Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
For today's reflection, we're going to continue our counsels on a healthy and a holy spirituality. Our third counsel is prayer, which we spoke about previously, and now we're going to share some thoughts from St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, and how she lived and understood prayer.
A definition of prayer which Thérèse knew by heart from the catechism of her own home diocese, the Diocese of Bayeux, said that prayer is an elevation of our soul to God, to render Him our religious due, and to ask Him for our needs. It's an accurate definition, and it's tied to what we call the virtue of religion. The virtue of religion says that we give to God what's due to Him, and yes, we are expected to reach out to Him in prayer, whether it's in the weekly prayer of the Mass or in our own private prayer life.
In her autobiography, St. Thérèse shares more of a spontaneous understanding of prayer, and it's her definition, which the Catechism of the Catholic Church presents at number 2558, when it asks, “What is prayer?” We'll quote from her autobiography here, which details a little more of her thought than what the catechism shares. She says, “For me, prayer is an aspiration of the heart. It is a simple glance directed to heaven. It is a cry of gratitude and of love in the midst of trial as well as joy. It is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me with Jesus.”  St. Thérèse's understanding of prayer goes beyond just the virtue of religion, just giving God what we owe Him, and it very much echoes the gift of piety, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit that perfects the virtue of religion and makes us pray and do spiritual and religious things and practices more out of love than just out of a sense of duty. Thérèse understood prayer as an intimate relationship with the one who loves us the most.
As an aside, St. Augustine defined prayer as the expression of desire, and he said that God responds to that desire by moving our hearts towards Him, which is what He did very powerfully in the case of the Little Flower.
Here we'll highlight four characteristics of St. Thérèse's prayer life, which will be helpful for us. Her prayer life was simple, constant, contemplative, and rooted in love, and we'll say a word about each of these.
First, simplicity. Carmelite Bishop Guy Gaucher, in his reflections on St. Thérèse's prayer life, says that simplicity is a hallmark of her prayer. In her autobiography, Thérèse writes, “Outside the divine office, which I am very unworthy to recite, I do not have the courage to force myself to search out beautiful prayers in books. There are so many of them, it really gives me a headache, and each prayer is more beautiful than the others. I cannot recite them all, and not knowing which to choose, I do like little children who do not know how to read. I say very simply to God what I wish to tell Him, without composing beautiful sentences, and He always understands me.” She also writes, “God does not weary of hearing me, even when I tell Him simply my pains and joys, as if He did not know them.”  Yes, of course, God knows all of our pains and joys, and He understands them actually better than we do, but if we don't share those things with Him in prayer, what kind of a relationship is that? Remember, prayer is primarily relational, not transactional.
Like St. Thérèse, like us, she memorized and prayed prayers, liturgical prayers, vocal prayers, prayers written on holy cards, mental prayers. As she matured, she actually still prayed vocal prayers, but her prayer life simplified, which is what it should do as God calls us to higher levels of prayer. Prayer becomes less complicated as we mature, not more complicated, because one of God's attributes is simplicity, that He is simple, and so as we draw closer to Him, that attribute will begin to shine more in our own very soul.
In one of her letters written when she was 20, St. Thérèse says, “When I am before the tabernacle, I can say only one thing to our Lord, ‘My God, you know that I love you,’ and I feel that my prayer does not tire Jesus, knowing the helplessness of His poor little spouse, He is content with her goodwill.”  So too, in your prayer life, as you grow, you'll learn to cultivate a certain simplicity in how you go to God and in how you connect with Him.
Secondly, the Little Flower's prayer life was constant. In fact, she thought about God all the time and offered brief prayers to Him throughout the day. One of her religious sisters asked her, “How do you think about God always?” Thérèse answered, “It isn't difficult, we naturally think of the one we love.” Then the sister, Sister Maria of the Sacred Heart, asked, “You never lose His presence?” “Oh no,” swore Thérèse replied, “I do not believe I have ever been three minutes at a time without thinking of Him.”  St. Thérèse prayed in good times, in bad times, in dry times, in joyful times, in painful times, in sleepy times. She prayed at all times because the thought of her Savior was never far from her mind.
