Sister M. Milada of the Savior of the World, OCD
Shortly before her death in May 1897, Therese expresses in her long poem of 25 stanzas the place that the Virgin Mary held in her life, she writes her Marian testament. The poem is composed spontaneously, although she had been preparing for its composition for a long time, as she confides to her sister Celina: “I must still do some things before I die. I have always dreamed of expressing in song what I have in mind when I think of the Virgin Mary.”1
At the same time, she writes it at the request of her blood sister Mary of the Most Sacred Heart, to whom Therese has already written Manuscript B. Both texts are bound together. Their refrain is: “I love you.”
If Manuscript B is a testament and a hymn of love for Jesus, then this poem sings “Why I love you, Mary” (TB 54). This dual love is inseparable for her. At the center of Therese’s life is Jesus, but beside Him always stands Mary as His Mother. This is her most sublime title: “She is more Mother than Queen”2 (cf. ŽS 21.8.3/VŽ 117).
As a Mother, Mary gives us Jesus and gives us to Jesus. Everything relates to Him, she never keeps her children for herself. Therefore, we can never love Mary too much when in her and simultaneously with her we love Jesus in all things. “Do not believe that you can love the Holy Virgin too much, you will never love her enough, and Jesus will be very pleased, for the Holy Virgin is His Mother” (DT 92).3
From this, we can understand that the Virgin Mary held a prominent place in Therese's life, even though Therese was not unambiguously a “Marian soul,” but a Christocentric soul – and precisely because of her Christocentrism. Mary is inseparable from Jesus for her. She speaks of her 239 times, most frequently in poems (out of 54 poems, 8 are dedicated to the Virgin Mary and another 16 mention her once or more), she dedicates the first and last poem to her, the first and last prayer.
Therese's New Perspective on Mary
Therese’s teaching about Mary is as original as her view on God. If during a period emphasizing God’s justice this Carmelite discovers the primacy of mercy, likewise in the exaggeration of Mary’s exceptionalism, Therese sees her instead as small, simple, and humble. She instinctively defends against all triumphalist sermons that only show Mary's greatness and privilege, most often relying on apocryphal texts that are filled with miraculous and unusual elements. In contrast, Therese looks for the Gospel, which presents Mary in all her ordinariness, close to following. In doing so, she reveals the greatest, forgotten privilege for preachers, the grace of poverty and smallness, which was so characteristic of the earthly life of Jesus and Mary. Smallness and poverty are at the heart of the Gospel, its true reality.
“When I contemplate your life in the holy gospel,
I dare to look at you and draw near to you.
It is not difficult for me to believe that I am your daughter:
mortal and suffering4 as I see you” (TB 54, 2).
Thus, Therese does not need to fear Mary; they are similar in weakness. From how she describes Mary, we can recognize Therese's ideal of holiness, which all “little souls” can follow.
Dissatisfied with the sermons of the time (Therese confesses on her deathbed that she did not like any sermon about the Virgin Mary),5 therefore, a month before her death, she presents to her sisters a “sermon,” in which she summarizes everything she thinks about her: “How I would love to be a priest, so that I could preach about the Mother of God. Once would be enough for me, and I would say everything I think about it.
First, I would explain how little we know of her life: Unlikely things should not be said or what we do not know; for example, that the Holy Virgin went to the temple at the age of three to offer herself to God with ardent and entirely extraordinary feelings of love; while she may have gone there quite simply in obedience to her parents. Why also say, in light of the prophetic words of the elder Simeon, that from then on the Holy Virgin had in mind Jesus' suffering? ‘A sword will pierce your soul,’ the elder said to her (Lk 2:35). So these were not words for the present, you see well, Mother; they were a general prediction for the future. For me to like a speech about the Virgin Mary and benefit from it, I need to see her real life, not the presumed life; and I am sure that her real life must have been quite simple. They present her as inaccessible; but it would be necessary to show that she is imitable, to emphasize her virtues, to say that she lived by faith like we do, to prove it from the Gospel, where we read: ‘They did not understand what he said to them’ (Lk 2:50). And another place, equally mysterious: ‘His parents were amazed at what was said about him’ (Lk 2:33). This amazement implies a certain surprise, don’t you think, Mother?
We know well that the Holy Virgin is the Queen of Heaven and Earth, but she is more Mother than Queen, and because of her virtues, it should not be said that she overshadows the glory of all saints, just as when the sun rises the stars fade. My God, how strange it is! A Mother who overshadows the glory of her children! I think the exact opposite; I believe that she even increases the radiance of the chosen ones.
It is good to talk about her virtues, but it should not only be about that; and if in some speech, from beginning to end, it has to be called and said: ‘Oh, oh!’, it is excessive! Who knows if such a speech might lead some soul to feel some alienation towards such an extraordinary creature and say: ‘If it is so, I would rather go to a corner and shine there as best I can.’
What the Holy Virgin has in addition is that she could not sin, that she was exempt from original sin; on the other hand, she had less happiness than we do, because she did not have the Holy Virgin whom she loved; and that is a happiness in addition for us, how much less of a happiness this is for her! After all, in her song ‘Why do I love you, O Mary!’ I expressed everything I would say about her in a sermon.” (ŽS 21.8.3/VŽ 116-117; cf. also ŽS 23.8.9/VŽ 120).
