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Calming the Inner Storm
What does Thérèse, who lived a secluded life for nine years in a Carmelite convent in France, have to teach our hectic, tumultuous world? Perhaps one of her most significant teachings for our times of inner turbulence and outer turmoil is the loving way she worked with her feelings, particularly feelings of distress and hostility, the source of much of today’s unrest, violence and lack of love. We might even be surprised she had such feelings, since she is often presented as a pious, even syrupy saint, living an undisturbed life with feelings only of piety and peace. In reality she was an extremely sensitive young woman, with distressing feelings that she sometimes experienced as excessive. Perhaps her way of working, especially with her difficult feelings in little things, might help us to work with our difficult feelings in bigger things. Thérèse’s writings brim with examples of the way she noticed her feelings, explored them and profited from them. Never denying her feelings, rather she saw them contributing to her growth in self-awareness and love. She didn’t reject her feelings but never provided them with fuel to burn out of control and overpower her inner freedom. She understood that retaining her inner freedom in the midst of her feelings was essential in her loving relationship with God, with her Carmelite sisters, and with herself. Her willingness to make no enemies Thérèse had been almost 9 years
in Carmel, working with her difficult feelings as best she could; never
willfully, belligerently trying to change them, but always willingly bringing
them to God to be healed. Now, she said, she began to understand truly what charity toward her Carmelite sisters meant, and
she cultivated more deeply her love for them. But
she She had been meditating on Jesus’ words, “love your enemy.” “No doubt,” Thérèse said wryly, “we don’t have enemies in Carmel.” Then she added with disarming honesty, “but there are feelings.” Thérèse saw the connection between her feelings and the identification of “the enemy.” She knew that “the enemy” was any nun who aroused in her feelings of repugnance, inadequacy or threat. She recognized that her expectations and feelings actually invented “the enemy.” She knew some of the nuns were sometimes jealous and resented her. In that sense they had made her, at least temporarily, their enemy. But she did not want to fuel her own spontaneous feelings of hostility, lose her inner freedom and make them her enemy. Repugnant feelings came without her consent, but she believed Jesus’ words, “love your enemy,” meant, at least, not cultivating those spontaneous feelings of hostility and not acting on them. She refused to harbor, entertain, or justify her hostile feelings. When she had these hostile feelings, she felt embarrassed and then bore serenely the trial of being displeasing to herself. She described one sister as “displeasing me in everything, in her ways, her words, her character, everything seems very disagreeable to me.” Thérèse simply smiled at this sister when she could, but sometimes she could not even smile. “Frequently, when I . . . had occasion to work with this sister,” she wrote, “I used to run away like a deserter whenever my struggles became too violent.” To run away was all Thérèse could do. She refused to allow violence to be done to herself or to do violence to the nun. She simply loved her “enemy” and herself the best she could. Thérèse’s spontaneous feelings of hostility told her a truth: she disliked the sister at that moment, the sister was not acting charitably, and Thérèse was offended. But her feelings did not tell her the whole truth. The whole truth she knew only in faith: God loved the sister and God also loved her in her spontaneous, hostile feelings. God also called her to address the sister’s lack of charity, together with her own hostile feelings, as Jesus said, in love: compassionately, creatively, and with inner freedom and by not making the sister or herself “the enemy”. Thérèse was steadfast in her willingness to persevere in praying all her feelings to her merciful God, bringing them into the healing light of faith, and making no enemies. Her way of refusing to be willful in harboring hostile feelings against herself or others, but maintaining her inner freedom to act lovingly without violence, might suggest a specific focus for a contemporary understanding of Gospel love. Thérèse’s way might also challenge us to work with our own unique feelings, even in bigger matters, in a similar prayerful, loving way. |
discovered that she could also feel
hostility toward her sisters. She had spontaneous feelings of animosity when
one sister splashed dirty laundry water on her and another constantly made
repugnant noises during prayers.