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

10. Emancipation Through Love  

By choosing to be a willing captive of Love, she becomes as free as a bird in the air. As she grew more attached to her Bridegroom, she became more and more detached from everything else. From her early childhood she possessed a deep insight into "the hollowness of things that pass away."[39] "Was Jesus not my only friend?" she wrote about her early days: "To Him alone could I open my heart. All conversation with creatures, even on holy subjects, wearied me. True, sometimes I felt sad because of the indifference shown me, but I would console myself by repeating this line from a beautiful poem Papa often recited for us:

'Time is thy barque and not thy home'."[40] Thus, she looked at the world "sub specie eternitatis" (in the light of eternity). This general outlook on life prepared her for detachment from particular things, however much she might be affected toward them in her heart. She detached herself successively from dependence upon creatures, from love of the beauties of Nature, from the allurements of Art, and from the possessive instinct, not only in regard to material things, but also in connection with what she calls "spiritual riches."

"If I had been rich, it would have been impossible for me to have seen a poor hungry man without giving him straightway something of my goods. So also in the measure that I gain my spiritual treasure, I at the same instant think of those souls who are in danger of falling into hell, and I give them all I possess, and I have never yet found the moment in which I could say: 'Now I am going to work for myself'.[41]

A novice has recorded a little anecdote about her: "I was regretting a pin which I had been asked for, and which I had found most useful. 'How rich you are,' she said, 'you will never be happy'!"[42]

What volumes of meaning are contained in this gentle reproach! A person may be rich with a pin, but poor with a million. So long as one is not spiritually detached from matter, the possession of a single pin would bar him from the highest Heaven. On the other hand, if one regards matter as only a means of helping others, the possession of even the whole world could do no harm to his soul, for he is still "poor in spirit." To another novice, she expounded her doctrine of empty-handedness:

"There is but one means to compelling God not to judge us: we must take care to appear before Him empty-handed. It is quite simple: lay nothing by, spend your treasures as fast as you gain them. Were I to live to be eighty, I should always be poor, because I cannot economize. All my earnings are immediately spent on the ransom of souls. Were I to await the hour of death to tender my trifling coins, Our Lord would not fail to discover in them some base metal, and they would certainly have to be refined in Purgatory."[43]

According to her, one must be detached even from one's religious exercises: "You ought to detach yourself from your own personal labors, conscientiously spending on them the time prescribed, but with perfect freedom of heart. We read that the Israelites, while building the walls of Jerusalem, worked with one hand and held a sword in the other. This is an image of what we should do: avoid being absorbed in our work."[44]

Is this not what Lao Tzu meant when he said: "Do your work without setting any store by it?" What the hoary philosopher of China learned from the experience of a long life the green maid of France learned from the School of Love. Love, generous love that knows no measure, set her free and gave wings to her soul. "O my little sister," she said to Celine, "let us be detached from earth. Let us hover over the Mount of Love, where dwells the beautiful Lily of our souls. Let us detach ourselves from the consolations of Jesus, that we may be attached to Him alone!"[45]

In her hands, detachment has reached a heroic degree. I have an impression that she is detached even from the idea of detachment! The fact is that she is detached even from herself. "That which concerns Therese," she said, "is to abandon herself, to surrender herself completely."[46] And as she has immolated herself, there is nothing to which even the idea of detachment can be attached. She is a vessel, pure and simple, of the Holy Ghost, that's all. God alone has taught his little spouse "to scale the sublime heights of perfection with the agility of a fawn!"[47]

Therese has not superseded the other saints, but she has brought sanctity up to date. She is a revolutionary who knows how to effect reforms by way of transformation. The Holy Catholic Church is a living organism, it grows with the centuries, and our twentieth century, which may be called the age of psychological subtlety, has need of a saint like Therese, for she is one of the keenest psychologists and the most ruthless analysts that I know of. In her hands, sanctity is no longer merely sublime, it has seeped down like water into the subliminal regions.

The Holy Ghost has always raised new saints to forestall and cope with the needs of a new age. It was no accident that in the sixteenth century, the age of dawning individualism, He raised Teresa of Avila, a woman who was a man.[48] Nor is it for nothing that this time He has raised "a baby who is an old man." For our century is an old man who wants very much to be a baby, and the little Therese has shown the way. Sensitive, intuitive, paradoxical, humorous, subtle, flexible and ethereal, she did for spiritual life what some of the greatest contemporary minds have done in their own spheres of activity.

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