[00:00] Praise be to Jesus and Mary now and forever. We've been doing a series of counsels for a healthy and holy spirituality. The counsel that we've been speaking about in our last two reflections is fear and what it means to have a proper fear of the Lord. The last time we spoke about the spirit of Jansenism, which fosters an unholy fear of God. Today, we're just going to ask, what part did fear play in the life of St. Thérèse of

[00:35] Lisieux, and how did she overcome it? Because she's the person we've been using as an example of someone who truly lived a healthy and a holy spirituality. Anyone who's familiar with St. Thérèse's story knows that Jesus was the great love of her life. But before that great love really flourished, Thérèse was haunted by a great fear, the constant fear of offending God. It was like a spiritual shadow or a dark cloud that always hung over her.

[01:05] Growing up, Thérèse had a number of fears that stemmed in part from her environment, in part from her very sensitive nature, in part from childhood traumas, and also from spiritual trials too. I saw an article not too long ago on Catholic Answers, which spoke of the religious scruples of St. Thérèse and Martin Luther, and how both of them were obsessed with their sins. They were terrified by divine justice. They were doubtful of earning God's love.

[01:36] They were riddled with anxiety. One of those two famous figures actually overcame their fear of God in a healthy way. I'll leave it to you to guess which one of the two actually did that. Thérèse's mom, Zélie, had a fair amount of spiritual anxiety stemming from the Jansenistic ethos of her day, and also her difficult upbringing too. And then she passed away when Thérèse was four and a half, which understandably caused a lot of trauma to the little girl.

[02:07] Then Thérèse had an older sister enter the convent when she was nine, Pauline, who was like a second mother to Thérèse. So it was a very painful emotional shock to the young girl again. Thérèse experienced a certain rejection or inability to fit in at school with her peers. So these painful events were sources of insecurity and even depression for the little girl. Added to that was a religious anxiety and a spiritual OCD that Thérèse carried with her into the convent when she entered Carmel at the age of 15.

[02:43] Thérèse worried that her thoughts and even minor actions hurt God and could even lead to eternal damnation. She was always very pious, but the coloring of her spirituality was very sin-centered, which fits in with the Jansenistic view of life that infected French piety in her day and still, in our day, infects a number of traditionalist circles, actually. Yes, Thérèse did have positive rays of light regarding God in the midst of her childhood,

[03:14] but they were more intermittent rays than consistent ones. The cloud of fear was always hovering somewhere over her head and over her heart. A sin-centered spirituality is a lot different from a Savior-centered spirituality. It all depends on what your focus is. Is my focus on my sin and my imperfect performance, or is my focus on my Savior and His grace and His infinite love and mercy?

[03:46] And what you focus on in life, it actually makes all the difference in the world. All the difference in the world. As I think we mentioned last time, the God of the Jansenists and the rigorists is not someone, you really feel actually loves you or really cares about you, or someone you can actually get close to or you'd actually even want to get close to, frankly. He's more like the scribes and the Pharisees and the Gospels than Jesus. Thérèse was eventually cured of the vow of scruples that she had in her tweens, as they

[04:17] call them, and then afterwards she had what she considered was a miraculous cure at Christmas before she turned 14, when she regained a certain mastery over her emotions and a strength of spirit that she had actually lost at the death of her mom. But still, when she entered Carmel at the age of 15, the horror of sin persisted in her soul. She always carried with her her worry that she had deeply offended God. Anxiety over sin was a main theme of her life.

[04:50] Two priests actually helped her to find spiritual freedom. First was a Father Pichon, a French Jesuit priest. Shortly after she entered Carmel, Thérèse made a general confession to him, after which Father Pichon assured Thérèse that she had never committed a single mortal sin. It was actually a great relief and a joy to Thérèse, who, as she wrote, "quote, had such a great fear of soiling my baptismal robe," she said. Father Pichon said, "no, you've never soiled it, don't worry."

[05:23] But his reassurances weren't the end of the battle. Father Conrad de Meester, in his book, The Power of Confidence, he writes this. He says, in Carmel, Thérèse's delicateness of conscience is further accentuated by several factors. First, there's the growth of her ideal of love, which increases her vigilance against every voluntary fault. There's also a continuous presence of her weakness and the aridity of her prayers, which makes her wonder, am I faithful enough?

[05:55] She always was wondering that, am I faithful enough? And unfortunately, there's also the negative influence of certain preachers, who sometimes said, quote, "that it was very easy to offend God and to lose one's purity of conscience," unquote, and that easily one can fall into mortal sin, even by a simple thought. It's a very Jansenistic spirit. Mother Agnes described Thérèse's reactions to these preachers, saying this. During the entire course of these exercises, I saw Thérèse pale and defeated.

