The Liturgical Way of St. Thérèse of Lisieux

One of the richest fruits of the Traditional Liturgy is its ability to convey man’s infinite need for Grace. God is He Who Is; man is he who is not. Man, always grasping for more than his due, needs something transcendent to expose his wounds so that they may be bound and healed. In the Church, traditionally, all was ordered to God, by Love and for Love. From the sacred cathedrals built for solemn worship to the ostensibly rigid fasting laws regarding Holy Communion, all was done with a confidence in the fatherly care of God and the maternal education of Mother Church.

Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the Traditional Roman Missal. Each movement, word, and gesture prescribed by the Church is lovingly placed in the mind and heart of her ministers. Writing in 1848, the English convert St. John Henry Newman elucidates,

To me nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling, so overcoming, as the Mass, said as it is among us. I could attend Masses forever, and not be tired. It is not a mere form of words—it is a great action, the greatest action that can be on earth.

The enduring relevance of this Missal speaks for itself, primarily by the liturgical devotion of the saints who were formed by it. Chief among them for our times, I argue, is Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, the “greatest saint of modern times.” I claim that the Traditional Roman Rite was the foundation of St. Thérèse’s spirituality and sanctity, and I argue that this path is universal and fruitful for all in the Church.

The life of Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin was one marked by the sacred liturgy. Even before Thérèse entered the world, her saintly parents, Louis and Zelie, adopted for themselves the Church’s liturgical piety with the utmost and sweetest devotion. We read of their daily assistance at Mass and how “they strictly observed the fasts and abstinences of the Church, kept Sunday as a day of complete rest from work in spite of the remonstrance of friends, and found in pious reading their most delightful recreation.” For the Martin household, nothing came before the Work of God.

Monsieur Louis’ sweet and devout leadership was foundational in providing the fecund soil in which solid sanctity and devotion could flourish, so much so that even his recitation of the Our Father moved his family to tears. And there was no inconsistency between his life in the home and in the world. He never, for instance, failed to salute the Blessed Sacrament, regardless of what might be thought of him.

The story of Louis’ and Zelie’s own respective desires for the cloister is well-known. It will suffice to mention that while neither Louis nor Zelie became religious themselves, their embrace of the Sacrament of Matrimony stemmed from a pure love of God and desire for sainthood for themselves and their children. Sts. Louis and Zelie show us that everything ought to be ordered by charity, and charity comes to us by Grace principally through the Church’s liturgy. There would be no St. Thérèse without her saintly parents.

The young Thérèse was herself imbued with liturgical piety. A patroness of not a few Benedictine novitiates, she often listened to the reading of Dom Gueranger’s Liturgical Year. Thérèse’s aunt, a Benedictine nun of Le Mans, was herself commended by Gueranger as the “model religious.” And it was from those daughters of St. Benedict that Thérèse and her elder sister Pauline would be immersed in the liturgical spirit of the Church. There she learned to further love the riches of the Church’s devotional treasury. She cultivated strong devotions to the saints, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and, above all, to Our Eucharistic Lord.

Moreover, Thérèse recognized the Church’s cultural patrimony and its ability to shape souls. In a letter from her pilgrimage to Italy, Thérèse remarks that Rome “taught me more than long years of study.” This is significant because it further demonstrates that the signorella (as she was called in Italy) of Lisieux was a true daughter of the Roman Church. Indeed, we may fittingly place her as one of the “little children” Newman himself recalls seeing upon experiencing the Mass:

There are little children there, and old men, and simple laborers, and students in seminaries, priests preparing for Mass, priests making their thanksgiving, there are innocent maidens, and there are penitent sinners; but out of these many minds rises one Eucharistic hymn, and the great Action is the measure and the scope of it.

As Mater et Magistra, Mother Church has always promoted a real harmony among her children, and this includes the manner in which one assists at the Holy Sacrifice. Rather than impose the same manner of praying to all the faithful at a particular time, the Church has traditionally encouraged “actual participation” in a harmonious sense—not “following a hard form of prayer from beginning to end…but concurring in a sweet harmony.” Paradoxically, it is precisely because of the tight rubrical rules for the priest that the laity has the liberty to pray in whatever manner the Holy Spirit inspires.

Like Cardinal Newman, Thérèse had a particular devotion to the Sovereign Pontiff. She writes, “we spent six days visiting the chief wonders of Rome, and on the seventh we saw the greatest of all—Leo XIII.” She joyfully recounts the privilege of assisting at the pope’s Mass “in his own private chapel.” “His saintly bearing at the altar” she continues, “gave abundant evidence that the Vicar of Christ was in very truth the ‘Holy Father.’”

Anyone who has had the privilege of assisting at an unreformed pontifical Mass can immediately attest to its unique nobility and force. There was then immediately a second Mass of thanksgiving before the Holy Father received the pilgrims. It is worth stressing that it was in this Roman context of the Traditional Liturgy, with all its fasts, feasts, ember days, and vigils, that Thérèse recognized her vocation.

Thérèse received the holy habit of the Carmelite Order on January 10, 1889, at the age of 16. It was at Carmel that the young fleur de Jesus was perfected in charity through the liturgy, culminating in her offering herself as a perpetual Victim of Divine Love. Like her great spiritual mother St. Teresa of Avila, Thérèse was zealous for the dignified celebration of the liturgy, which she lived day in and day out as sacristan. Indeed, Thérèse’s life was totally shaped by the Divine Office, her “joy and martyrdom.”

As a novice, Thérèse had the responsibility of intoning the antiphons, reciting versicles, and reading the scriptural lessons for the midnight office of Matins; this was done entirely in Latin, the language of the Church. It is difficult to not think of her time as a girl with the Lisieux Benedictines here, as her Little Way was fully manifested in her liturgical offices and humble work. Regarding her devotion to the Office, Thérèse confidently proclaims, “I do not think it is possible for anyone to have desired more than I did to assist properly at choir and to recite perfectly the Divine Office.”

The entirety of Thérèse’s liturgical mission could be encapsulated here. For Thérèse, the primary purpose of the Liturgy is to adore the Divine Trinity; evangelization is a secondary matter. God’s Merciful Love overflows into the Mystical Body, returning to the “source and summit” whence it came.

It is through the liturgy that man can truly know himself and make a sincere gift of himself. This was true for Thérèse, and it remains so now. Thérèse shows that legem credendi statuat lex supplicandi. She also shows that sainthood is the ordinary path for each Christian.

Thérèse became a saint because she relied upon her Heavenly Father to make her one. The means of grace at her disposal then are the same for us now. And if the Roman Missal that Thérèse loved so dearly is persecuted in our times, we may take heart with St. Zelie, knowing that we, too, “shall go to that Kingdom, enriched with greater merit because of a more prolonged combat.” The liturgy made Thérèse a saint. May it be the same for us.