This year is the bicentennial of the birth of Saint Therese Couderc, co-founder of the Cenacle Sisters. My group (five of us) entered the pre-novitiate on February 1, the birthday of the saint we call Mother Therese, but about whom I knew precious little then.
Oh, I had read a romantically pious biography of her, and knew that an important element in her spirituality was surrendering oneself* to God. On that winter day in Saint Louis , though, the ground covered with a foot of snow, I had no idea of what this concept required — of both how difficult it is in real life (and how easy – see the whole meditation of Saint Therese at “To Surrender Oneself”).
I had not yet learned what Mother Therese knew — that there is nothing we can call our own. She spoke of “my extreme poverty” (in French, ma misère). She was conscious of having no virtue of her own: whatever goodness she had was from God, and even her spiritual life was more God’s affair than it was hers. She said that if she were called to account for her deeds, she would find herself with empty hands, her only recourse being the great mercy of God. But for her, as for us, this great mercy of God is sufficient.
I did not yet know that all-sufficiency of God’s grace. I knew it in my head, of course, having been well taught. But when I entered the Cenacle, not having grown into a spiritually mature daughter of Mother Therese (and who can ever claim to be entirely mature?), I was still afraid of what God might do when I failed in faith or devotion or human virtue. I was well aware of my own lukewarmness. I knew the pitiful state of my prayer. Would God abandon me because of that? And what if I made a terrible mistake or committed a dreadful sin? Was it possible to be so evil that I would not be forgiven?
How miserable I made myself!
Mother Therese wrote:
In a word, to surrender oneself is to die to everything and to self, to be no longer concerned with self except to keep it continually turned toward God.
To surrender oneself is, moreover, no longer to seek oneself in anything, either for the spiritual or the physical, that is to say, no longer to seek one’s own satisfaction, but solely the divine good pleasure.
To be “no longer concerned with self except to keep it continually turned toward God” and “no longer to seek oneself in anything, either for the spiritual or the physical” — I realized that this stance must also include the way I dealt with my failings. In other words, how could I be continually turned toward the good God and at the same time constantly focused on my own inadequacy? How could I be no longer concerned with self, if I were always berating myself, rather than praising God for the divine mercy freely poured out in Jesus Christ who died for me?
What about my prayer? What about other areas of my life? Here, too, it is impossible to be continually turned toward God if my primary concern is the quality of my own prayer — or the state of my faith, or my relationships, or my work, or anything else that I consider mine. A certain discipline is important, certainly, but even the discipline is not to be my primary focus. My focus must be God.
This turning toward God means handing over the results of my prayer or of any other undertaking. The fruits are important of course. Am I growing in faith, hope, and love? Does my life witness to what Paul calls, in Galatians 5, the “fruit of the Spirit”: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”? If not, something is askew.
Success or failure, however, is another matter altogether. In the life of Mother Therese there were certainly what we would call failures — the most startling being that she was deposed from her role as superior general — in other words, she was fired. But what we human beings consider failure is not necessarily failure in God’s eyes. Just consider the colossal “failure” of the mission of Jesus as it seemed to end on the cross.
In the Spirit of this same Jesus, Mother Therese handed herself over to the one she knew as the Good God. Through grace, she answered the call to entrust herself to a Mystery she could not see, but whom she experienced as Mercy, Love, and Peace.
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
(John 12:24)