"I understood that if the Church had a body composed of different members, the most necessary and most noble of all could not be lacking to it, and so I understood that the Church had a Heart and that this Heart was burning with love. I understood it was Love alone that made the Church's members act, that if Love ever became extinct, apostles would not preach the Gospel and martyrs would not shed their blood. I understood that love comprised all vocations, that love was everything, that it embraced all times and places...in a word, that it was eternal!"

One of the most celebrated mystics of the twentieth century, and recently named a Doctor of the Church (the only woman to be given this title since Catherine of Siena and Teresa de Avila), Thèré lived as one flooded by divine love. Her teaching on the spiritual life was that of a pure and simple loving devotion to Jesus Christ, described as 'the little way of spiritual childhood'. Transparency, abandonment, and complete trust in God as a loving Father were the foundation of her life and her practice. I personally find her teaching and her life of abandonment to God very similar in spirit to that of Madame Guyon, though some would doubtless disagree with me. Like Guyon, she takes the essence of Carmelite spirituality as expressed by John and Teresa and makes it extremely accessible to people who are often intimidated by the intricate depths of their teaching. For all of her own feeling that her 'little way' was inferior to that which John of the Cross describes, they seem to me to be one and the same.

Her autobiography has been published in a number of editions, of which I read the edition assembled by John Clarke; the one which I read was edited by John Clarke and I highly recommend it. Although the language is a bit out of date (an issue rectified by John Beevers' newer translation) the wording of her letters has a depth of intensity and meaning which I feel is lost in the newer translations.

There are many sites on the Internet which are devoted to the life and teachings of this woman.

 
 

 

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