THE SCIENCE OF LOVE  
A Study in the Teachings of Therese of Lisieux
by John C. H. Wu

8. The Martyrdom of Love  

The more I study the character of Therese, the more she fascinates me, and the more I adore that supreme Artist of Souls, Jesus. What a remarkable girl she must have been who could write at fifteen words like these: "Love can do all things. The most impossible tasks seem to it easy and sweet. You know well that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, or even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them. What, then, have we to fear?"

This reminds me of a Chinese proverb: "So long as man and wife love each other, what if they are beggars together?" For the sake of her Divine Spouse, she was willing to suffer any form of martyrdom and reckon it as nothing. To her, life becomes a continual martyrdom, a great bundle of little sacrifices. She wants to be a martyr without appearing to be one. Her heroism reaches such a height that it no longer seems heroic but quite ordinary. She has, by precept and example, deepened, subtilized, and broadened the idea of martyrdom, and she has achieved it for herself and for other souls by subordinating everything to Love. "Far from being like to those great souls who, from their childhood, practice all sorts of macerations, I made my mortification consist solely of breaking my will, keeping back a word of retort, rendering little services without making much of them, and a thousand other things of this kind."[29]

With her, martyrdom is not simply to be beheaded or to face the firing squad, or even to jump into boiling oil. Such opportunities are, after all, very rare, and given only to the privileged few. But there is the daily life to live; and as love feeds on sacrifices, it would be starved to death if we should wait for chances of making big sacrifices. In her hands, our everyday life acquires a new dignity and a new meaning. What George Herbert had sung she put into practice:

Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws, Makes that and th'action fine.

For God really does not need our sacrifices, they are useful only as proofs of our love for Him. If we love Him with a burning passion and single- hearted devotion, everything we do or refrain from doing, every word we speak or refrain from speaking, becomes a little sacrifice, which may be likened to a fragrant flower, because we offer it with a cheerful countenance and a sweet smile that captivate the Heart of God.

There is a Chinese saying: "If you fail in painting a tiger, the result is liable to turn out a dog; whereas if you fail in carving a swan, the result may at least resemble a duck." It is safer for little souls to imitate little Therese, than to imitate the giant saints of yore. For the swan and the duck are birds of one feather; while the tiger and the dog, according to our Chinese notion, belong to entirely different orders.

And after all, is our blood so valuable that it can add anything to the Blood of Christ? What does a tiny little drop mean to an infinite ocean? And yet, when necessary, our blood is useful as a humble token of our love for God, but only as a token and not as an end in itself. In other words, the Martyrdom of Love absorbs all other forms of sacrifice and mortification and adds something new, over and above. "Many make themselves victims to Justice, while none think of making themselves victims to love."

Needless to say, she was not the first to practice this form of martyrdom. All saints are more or less martyrs of love. But there is no denying that she or rather the Holy Spirit working in her brought this fundamental aspect of Christian doctrine to an intenser focus and clearer articulation.

Sanctity is like a pyramid. The higher the apex, the broader the base, and the larger the bulk. The pyramid of Therese has Love for its apex, Nature for its base, and all the circumstances of our everyday life for its bulk. With her the greatest simplicity goes hand in hand with the greatest diversity By embracing the One, she embraces all!

In a truly remarkable essay on "What Religion Means to Me," Madame Chiang  Kai-shek has presented the nature of Christian simplicity in a nutshell. "Life is really simple, and yet how confused we make it. In old Chinese art, there is just one outstanding object, perhaps a flower, on a scroll. Everything else in the picture is subordinated to that one beautiful thing. An integrated life is like that. What is that one flower? As I feel it now, it is the will of God."[30] I quote these words, because they seem to fit the life of Therese like a glove.

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