The following is an excerpt from Interior Freedom by Fr. Jacques Philppe.
“It is in your own hearts that you are restricted"
To try to explain the nature of that inner space of freedom that we each possess and no one can steal from us, I want to tell you about a little experience of my own concerning St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux has been a very dear friend of mine for many years, and I’ve learned an enormous amount at her school of Gospel simplicity and trust. Two years ago, I happened to be at Lisieux on one of the first occasions when her relics were to be taken from the Carmelite convent to one of the cities that had asked for them—I think it was Marseilles. The Carmelite sisters had asked the brothers of the Community of the Beatitudes for help in carrying the heavy, precious reliquary to the car that was to take it to its destination. I volunteered for this delightful job, and it gave me the unexpected chance of going into the enclosure of the Lisieux Carmel and discovering, with joy and emotion, the actual places where Thérèse lived: the infirmary, the cloister, the laundry, the garden with the chestnut-tree avenue—all places that I knew from the saint’s description of them in her autobiographical writings. One thing struck me: these places were much smaller than I could have imagined. For example, at the end of her life Thérèse gives a good-humored account of the sisters dropping by to have a little chat with her on their way to make hay; but the great hayfield I had pictured to myself is in reality a mere pocket-handkerchief!
This unremarkable fact, the smallness of the places where Thérèse lived, made me think a lot. I realized a what a tiny world, in human terms, she inhabited: a little provincial Carmelite convent, not outstanding for its architecture; a minuscule garden; a small community composed of religious sisters whose upbringing, education, and manners often left much to be desired; a climate where the sun shines very little…And she spent such a short time in the convent: ten years! However, and this is the paradox that struck me, when you read Thérèse’s writings you never get the impression of a life spent in a restricted world, but just the opposite. Overlooking certain limitations in the style, her way of expressing herself and her spiritual sensitivity convey an impression of breadth, of marvelous expansion. Thérèse lives in very wide horizons, which are those of God’s infinite mercy and her unlimited desire to love him. She feels like a queen with the whole world at her feet, because she can obtain anything from God, and, through love, she can travel to every point in the globe where a missionary needs her prayer and sacrifices!
There is a whole study waiting to be done on the importance of the terms used by St. Thérèse to express the unlimited dimensions oof the spiritual universe she inhabits: “infinite horizons,” “immense desires,” “oceans of graces,” “abysses of love,” “torrents of mercy,” and so on. Her “Manuscript B” especially, recounting her discovery of her vocation in the heart of the Church, is very revealing. Of course she speaks of suffering, the monotony of sacrifice, but all of that is overtaken and transfigured by the intensity of her inner life.
“Why does Thérèse’s world—humanly speaking, such a narrow and poor one—give the sense of being so ample and spacious? Why does such an impression of freedom leap out from the account she gives of her life in Carmel?
Quite simply because Thérèse loves intensely. She is on fire with love for God and charity for her sisters, and she carries the Church and the whole world with motherly tenderness. That is her secret: she is not constricted in her little convent because she loves. Love transfigures everything and touches the most banal realities with a note of infinity. All the saints have had the same experience. St. Faustina exclaims in her spiritual diary: “Love is a mystery that transforms everything it touches into beautiful things that are pleasing to God. The love of God sets the soul free. Then it is like a queen, knowing nothing of the constraints of slavery.”
