Today is the feast day of the much beloved St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. Most of us know her autobiography "A Story of a Soul" and her Little Way and how she became a Doctor of the Church. We also know that along with St. Francis Xavier, she is the co-patron of missionaries. But do most Catholics know how this young, cloistered nun became the patroness of missionaries when in fact she did not leave her cloister. Most will quote her entry in her diary where she mentioned how she wanted to become a missionary to save souls.
Well, let me share to you the story of how Holy Mother Church proclaimed her to be... by actually working a miracle that brought the first Eskimo into the saving arms of the Church.
The article below was written by Fr. J. Linus Ryan, O. Carm., National Co-Ordinator of the St. Thérèse Relics Irish Visit 2001 and the director of the St Thérèse National Office, Terenure College, Dublin, Ireland. This article was used as a sort of preface to the St. Therese 2007 Calendar.
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Dear devotee of St. Therese, on the 14th December, 1927 the Holy Father, Pope Pius XI, proclaimed St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus ‘the Special Patroness of all missionaries, men and women, and of the missions existing in the whole world on an equality with St. Francis Xavier.’
This year on the 14th December we celebrate the 80th anniversary of that blessed event. The celebration will conclude a special International Missionary Year opened with great solemnity in Lisieux on the Feast of St. Thérèse 2006 at which our own Cardinal Daly and our Irish pilgrims were present.
“Ah! In spite of my littleness, I would like to enlighten souls as did the Prophets and the Doctors. I have the vocation of the Apostle. I would like to travel over the whole earth to preach Your Name and to plant Your glorious Cross on infidel soil. But O my Beloved, one mission alone would not be sufficient for me, I would want to preach the Gospel on all the five continents simultaneously and even to the most remote isles. I would be a missionary, not for a few years only but from the beginning of creation until the consummation of the ages. But above all, O my Beloved Saviour, I would shed my blood for You even to the very last drop.”
[‘Story of a Soul’ – Man. B. Chapter IX].
The ongoing pilgrimage of her Sacred Relics in recent years to the four corners of the earth is proving to be the catalyst for the fulfilment of all her missionary dreams. The decision of Pope Pius XI to name St. Thérèse co-Patroness of the Missions came as a surprise to many. Why should a humble Carmelite nun who had never put her foot on mission soil, who had lived only a few short years in the solitude of a Carmelite cloister, be proclaimed co-Patroness of all the missions and of all missionaries? It was certainly puzzling. But the missionaries themselves were not puzzled. On the contrary, they were overjoyed. For already everywhere in the mission field the little Saint of Lisieux was being invoked. It was in fact the missionaries themselves who caused St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus to be proclaimed their Patroness. The story of her Cause as Patroness of the Missions is truly an astonishing one. With the rapid spread of devotion to St. Thérèse throughout the
world shortly after her death, her clients were to be found everywhere. She was fervently invoked in the kraals of Africa and the igloos of the Eskimo, as well as in her native France. But missionaries especially began to pray to her and to implore her intercession for their needs. They felt confident that she had power with God to work miracles of grace in the hearts of the poor pagans and to draw them to the faith, and wonderful answers were received to these prayers.
In 1923, just after her Beatification (April 29), she was proclaimed Patroness of the Carmelite Missions. Thus her missionary glory, as we may call it, began. Pope Pius XI, the great Pope of the Missions, was, as is well known, deeply devoted to St. Thérèse. She was his first saint and he had openly proclaimed her to be his ‘Guiding Star’. One of the projects which he had most at heart was the training and formation of a native clergy in the Missionary countries. He realised that this is the great means of establishing the Church on a solid and stable foundation in missionary lands. And so, to give a new impetus to the Pious Association of St. Peter the Apostle, for the education of native Seminarians, he named the little Saint of Lisieux as its special patroness on 29th July 1925, just two months after her canonisation. ‘We declare’, he wrote, ‘St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus Patroness of the Pious Association of St. Peter the Apostle for the native clergy’ and he went on to say that he was sure innumerable graces would flow to the Association through her intercession and that the very grave difficulties in the formation of a native clergy would be overcome. But St. Thérèse had still to be proclaimed Patroness of the Missions.
It is significant that the movement to have her proclaimed such began in what is acknowledged by all to be the most difficult mission field in the whole Church, the frozen lands of the Eskimo, that region of snow and ice in northern Canada. God’s instruments were an intrepid missionary bishop, Mgr. [Ovide] Charlebois[Missionary Oblate of Mary Immaculate], Bishop of Berenice, and a devout layman, a great client of St. Thérèse, named Paul Bernard. Bishop Charlebois had laboured for five years amongst Eskimos of Hudson Bay without a single conversion. Nothing daunted he worked on, hoping against hope that one day he would win these wild children of the woods for Jesus Christ. One day there arrived for him from his native France a precious relic of St. Thérèse, a pinch of dust from her tomb. Some time afterwards he met a group of Eskimos at a trading station at a place called Chesterfield Inlet. Moved by a sudden impulse he threw amongst them the precious dust. Immediately the whole group came forward to him and asked for baptism moved, as they afterwards related to him, by an irresistible impulse. It was truly a wonderful miracle of grace. [The conversion happened even before Bishop Charlebois became a bishop.]
