St. Therese and the sword- Meditation from Archbishop Fulton Sheen What is the better way than to enjoy a crush course in the Little Way of our beloved armelite Saint! St Therese! the Little Flower! "iven by her disciple and third #rder armelite! Archbishop Archbishop Fulton Sheen$ Let us see what he has to say....
The new way of St Therese is not to start thinking about how wicked you are, how sinful, but to begin looking at our Lord. And from that, you will see that you are not as good as you ought tobe, but yo will try to please the one you love. Let me give you some of her words along these lines. She said: Jesus! i would so love Him, love Him as he has never been loved in the history of the world.
And one of the novices - for she was the istress of !ovices - came to her one day, and she said, "Oh, I have so many virtues to aquire." The Little "lower said, "No, you've got a lot of things to lose!" That#s the trouble. $ur spiritual books tell us how to ac%uire humility. & told you about the '( ways of St )ernard. *ell now, you#ll go cra+y trying to develop those '( ways. $ne of them is to love to be stomped on and trampled on. The Little "lower says, no, start loving the Lord, and then you#ll no longer be proud. ou cannot start ac%uiring, for eample, the virtue of humility or fortitude. ou can never fall in love with abstraction. ou can only love a person. !o one in the world ever fell in love with a theorem of geometry. This is the trouble with secular humanism and materialism: There#s no person to love. So then the new way of the Little "lower is....fall in love. Love the ood Lord, and then you will strive to please /im. And because you see that there are imperfections in you, you will love /im more so that they may washed away. This is not a little way, it#s the new way because we#ve forgotten it. &t#s buried in Scripture. &t#s buried in &saiah, buried in 0salms, buried in 1echariah, and she digs it out for us. !ow we come to the second point. *hat e2ect did it have on her3 !ow when we look at the picture of
this frail little "rench girl, we think of her, yes, as the little Therese, frail, meek, humble. )ut does love make one that way3 4eal lovers are courageous. 5o you know what she wanted to be3 She wanted to be a soldier. She used to dream about it. &n one of her dreams, someone was conscripting soldiers for an army. And she heard a voice saying, "aybe we ought to as for herese." And she said, "#ell, I'm ready." She said, "I'm sorry it's not a holy war, but I'm ready to $ght anyway." !ow we never think of the Little "lower as having a saint whom she wanted to be like more than anyone else, but she did. 5o you know who that was3 6oan of Arc. 7an you imagine her seated on a horse clad in armour3 And she said: "If I were Joan of %r&, it would not be voi&es from heaven. It would be only the voi&e of my eloved." $ne of her favourite tets of Scriptures, therefore, was "I &ame not to bring (ea&e, but the sword." 8att '9:;<...And then St Therese said: "% sister showed me a (hotogra(h re(resenting Joan of %r&, &onsoled by an interior voi&e. he saints en&ourage me from above, and they say to me, ")o long as you are in fetters, you &annot ful$ll your mission. ut after your death, then will be the time of your &onquest." &n other words, she said, "I'm going to be a warrior and a soldier after my death, I am in no battle$elds, now e*&e(t the battle of the s(iritual
life." This =gure gives you some idea of, for eample, her powerful intercession. This, too, accounts for her love of missions. She is the patroness of the 0ropagation of the "aith, though she was never in mission lands. The reason she is the patroness of the 0ropagation of the "aith was because she loved missions, and she corresponded all her life with two missionary priests and o2ered up her su2erings for them. es, that is true, but there is a deeper reason still. This woman was in love, and she wanted her )eloved known all over the world. That#s why she loved the missions> As she put it: "+ie the (ro(hets and the do&tors, I would enlighten souls, I would travel the whole world to (rea&h our name and set u( our glorious &ross in (agan lands. ut one mission &ould never su-&e for me. #ould that I &ould, at one and the same time, (ro&laim the gos(el to the world, even to the remotest of its islands. I would desire to be a missionary not only for a few years but to have been one from the &reation of the world and to &ontinue to the end of time." Love makes one a missionary. *hen we cease to love, we cease to be a missionary. !ow it is sometimes asked, for eample, why is there a decline of conversions today3 &t is due to ecumenism3 !o, it#s not due to ecumenism. &t#s due to the fact that we#re not making 7hrist the center
of our lives. And if we were deeply in love with 7hrist instead of with social programs and the like 8all which have their place, but here & am speaking of primacy<, if we gave the primacy to 7hrist, then we would be on =re to save souls. After all, the reason we are tired in body is because we are already tired in mind. *e have no love. The =res have gone out. *e are cinders, burnt out cinders ?oating in the immensity of space and time. And here is a young girl. &t is almost as if she is locked up in a gilded cage, absolutely straining at the leash in order to become a missionary. *hy3 Simply because she loved> As & told you, love does not mean @ust simply to have and to own and to possess. &t#s not sitting on the throne waiting for others to serve. &t#s the going out, the spending of oneself. Love is not the circle circumscribed bt self. &t#s like a cross outstreched to embrace the whole world. Love isn#t )uddha, fat, sleek, a well-oiled body, hands folded across the breast intently looking inward, thinking only of self. &t#s the picture of thin saints looking out for the mission to the world, as Therese looks out in many of her photos. And therefore, she loved this tet, the sword. And she says many times in her writings that "I am entering armel to bring the sword to the monastery of armel." &n other words, it needed a little =re. She entered it to change it. And her reason for doing so was right. *e are fond of talking peace today, but all we
mean by peace is lack of disturbance. $ur Lord said, "I &ame not to bring (ea&e." od /ATS 0A7 in those who are destined for war> And we are destined for war, spiritual war. *e#ve forgotten that we#re in a combat. *e are in genuine combat. *hen our =rst parents were driven out of the garden of 0aradise, od stationed an angel with a ?aming sword, a two-edged sword that turned this way and that. *hy3 To keep our =rst parents from going back to eat of the Tree of Life and thus immortali+e their evil. And the only way we can ever get back again into paradise is by having that sword run into us. &t#s ?aming because it#s love. &t#s two-edged because it cuts, and it penetrates. &t#s not the sword that#s thrust outward to hack o2 the ear of the servant of the high priest as 0eter did. &t#s the sword that#s thrust inward to cut out all of our seven pallbearers of the soul, the pride and covetousness, lust, anger, envy, gluttony, and sloth. This was the sword she loved. And this sword is what we#ve forgotten in our modern world with the dripping away of discipline, the ascetic principle. The disciplinary principle of the 7hristian world had moved to the totalitarian countries. And concerning the sword, & %uoted the sword in relationship to the arden of den, but in the prophecy of 1echariah, we read this: "his is the very word of the +ord of Hosts/ Oh sword, awae against my she(herd." 81ech ':B<
*ho is the shepherd3 $ur Lord. So 1echariah is having the heavenly "ather say, C)word awae! %wae against y she(herd, against y )on, against Him who wors with e."So when our )lessed Lord came to this earth, the sword of /erod was raised against /im. 5id anyone ever raise a sword against a two-year-old 7aesar3 $r a si-month-old Stalin3 *hy the sword against /im3 because /e plays a role in salvation. &t belongs to warriors. And as the heavenly "ather ran the sword into /is own Son, the Son ran the into /is own other. Simeon said to ary, "ou, too, shall be (ier&ed to the heart." 8Luke (:D< So the "ather ran a sword into /is Son, the Son into /is own other, and $ur Lord into us. "I have &ome not to bring (ea&e, but the sword." This , then, is the way of the warrior and the little girl who wanted to be a soldier. And there was not much di2erence in her mind between a soldier and a missionary.