Therese Martin has inspired generations of individuals to live the gospel way of spiritual childhood, including her family. In Celine Martin’s “Counsels and Reminiscences”, we note that while Therese died a saint at twenty-four, Celine strove against her imperfections until her holy death in her ninetieth year. Celine remained pupil of her young sister. When Therese, as her novice mistress, warned Celine what form her spiritual struggle would take, she might have been speaking any of us. “You must never believe, when you don’t practice virtue, that it is due to some natural cause like illness, time, or grief. You must draw a great lesson in humility from it and take your place among the little souls, since you are able to practice virtue only in such a feeble manner.” Therese added, “What is necessary for you now is not to practice heroic virtues but to acquire humility. For that, your victories must of necessity always be mixed with failures, so that you cannot take any pleasure in thinking about them.”
Celine wrote of her struggle “with the faults that constantly kept me in a state of humiliation, for, due to my impulsive temperament, I often had little outbursts with the sisters that afflicted me a great deal on account of my self-love. I thought my exterior was deceiving, that I was better than I appeared to be: from that, I developed a certain frustration at not being judged at my true worth. Then my little sister endeavoured, by her penetrating instruction embellished with symbolic stories adapted to my circumstances, to make me love the shame I was in.” “She made me find my joy in believing that I was a ‘very little soul’ whom God constantly had to support because it was nothing but weakness and imperfection.”
**Therese’s “little way” of spiritual childhood was summarised by her Carmelite sisters, Celine and Pauline. It is the way of unselfish love, recognising that the “indescribable condescension” of Jesus is open even to the poorest of souls. It is the way of “joyful humility, passionate trust in Merciful Love, total abandonment to the divine will.” It is in “hidden sacrifices full of love and fidelity to every-day duties” with a “deep and experiential understanding of the Fatherhood of God.” It is in “zeal for souls.” It is lived with trust in our loving God. Such simplicity of heart is not of a childish nature, but childlike in its trust.
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“It is love alone that counts,” wrote Therese. “And love is total abandonment, the blind trust of a little child in its heavenly father, which cannot work without a profound humility and which becomes, without anyone suspecting it, a natural virtue as it is in all little ones.”
On the fiftieth anniversary of Therese’s death, the Pope sent Celine the following message regarding the little way of spiritual childhood. “Many think that it is a special way reserved to the innocent souls of young novices in order to guide them in their first steps, and that it is not suited to already mature individuals who need much prudence because of their great responsibilities. That is to forget that our Lord Himself recommended this way to all children of God, even to those who have, like the apostles He formed, the greatest of responsibilities, that of the care of souls."
