Day 6: Mary in Therese's Life

The sixth day of the Saint Therese Novena turns to a dimension of her spiritual life that runs through Story of a Soul but is sometimes underemphasized in popular treatments: her deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. As a daughter of Carmel, Therese inherited the Marian charism of the Order of Mount Carmel; as a child, she experienced a particular Marian healing that she remembered as a foundational grace; as a religious, she composed Marian poetry that constitutes one of the principal Marian devotional bodies of the late nineteenth century.

Today's invocation

Saint Therese, Little Flower of Jesus... (the full opening prayer)

Today's meditation

Therese's principal personal Marian experience occurred in May 1883, when she was ten years old. She had become seriously ill (the medical history is uncertain; modern scholars suggest the illness may have been a severe form of nervous-physical breakdown after the loss of her mother and the entry of her older sister Pauline into the Carmel). She lay in her sickbed for months, in a condition that frightened her family and her doctor. At the height of the illness, on Pentecost Sunday 1883, the family placed a statue of Our Lady of Victories near her bed and prayed for her recovery. Therese, gazing at the statue, suddenly saw the face of the Virgin smile at her. The smile (which Therese later called the ravishing smile of the Blessed Virgin) instantly cured her of the illness. She remembered the experience as one of the foundational graces of her life and described it at length in Story of a Soul.¹

In the Carmel, Therese's Marian devotion took the form proper to the Carmelite tradition: the Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the May and October Marian devotions, the daily Salve Regina in choir, and the personal recitation of the rosary. She composed a long Marian poem, Why I Love You, O Mary, in May 1897, only months before her death; the poem is one of the principal Marian poems of modern Catholic literature and articulates her conviction that Mary is more Mother than Queen (the phrase is hers).

Her last recorded words about Mary, spoken during her final illness in September 1897, are: "Oh! Mama. I think the Blessed Virgin will soon come to take me." Five days later she died. The Catholic tradition has read this as the fulfillment of the smile of Mary received fourteen years earlier: the Mother who had healed her at ten came at her death to lead her home.

Today's intention

Today, in addition to your principal intention, ask Saint Therese to deepen your own Marian devotion. Saint Therese, you loved the Blessed Virgin Mary as your Mother, the Mother of mercy, the smile that healed you. Obtain for me the same Marian love.

If you have struggled with Marian devotion (some Catholics, especially converts from Protestant traditions, find Marian prayer difficult initially), today is an appropriate day to bring this struggle to Saint Therese. She knows the Mother of God; she will introduce you.

Reflection

The Catholic spiritual tradition has long observed that devotion to the Mother of God is the principal mark of the holy soul. The reason is theological: Mary is the most perfect creature, the most fully redeemed, the most completely conformed to Christ. To love her is to love what we ourselves are called to become. The soul that has neglected Marian devotion has, in a real sense, neglected its own future identity.

Therese's particular Marian gift is the same gift she offers in every dimension of the spiritual life: she makes the abstract concrete. The Mother of God in Therese's writings is not a distant theological concept but a real Mother, smiling at her sick child, present at her death, available to every Catholic who turns to her. The Saint Therese Novena, prayed in conjunction with the Holy Rosary, is one of the most fruitful Catholic Marian disciplines for those who wish to recover or deepen their relation to Mary.

Closing prayers

Conclude with the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.

Saint Therese, daughter of Mary, pray for us. May the Mother of God, who came to you with a smile, come to us as she came to you.

Footnotes

1. Saint Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, chapter 3, on the May 1883 illness and the smile of Mary. The statue of Our Lady of Victories venerated by the Martin family is preserved at the family home in Lisieux (Les Buissonnets), now a Catholic museum. ↩