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

11. The Art of Life  

When the Little Flower was in Rome, she made a visit to the famous cemetery "Campo Santo." She has left us a beautiful word-picture of the place:

The "Campo Santo" filled us with rapture. The whole vast enclosure is covered with marble statues so exquisitely carved as to make one fancy that the chisel of genius has actually imparted life. The apparent negligence with which these wonders of art are everywhere scattered is but an additional charm. Their expression, too, so perfectly portrays a calm and Christian sorrow, that one is almost tempted to console them. Here it is a child throwing flowers on its father's grave, and as the delicate petals seem to fall through its fingers, the solid nature of the marble is forgotten. Elsewhere a widow's light veil, and the ribbons that bind some young maiden's tresses, appear to float at the bidding of the breeze.[49]

What genius had done to those marble statues, the Divine Sculptor was to do to her character. At first glance, she, too, appears "to float at the bidding of the breeze," but in reality no one could be more solid than this "Little White Flower" of Jesus.

It was her hard living that made her so easy to live with. If Therese had been a member of the home in Bethany, she would have served Jesus as carefully as Martha did and at the same time cast furtive glances at Him to see whether He was completely happy with Magdalen sitting at His feet.

She would also have loved her sister all the more for having loved Jesus so much. This I infer from what she said herself, "If, by an impossibility, God Himself did not perceive my good acts, I should not be troubled. I love Him so much that I would give Him pleasure by my love and my little sacrifices without His perceiving that they come from me. Seeing and knowing, He is, so to speak, obliged to make me a recompense . . . and I would not put Him to that trouble!"

The heavier her tasks, the more cheerful she would have appeared. How easy it is to overlook solid virtue hidden beneath an exterior of charming simplicity!

In the art of letters, it is said that hard writing makes easy reading. For true profundity looks limpid. The azure sky is unfathomable, and yet how clear it looks! Justice Holmes, for instance, was not only a great jurist but also a great writer. Justice Frankfurter once wrote about his judicial writings, "In their impact and sweep and freshness, his opinions have been a superb vehicle for the views they embody. It all seems so easy . . . brilliant birds pulled from the magician's sleeve . . . but it is the delusive ease of great effort as well as great art."[50]

Holmes himself wrote to me about style in writing, "When you read Tennyson you feel that he has been carefully searching for the exquisite. When you read Shakespeare you feel as if the splendid speech came without effort, because that was the way he wanted to talk. Stevenson searches for a happy word. Kipling rips an unusual word out of the bowels of the dictionary, and on his lips it sounds as natural as slang."[51]

Indeed, the greatest art is to conceal art. On the other hand, there is a great deal of truth in what Popocurante in Voltaire's "Candide" remarked "a propos" a concert: "This noise is amusing for half an hour; but if it last longer, it wearies everybody although nobody dares to say so. Music nowadays is merely the art of executing difficulties, and in the end that which is only difficult ceases to please. Perhaps I should like the opera more if they had not made it a monster which revolts me."[52]

What is true of music, sculpture and writing is also true of the Art of Life. No one could be more fastidious than little Therese in observing the severe Rule of the Carmel. And yet she always appeared light-hearted and contented. As her sisters have testified, "She always appeared gracious and smilingly cheerful, and unless one knew her more intimately, one might imagine that she pursued an easy path full of consolations. This is how it is that many who read her life do not discern the meaning of her smile: they overlook the cross so carefully hidden under the flowers."[53]

In a very real sense, to take the holy order or to enter a Carmel is already martyrdom. What bigger offerings can one make than to sacrifice all the pleasures of the world and cut off all earthly ties for the sake of God? That Therese did not regard her vocation as a sacrifice but a privilege did not make it less a sacrifice in the accepted sense of the word.

But how shallow are the hearts of men, and how easily taken in are their minds!

Even now, as Father Mateo Crawley-Boevey says, some people still imagine that our sweet saint lived her Carmelite life a nightingale in a grove, singing of our Lord's tenderness to her and of her own love for Him.[54] She is, indeed, like a nightingale, but let us not forget that, like a nightingale, she sings with her throat against a thorn! "Should my roses be gathered from amid thorns," she says, "I will sing notwithstanding, and the longer and the sharper the thorns, the sweeter will grow my song."[55]

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