness in the writings of John of the Cross, see Constance
FitzGerald, O.C.D. in “Transformation in Wisdom: The Subversive Character and
Educative Power of Sophia in Contemplation,” in Kevin Culligan, O.C.D. and Regis
Jordan, O.C.D., eds., Carmel and Contemplation: Transforming Human Consciousness
(Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2000), 281–358.

Conn | Thérèse of Lisieux: Far From Spiritual Childhood