Saints & Celebrities

Published: September 28th, 2009

Perhaps you’ve heard about the latest band to hit the English and Welsh shores? Not a band of musicians, but of nuns! And they bring you not tunes, but bones. For 12 years and counting, a band of sisters have toured the world with relics of a famous Carmelite nun called St Thérèse of Lisieux, and this month they are in the UK, just one leg (literally) of a tour that has already taken them to Ireland, Cameroon and Guyana this year alone.

You may well ask, who was this woman? Why do hundreds of thousands flock to attend her roving graveside?

Thérèse’s story is really rather normal. She was born in Alençon, France in 1873. One of five daughters of a devoutly Catholic family, Thérèse joined the Carmelite nuns of Lisieux when she was just 15. A few short years later, she contracted tuberculosis, dying tragically young at the age of 24. But despite this brief and unimpressive life, Thérèse was sainted in 1925. Pope Pius X even dared call her the ‘the greatest saint of modern times’. Being a saint who was ‘modern enough to be photographed’, by 1910 her convent was posting out 180,000 pictures of her every year.

St Thérèse’s snapshots, remains and story have travelled such a long way because of what she called her ‘little way’. In her diary, Story of a Soul, Thérèse reflects in words that will connect with many of us:

"I have always wanted to become a saint. Unfortunately when I have compared myself with the saints, I have always found that there is the same difference between the saints and me as there is between a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds and a humble grain of sand trodden underfoot by passers-by. Instead of being discouraged, I told myself: God would not make me wish for something impossible and so, in spite of my littleness, I can aim at being a saint. It is impossible for me to grow bigger, so I put up with myself as I am, with all my countless faults."

In spite of her littleness and embracing her weakness, Thérèse looked for a ‘little way which is very short and very straight’ to serve God and humankind. She looked for the simple stuff and she poured herself into it completely, describing it as ‘the way of spiritual childhood, the way of trust and total surrender. I wish to… tell [people] that there is only one thing to do here below – to strew before Jesus the flowers of little sacrifices.’
The flowers of little sacrifices: in each task and every conversation, through prayer and through action, she looked for ways to serve the other, and so ‘to perfume the royal throne with their sweet scents…to sing in her silvery tones the canticle of love.’ For that, Thérèse is known to many by the affectionate monicker, ‘Little Flower’. Monsignor Keith Barltrop, who organised the current tour, commented: ‘I suppose we live in such a complicated age that people value the kind of direct approach she has.’ – food for thought there. As someone ‘whose very ordinariness made her lovable’.  The world needs more of this sort of ‘ordinariness’. More little lives of love.

But who or what are saints, really? A bit like celebrities, their everyday lives are the object of our attention and the subject of our conversation. But some suggest that in our postmodern society the stories of the saints have more power to affect lives and communities than ever before, because they are rich, particular, peculiar lived examples of something different, for a generation that will be inspired and shaped, as David Ford writes, not by ‘a theory or argument but the actual embodiment of compassionate responsibility.’ Here and there, I see communities who today are doing just that.

In John 13.35 Jesus tells his followers,

‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’.

Later, when he prays for them, he is more specific:

‘May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.’ (John 17.18–21)

Notice that now the point is not that people look at churches and say ‘Gosh, your lives are all so wonderful, you must be from Jesus!’, but that people can see through us and realise – somehow – that Jesus was sent by God. Many of us, like Thérèse, feel little, weak, ordinary, anonymous and limited. To feel this way is to stand in the shoes of saints. In fact, as far as Paul is concerned, Jesus’ followers are ‘all the saints’! (Ephesians 1) When we try to be Jesus’ poster children, we often end-up plastering ourselves all over the windows through which people might see him. Thérèse’s ‘little way’ is a call to a different kind of life, in which littleness and weakness embraced become transparent to the presence of Jesus in us. Like Paul, she calls people to be little, ordinary saints.

If in today’s world someone like Jade Goody or Paris Hilton can be ‘famous for being famous’, I hope Andrew Brown is right, and people like Thérèse can be renowned for the example and intrigue of marvellously ordinary lives. Nevertheless, despite her current world tour, let’s not forget that Thérèse’s daily life was, unlike Jade Goody’s, not infamous – lived beneath the watchful eye of millions – but anonymous, seen often by God alone. Big Brother was almost certainly not watching. As she once wrote, ‘I am but a poor little thing who would return to nothingness if your divine glance did not give me life from one moment to the next.’
As leaves turn and fall this autumn, will we be found strewing the flowers of little sacrifices, living before the divine gaze in communities of prayer and practise? Such communities become transparent to Christ, and will surely beckon many ‘little’ brothers and sisters to come and join in.  

Mark Knight lives in Guildford and works with 24-7 Prayer as a 'theologian in residence' and as part of a learning community called Transit. He spent a year living in the Reading Boiler Room, UK and another with a 24-7 community in Seville, Spain. He is currently accepting donations towards the purchase of his first banjo.

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