Perfect patron – a saint with a joy that inspires

Sydney
14 April 2002

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Perfect patron – a saint with a joy that inspires

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Perfect patron – a saint with a joy that inspires

St Thérèse at 15

By Yvette Hanna

Why I have chosen St Thérèse of Lisieux to be my patroness:

I am inspired by her humility and her magnanimity. This young nun took the two Gospel precepts – “Without me you can do nothing” (John 15) and “I can do all things in him who strengthens me” (Phil 2) – and lived out those precepts in a way that enabled her to embrace the whole world in a secret life of utter dependence upon God.

I love the hiddenness of her life. Thérèse’s acts of love were as simple as wheeling the chair of a sick nun and withholding her complaints when a nun splashed water on her, but she gave those acts as offerings for the whole Church. It is so easy to feel that my attempts to grow in holiness are pretty negligible in the great scheme of things.

St Thérèse’s life, and her emphasis upon the importance of the love that informs our acts, rather than the apparent greatness of our acts, challenges me to let no opportunity for a good deed to pass, even if it seems small and insignificant. For this reason, I am attracted to her Little Way.

It is a way of trust in God and abandonment to God that is applicable to my own life. Even though her circumstances of life were so different to my own (I am definitely not a holy nun!) she is honest enough to admit to the same temptations that face me. For example, her experiences of character clashes and of dryness in prayer are the same challenges that confront us every day. Her Little Way helps me to face these conflicts, just as it helped her.

Her words – “I don’t seek to do extraordinary things. I seek to do ordinary things extraordinarily well” – are revolutionary words to me. They tell me that I don’t have to be in the limelight in order to mean something; my actions don’t have to be wildly applauded by the world in order to be successful. The perfect life for me is one that God loves, in which I love God, not one that everybody else loves!

I love Thérèse’s joy. You almost could not guess that she was at the end stages of a terminal illness when she wrote her book. She says nothing about the terrible treatments that were prescribed for tuberculosis, or the pain of slowly suffocating to death, which she did over a period of several months.

I am inspired by that joy that she maintained even in the face of the temptations to despair and to commit suicide.

I love her absolute confidence in God, which persisted through sickness, loneliness, mockery and temptations. She portrays God in a way that gives confidence and consolation: “I assure you that God is even kinder than you think … for those who love him and, after each discourteous act, cast themselves into his arms and ask pardon, Jesus is vibrant with joy.”

St Thérèse is the perfect patron for me in her teachings and her example.

If you don’t own her work, The Story of a Soul, then buy it; if you’ve bought it, then read it; if you’ve read it, then read it again!

Yvette Hanna is a student at the University of Sydney. This is the summary of a talk she gave at a dinner attended by the Bishop of Parramatta, Bishop Kevin Manning.