Marian Events in Her Life
This perspective of Therese on Mary results not only from her deep meditation on Scripture but also from personal experience. The entire Martin family had a typical intimate reverence for the Virgin Mary; all the children were given her name. The statue of the Virgin Mary (now known as the “Smiling Virgin Mary”) was the center of the domestic liturgy, and parents and children gathered before it for communal prayer. In May, it was surrounded by lots of greenery and flowers.
Zelie Martin attributed to the Virgin Mary a special inspiration regarding the production of Alençon lace and also peace after the death of little Helen. At that time, she felt pangs of conscience, wondering if her daughter was suffering in purgatory because she did not call the confessor when she slightly lied shortly before her death. She turned to the Virgin Mary and heard a mysterious voice: “She is here, beside me!”6
This intimate experience of mother Zelie was surely passed on to her children. Louis Martin, during severe illnesses of his children, often went on pilgrimages to various Marian shrines to pray for their healing. Particularly one church is closely associated with the Martin family – the Church of the Victory of the Virgin Mary in Paris. Through prayer there, Therese's father and uncle maintained their faith during their studies in the already secularized Paris. This church was later closely tied to Therese's life as well. The Carmelite dedicated one of her poems to the Virgin Mary of Victory, in which she asks for her missionary brother (TB 35).7
The family atmosphere also influenced the last of the Martin daughters, Marie Françoise Therese. Already after her first confession at the age of five and a half, she wrote: “I remember that the first instruction I received urged me to piety towards the Holy Virgin. I resolved to double my tenderness towards her” (Rk A 16v/AS 43).
However, the event that fundamentally marked her relationship with the Virgin Mary was her mother's death. Thus Therese, at the age of four and a half, loses the feeling of unconditional acceptance, safety, and warmth of home. For ten years, Therese would experience this painful loss and also seek a new inner certainty and protection. The little one temporarily clings to her sister and “second mother” Pauline, but she also loses her at the age of nine and a half.
The Smile of the Holy Virgin
Therese realizes that every human relationship is fragile and can be disrupted. Thus, she increasingly begins to seek certainty and safety in supernatural relationships, which cannot let her down. Already at seven, she writes in her prayer book: “Blessed Virgin is my mother, and small children usually resemble their mother.”8
But the deep wound caused by her mother's death and later further deepened by Pauline's departure, which caused the girl to become ill with a “special disease,” must be resolved through a heavenly intervention. When relatives did not know what to do with Therese, they had nine Masses said at the Church of the Virgin Mary of Victory in Paris. And they were heard: “When poor little Therese found no help on earth, she also turned to the heavenly Mother. She begged her with all her heart to take pity on her. Suddenly, the Holy Virgin appeared to me beautiful, so beautiful, that I had never seen anything so beautiful. Her face breathed kindness and incomprehensible tenderness.
But what struck deep into my soul was “the captivating smile of the Holy Virgin.” At that moment, all my sorrows vanished, two big tears streamed silently down my cheeks. But they were tears of unsullied joy.” (Rk A 30r/AS 66).
This is one of the few extraordinary mystical graces of Therese.9
For Therese, Maria will henceforth primarily be the Virgin of the smile, the Mother who reveals to her in all confusion and uncertainties the heavenly favor and protection. Therefore, even before her death, during great temptations against faith, Therese longs for this smile and summarizes the content of her life from beginning to end under it:
“From the morning of my life you smiled at me:
come and smile at me, Mother, it is evening already!” (TB 54, 25).
She will also experience internally Mari’s smile on the day of her first Holy Communion:10 “In the afternoon, I was the one who made the act of consecration to the Holy Virgin. It was quite just for me to speak on behalf of my companions to the heavenly Mother, I who had been deprived of my earthly mother at such a tender age! ... I put my whole heart into it when I spoke to her, when I consecrated myself to her, like a child who throws himself into his mother’s arms and asks her to watch over him. It seems to me that the Holy Virgin surely looked at her little flower and smiled at her. Did she not heal her with her visible smile?” (Rk A 35v/AS 77).
However, the healing is not definitive. It will only happen on Christmas night in 1886 and will find its final confirmation in the Church of the Virgin Mary of Victory. Until then, Therese has pangs of conscience about speaking of this experience, which she wanted to keep as her secret (cf. Rk A 31r/AS 67-68). The reaction to this is her first written prayer: “My good Holy Virgin, make it so that your little Therese never suffers again” (TM 1).11
Only the visit to the Paris temple before the pilgrimage to Rome brings her peace after four and a half years (November 4, 1887): “Oh, what I felt at her feet, I could not express. The graces that she granted me moved me so deeply that only tears revealed my happiness as on the day of my first Holy Communion. The Holy Virgin made me feel that she indeed smiled upon me and healed me. I realized that she watches over me, that I am her child, and so I can now only call her ‘Mummy’, for it seems to me even more tender than the name ‘Mother’.” (Rk A 56v-57r/AS 120).
In this way, now without any extraordinary signs, Therese deeply experiences Mary’s love and responds to it with all her childlike love. This love, which chooses “Mummy” instead of “Mother,” is by no means something sentimental or childish. It is a similar experience to when later she will call God her “Daddy.” (Cf. CS 81). Then she understands all of Jesus's love for the Father, with which he calls him “Abba.”
Abbreviations used in this article: Rk A – Manuscript A / AS – Autobiographical writings, ŽS – Yellow notebook / VŽ – Entering into life, TB – Therese’s poems, DT – Therese’s letters, TM – Therese’s prayers
