I just finished reading Pope Francis’s new exhortation, C’est la confiance, which was released earlier today and focuses on the life and message of St. Therese of Lisieux. I found it so rich and inspiring that I think as soon as I publish this post, I will read it again!
You may recall that back in June, Pope Francis delivered his Wednesday General Audience address and then headed directly to the hospital for abdominal surgery. The subject of his address was the “missionary zeal” of St. Therese (named by the Church as Patroness of the Missions, despite never leaving her Carmelite monastery after she entered it). I wrote a little reflection about how those of us who are not able to go out into the mission fields — even those who are confined to hospital beds or cloisters — are integral to the Church’s mission of evangelization and sharing the gospel throughout the world.
At the beginning of the June 7 address, Pope Francis announced that he planned to dedicate an Apostolic Letter to her in honor of the 150th anniversary of her birth. The document released today, however, is an Apostolic Exhortation, which puts it on a higher level than his 2020 Apostolic Letter Patris Corde on St. Joseph, or June’s (amazingly titled) Apostolic Letter THE GRANDEUR AND MISERY OF MAN on Blaise Pascal. As an apostolic exhortation, this document is on the same level as Amoris Laetitia and Evangelii Gaudium (although at around 7,400 words, it’s closer in length to Francis’s previous apostolic exhortation, Laudate Deum, which was released on October 4.
In addition, the document was not released on St. Therese’s birthday (January 2) or feast day (October 1), but on October 15, the liturgical feast of St. Theresa of Avila, the reformer of the Carmelite Order and the foundress of the Discalced Carmelites. Pope Francis explains, “I have not chosen to issue this Exhortation on either of those dates, or on her liturgical Memorial, so that this message may transcend those celebrations and be taken up as part of the spiritual treasury of the Church. Its publication on the liturgical Memorial of Saint Teresa of Avila is a way of presenting Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face as the mature fruit of the reform of the Carmel and of the spirituality of the great Spanish saint” (no. 4).
In this exhortation, Pope Francis makes more explicit the missionary zeal and spiritual motives of St. Therese, clearly intending to provide the Church with a much richer understanding of the gifts that she brings to the Church that often go unnoticed. In the exhortation, he laments, “At times, the only quotes we find cited from this saint are secondary to her message, or deal with things she has in common with any other saint, such as prayer, sacrifice, Eucharistic piety, and any number of other beautiful testimonies. Yet in this way, we could be depriving ourselves of what is most specific about her gift to the Church” (no. 51).
Without context, the pope’s critics might take this passage to mean that this exhortation is an attempt to drain from St. Therese’s legacy its spiritual and supernatural significance. But they would be wrong, because at the center of C’est la confiance is St. Therese’s zeal for the salvation of souls. He writes,
Therese could define her mission in these words: “I shall desire in heaven the same thing as I do now on earth: to love Jesus and to make him loved”. She wrote that she entered Carmel “to save souls”. In a word, she did not view her consecration to God apart from the pursuit of the good of her brothers and sisters. She shared the merciful love of the Father for his sinful son and the love of the Good Shepherd for the sheep who were lost, astray and wounded. (no. 9)
Pope Francis chooses for the theme of this exhortation a quote from a letter written by St. Therese, “It is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to Love” (no. 1). At first glance, this assertion seems risky or ill-advised. After all, we’ve witnessed plenty of examples where misplaced confidence in religious ideas has led to embarrassing disappointment or even unspeakable tragedy. Pope Francis points out that the confidence exemplified by St. Therese is not confidence in ourselves or in ideas or movements, however, but confidence in God’s love and mercy. Her confidence might be described as anti-Pelagian — it is not to be placed in ourselves or others. Our complete confidence must be given to God alone, free from attachments. The pope writes, “Therese, for her part, wished to highlight the primacy of God’s action; she encourages us to have complete confidence as we contemplate the love of Christ poured out to the end. At the heart of her teaching is the realization that, since we are incapable of being certain about ourselves, we cannot be sure of our merits. Hence, it is not possible to trust in our own efforts or achievements.”
One passage in the exhortation struck me as a subtle rebuke to some of the vitriol and attacks on the hierarchy during the church closings in response to the Covid-19 pandemic — a sense of entitlement insisting upon a “right” to receive the Eucharist, and in the way we prefer, even if it meant putting the lives and health of others at risk. Francis writes that the “insistence of Therese on God’s initiative leads her, when speaking of the Eucharist, to put first not her desire to receive Jesus in Holy Communion, but rather the desire of Jesus to unite himself to us and to dwell in our hearts. In her Act of Oblation to Merciful Love, saddened by her inability to receive communion each day, she tells Jesus: ‘Remain in me as in a tabernacle’. Her gaze remained fixed not on herself and her own needs, but on Christ, who loves, seeks, desires and dwells within” (no. 22). Here, Therese exhibits a palpable level of detachment and a total confidence in God’s will. Her confidence in God’s love transforms what many would see as a loss into a gift.
C’est la confiance is not merely about St. Therese’s spiritual approach. Certainly her outlook — captured in her famous phrase, “Everything is grace” — is example for all of us to embrace. But there are tangible fruits that we can recognize from the life of St. Therese. She was committed to the salvation of souls, after all. In the Carmelite monastery, St. Therese took up a number of what might be called “personal projects” — persons who were far from the faith but with whom she nevertheless felt a spiritual closeness. She offered her prayers and sacrifices for these individuals with complete confidence in God’s love for them and desire for their salvation. In most of these cases, the answers to her prayers are unknown on this side of heaven. One such case was Fr. Hyacinthe Loyson a former Carmelite provincial and a famous preacher at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, who was excommunicated, renounced the faith, and was married. St. Therese offered her final holy communion — her viaticum — for his conversion.
In the exhortation, however, Pope Francis points to one situation where St. Therese’s confidence in God’s love seems to have had a dramatic result:
Before entering the Carmel, Therese had felt a remarkable spiritual closeness to one of the most unfortunate of men, the criminal Henri Pranzini, sentenced to death for a triple murder for which he was unrepentant. By having Masses offered for him and praying with complete confidence for his salvation, she was convinced that she was drawing him ever closer to the blood of Jesus, and she told God that she was sure that at the last moment he would pardon him “even if he went to his death without any signs of repentance”. As the reason for her certainty, she stated: “I was absolutely confident in the mercy of Jesus”. How great was her emotion when she learned that Pranzini, after mounting the scaffold, “suddenly, seized by an inspiration, turned, took hold of the crucifix the priest was holding out to him and kissed the sacred wounds three times!” This intense experience of hoping against all hope proved fundamental for her: “After this unique grace, my desire to save souls grows each day”. (28)
Towards the end of this exhortation, I was beginning to think that the message of St. Therese had begun to remind me of Pope Francis’s first exhortation and call to evangelization, Evangelii Gaudium. As if on cue, I then read this passage from Pope Francis: “In Evangelii Gaudium, I urged a return to the freshness of the source, in order to emphasize what is essential and indispensable. I now consider it fitting to take up that invitation and propose it anew” (no. 48). Ultimately, this new exhortation is an expansion of the missionary call that Pope Francis has been making since the first day of his papacy.
There are many more elements in this short (but rich) exhortation, but we can discuss those on another day. And here’s the link to the exhortation, in case you missed it.
For another perspective, a Carmelite priest friend sent me these two videos. The first is a response to the exhortation by one of the brothers in his community, and the second is a video in which he discusses the significance of St. Therese as Patroness of the Missions.
Enjoy!
Mike Lewis is the founding managing editor of Where Peter Is. He and Jeannie Gaffigan co-host Field Hospital, a U.S. Catholic podcast.
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