This miraculous conversion was the beginning of a hopeful future for a mission [that was the story of how the Oblates labored in the frigid areas of Canada and how they brought souls to the world. Well, that was before Vatican II.] which humanly speaking seemed doomed to failure and the story was relayed to the missionary bishops of the world, [Among them Servant of God, Bishop Charlebois who is by the way declared Venerable.] who petitioned Pope Pius XI to make her co-Patroness of the Missions, which he happily did on 14th December 1927. Thus were the great desires of the humble Carmelite realised (desires which we have quoted at the beginning of this article from her Autobiography, ‘Story of a Soul’). But even while she was living out her humble and entirely hidden life in Carmel our Saint was in direct touch with the missions for she was given by her superiors as the spiritual sister of two missionaries to help them by prayer and sacrifice (one of her favourite saints, whose image she pinned to her bed curtains, was the French missionary to China, St. Theophane Venard)
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A similar event happened with another tireless Oblate missionary in the same land of the Eskimos...
From the book "Bishop of the Winds: Fifty Years in the Arctic Regions by Gabriel Breynat, OMI translated from the original French by Ala Gordon Smit. (I have a pdf copy so if you like one, please email me.). This is the story of the tireless Oblate Fathers who brought the Gospel to the Icy North. It is told from the experience of Servant of God, Arsene Turquetil, OMI.
"My Eskimo parish numbers at present six faithful, five of whom I baptized at Christmas. Before spring I hope to double the number; but then the fight must end, at any rate temporarily, for want of combatants. The Eskimos will be going back to the sea this year, all except twelve who will be away elsewhere.
"A family came to visit us three or four weeks ago. The mother wanted medicine for her little girl, aged eighteen months. I didn't think the poor thing would live, but I produced some medicine, and while I was administering it I prayed Sister Therese of the Child Jesus not to let the child die unbaptized.
"Eight days later the father returned. He had cast over the child all the spells that were known to him, and known to those of his like who were present. Now he came to tell his brother that death was imminent.
"Your daughter is going to die." I told him bluntly. 'Would you like me to baptize her, so that she will go to heaven?" 'Yes,' he said promptly. "That day, you may be sure, I bolted my dinner without ceremony, and covered the eight miles I had to travel with a light heart and nimble foot. I baptized the dying baby, "Therese". It was my first Eskimo victory.
"Yesterday I saw the family again. The good God, it seems, decided to show that his own medicine was worth more than all the grimaces of the sorcerers. The little creature is now quite well!"
And our good Father had other consolations. At the Christmas festivities the Hare Indians came along to say their prayers. "The house and chapel were full," he wrote. "Not that either is very big, or lends itself to ceremonies. If Bethlehem was bare and destitute, so was this. You may judge for yourself. The newly opened chapel is exactly eight feet by ten. It is connected with the house, but so far has no doors. Rough caribou skins are a substitute for flooring. The walls are just trunks of trees squared on two faces and caulked with a kind of mud. There are no ornaments but a statue of the Sacred Heart and one of Father Lacombe's picture catechisms, reproducing a summary of the Old and New Testaments. A little table, fixed to the wall, serves to hold my portable altar, and a chest beside it takes the place of a sacristy. "Such is the little corner of the Arctic regions which Our Lord deigned to accept, on Christmas night, to commemorate the mystery of his coming into the world. There was no high Mass [EF Mass. Just to point it out], nor much in the way of music; only a few hymns, sung in a barbarous tongue but with true sincerity. But, above all, Communion was received by all the adults present, with only one exception, a white man. Elsewhere the baby Jesus had more spectacular receptions, but were they any more consoling to him?
After the Mass of the day, three grownups and two little children were baptized. Such a consolation is enough to obliterate the memory of many sufferings and hardships."
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These were the miracles that made the Church to declare the Little Flower co-patroness of the missions.
Indeed, a beautiful story!
You can also find the story in the official website of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate here.
You can find the story of the petition to proclaim her co-Patroness of the Missions here. You can also find a blogger's pilgrimage to the saint's place of birth and the basilica dedicated to her memory. Items such as the saint's play stove can be seen. Click here.
In the meantime, let me share this beautiful morning prayer written by St. Therese.
O my God! I offer Thee all my actions of this day for the intentions and for the glory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I desire to sanctify every beat of my heart, my every thought, my simplest works, by uniting them to Its infinite merits; and I wish to make reparation for my sins by casting them into the furnace of Its Merciful Love.
O my God! I ask of Thee for myself and for those whom I hold dear, the grace to fulfill perfectly Thy Holy Will, to accept for love of Thee the joys and sorrows of this passing life, so that we may one day be united together in heaven for all Eternity.
Amen.
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