[06:29] She could no longer eat or sleep and would have fallen sick if it had lasted. Father Pichon tried to help her. In a letter from October of 1889, he said this. "I forbid you, in the name of God, to call into question your being in a state of grace. The devil is laughing heartily at you. I protest against this ugly mistrust. Believe obstinately that Jesus loves you," he said. But it wasn't until two years later, in October of 1891, that Thérèse found liberation from

[07:02] her struggles, and it was thanks to a Franciscan priest named Father Alexis Prou. As a side note, I did a little research using ChatGPT regarding Father Alexis. ChatGPT originally said that, initially said that he was a Dominican priest. It wasn't until I called out ChatGPT, and it confessed that, okay, he was a Franciscan, he wasn't a Dominican, but I actually had to call him out on that one. So just a word to the wise, be cautious.

[07:33] I do think the Dominicans are using AI to steal our Franciscan glory. I said to them recently, I shared this with them, I said, there was once a humble Franciscan priest, and he was talking to a Dominican. And the humble Franciscan priest, he confessed, he said, you know, us Franciscans, we've been the cause of a lot of problems in the church over the number of centuries, the past centuries. The Dominican said, yes, he said, and we've been the solution to those problems, he said.

[08:03] And the humble Franciscan priest said, yes, it's true, he said, but which is greater, the cause or the effect, which is greater? And just like you guys, the Dominicans didn't laugh when I actually said that joke, they actually didn't laugh, which is greater, the cause or the effect, right? It's a bit of a scholastic joke, understandably, if you don't laugh. But anyway, St. Thérèse went to confession to Father Alexis, who was an OFM, and she was determined not to say anything about the great interiorist trial that she had been going through.

[08:35] To her surprise, she said she felt expanded, understood in a marvelous way, even fathomed. Her soul was like an open book to the priest. She writes this, he launched me full sail upon the waves of confidence and love, which attracted me so strongly, but upon which I hadn't dared to advance, he told me that my faults caused God no pain, and that holding as he did in God's place, he was telling me in His name that God was very much pleased with me.

[09:07] So Thérèse was extremely happy, because as she writes, she had never heard that our faults could not cause any pain to God. However, she says, I feel at the bottom of my heart that this was really so, for God is more tender than a mother. It was at this point, so when she was almost 19, that the obsessive fear of offending God was actually taken away from her, and her little way began to unfold and really bloom and expand from then on.

[09:37] She even spiritually got to the point where she would say that, "quote, even if I might have on my conscience all the sins that can be committed, I would go with a heart broken with repentance and throw myself into Jesus' arms, because I know how much He cherishes the prodigal who comes back to Him." It's not because God in His kind mercy has preserved my soul from mortal sin that I rise and go to Him in confidence and in love. It's not because He has preserved me that I rise and go to Him in confidence and in

[10:12] love. Thérèse learned that it's not that God loved her, not because she never committed a serious sin. She learned that God loved her because of who He is and because of who she is in His sight, that He is love itself and that she is His beloved little, weak, imperfect daughter. For those who love Jesus, Thérèse writes, and then after each little fault, come and throw themselves into His arms asking His forgiveness.

[10:45] Jesus jumps for joy. He tells His angels what the prodigal son's father told his servants, "put a ring on his finger and let us celebrate." Oh, my brother, how little known are the goodness and merciful love of the heart of Jesus, she said. And then she adds this. Oh, my brother, since it has been given to me as well to understand the love of the heart of Jesus, I acknowledge that it has chased away all fear from my heart.

[11:18] Thérèse's fear of being unlovable turned into embracing the love of God. Her fear of sin turned into confidence in His mercy. Her fear of weakness turned into trust in God's strength because of her weakness. Her fear of suffering turned into a trusting abandonment to God's will. It was in finally grasping the awesomeness of God's goodness and love that fear was conquered in her life.

[11:48] I'm of a nature, she writes, such that fear causes me to draw back with love. Not only do I go forward, but I fly, she says. Very beautiful. Echoing what St. John says in his first letter, perfect love casts out fear, 1 John 4:18. So as we learn to interiorize and personalize the Lord's love for us and our lady's love for us as well, since she's our mom, as we learn to take those to heart more, our spirituality

[12:22] will grow by leaps and bounds as it did in the life of our little Thérèse. So let's ask our lady for that grace to have ungodly fear banished from our minds and hearts and have it replaced with confidence in God's merciful love. Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.