In our own prayer life, we should ask Our Lady and our guardian angel for the grace to think more often about God. God is love and goodness and truth and kindness and mercy itself. And any of those attractive and beautiful qualities that we see in others whom we love, those are just shadows of how wonderful the Lord is. The loving and wonderful and kind and generous people in our lives are like a faint passing glimpse of the beauty and the splendor of our good God.
Thirdly, Thérèse's prayer life was contemplative. Bishop Gaucher, in his reflections, talks about the evolution of her prayer life by using two illustrations: one from her childhood and the other from when she was about to pass away.
So at the age of four, Thérèse was picturing herself as a cloistered religious with her sister, Céline. When her older sister, Pauline, explained to her that cloistered religious have to keep silence, little Thérèse was confused. And Pauline tells us that Thérèse wondered how you could pray to Jesus without saying anything. How do you pray to God without saying anything, was the question of the four-year-old Thérèse. Great question for a four-year-old to ask.
Twenty years later, when she was ill, and there was no hope for her recovery, Sister Thérèse was talking with Céline, who is now Sister Geneviève. So what she imagined when she was four years old about her and her sister being in religious life together came true. Thérèse said to her, “I cannot sleep. I am suffering too much.” “So I pray.” “And what do you say to Jesus?” Céline asked. Thérèse responded, “I don't say anything. I love Him.”  So from the age of 4 to the age of 24, in that time frame, Thérèse had learned that you can pray not just with words. She learned that prayer, more contemplative, deeper prayer, is a simple gaze and offering of love. Prayer doesn't have to be just with words. In fact, the more contemplative our prayer life is, the less wordy it becomes.
In one of her letters, Thérèse writes, “Frequently only silence can express my prayer. However, this divine guest of the tabernacle understands all, even the silence of a child's soul filled with gratitude.”  Sister Geneviève, i.e., Céline, says on entering Thérèse's cell one evening, “I was struck by her heavenly expression of recollection. Although she was sowing industriously, she seemed lost in profound contemplation.” When I inquired, “What are you thinking about?” She replied with tears in her eyes, “I'm meditating on the Our Father. It is so sweet to call God our Father.” That's the heart of someone who is a contemplative.
St. Thérèse thought of herself as a little bird who would, quote, “gaze on her divine Sun, sun, no matter what the weather was like.” So the clouds, storms, darkness would never tear her mind and her heart away from her Spouse because she had the mind and the heart of a contemplative.
And lastly, very briefly, Thérèse's prayer was rooted in love, not rooted in fear, nor simply rooted in a spirit of duty. Love makes us move beyond the call of duty, as expressed in the definition of prayer from her diocese that we shared at the beginning. Love made her move beyond that and brought her to resemble the one whom she loved.
An inscription engraved in her cell in Carmel reads, “Jesus is my only love.” And in her last manuscript, she writes, “It is prayer, it is sacrifice, which gives me all my strength. These are the invincible weapons that Jesus has given me, prayer and sacrifice. They can touch souls much better than words, as I have very frequently experienced,” she says.
As a new Joan of Arc, these were Thérèse's weapons, prayer and sacrifice, weapons which each of us can readily take in hand if our spiritual life is rooted in the goodness and in the love of God.
“Oh, infinite mercy of the Lord, who really wants to answer the prayer of His little children,” Thérèse writes, “how great is the power of prayer. One could call it a queen who has at each instant free access to the King and who is able to obtain whatever she asks,” unquote.
So a healthy and a holy spirituality will lead us to a life of prayer which echoes in some way that of St. Thérèse's prayer life: a life of prayer that becomes simpler, more constant, more contemplative, and more and more rooted in the charity which is God.
May Our Lady help us to truly become men and women of prayer.
Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.