Among the stories of Elisha there is a striking one in which, after the prophet’s death, someone else had to be hastily buried in his tomb. As soon as the body touched Elisha’s bones the dead man revived (2 Kings 13.21). It was this remarkable episode that inspired another beautiful verse of Scripture regarding him: ‘Even in death his body prophesied...and in death his works were marvellous’ (Sirach 48.13-14).
The visitation of Thérèse’s relics around the world over the last few years have proved these verses true also of this legendary daughter of Elisha. Like the prophets of old which in her dream she wanted to emulate, we anticipate the wonders in store during the forthcoming visit of her relics to England and Wales. What word from the Lord do these bones bring? Of what particular promises will they be the prophetic witness? Of what revival might we expect them to be the vehicle? How may the presence of the precious remains of this prophet help to light our way?
The first prophetic word that will surely be preached by these bones is Truth. It is the primary concern of all the prophets. In the story of Thérèse we discover an uncompromising advocate of all that is true and a passionate opponent of anything counterfeit. ‘I can nourish myself on nothing but the truth.’ She had a horror of any kind of hypocrisy and couldn’t have survived on the diet of delusion with which we are so easily satisfied. Saint Thérèse blows the whistle on what keeps us from the full extent of our freedom as God’s sons and daughters. ‘Make me see things just as they are!’
This prayer of hers cuts through all our endless prevarication. ‘Let nothing throw dust into my eyes,’ she continues, ‘I beg you to answer me when I ask you humbly: What is truth?’ Her dedication to this search was unremitting, whatever the consequences that might be demanded by its discovery. On the very day of her death from tuberculosis at the age of 24 she was heard to say, ‘I have never sought anything but the truth.’
As novice mistress in the Carmel at Lisieux Thérèse encouraged her novices to be as open with her as possible, even to the extent of revealing the grief she sometimes caused them. But they had to be ready for her to honour them with the same honesty: ‘Let the novices not come to me if they do not want to learn the truth.’ Recalling the incident from the Old Testament where King Jeroboam’s wife went in disguise to the prophet Ahijah and was found out, she remarked, ‘I never ‘pretend’, I am not like Jeroboam’s wife.’
Indeed, like the prophet on that occasion, Thérèse arrives on our soil to unmask the games we often play, ‘why do you pretend to be somebody you’re not?’ (cf. 1 Kings 14.6). She invites us to come clean with each other, with God and especially with ourselves. Whatever cover-up operations we are usually so adept at employing, she promises with all the authority of her Lord that ‘the truth will set you free’ (John 8.32).
Thérèse’s unrelenting commitment to acknowledging the real state of affairs, not least within herself, leads us to another word about which her bones will prophesy eloquently: weakness. While we naturally run away from our weaknesses, this prophet dares us to run towards them. Indeed for Thérèse these very weaknesses proclaim a word we are unwilling to accept because a prophet is nearly always despised in his own house. It’s a message that is in the meaning of Elijah’s own name: ‘the Lord is God.’ Where more powerfully than in our weaknesses are we confronted with this message? It is right there in our impotence that we encounter his omnipotence. Little wonder Thérèse used to tell her novices, ‘love your powerlessness.’ She was well aware of her own. She knew how much of a highway it is to that humility through which the Lord has always done great things.
In her short life Thérèse rediscovered that liberation, once tasted by Saint Paul, which comes from being content with, and even actually able to rejoice in one’s imperfections, for the full scope they give to God’s grace and power in one’s life (cf. 2 Corinthians 12.5). Looking at her faults with the eyes of the New Testament she could see, with gospel clarity, that her weaknesses actually worked to her advantage. ‘The weaker we are, the more well-suited we are to the workings of grace.’ They made sure she could not fabricate her own perfection and led her to beg the Lord: ‘be yourself my Sanctity!’
If all this sounds alien to our ears today, how outrageous it must have sounded a century ago in the cloisters of Lisieux Carmel. Yet it is the key to her Little Way. Thérèse would have us embrace the situations in which we find ourselves intimidated by our limitations and liabilities, to learn to profit from them, and even to exploit their hidden potential. She was acutely aware of the danger inherent in the traditional image of holiness as a mountain to be scaled and conquered.
To all those in danger of making this climb a smokescreen for the ego to claim another trophy she warns, as prophets do so provocatively: ‘You are mistaking the road…you seek to climb the mountain whereas God wants you to descend it.’ Jesus has already made that journey ahead of us and is waiting for us deep down in the valley of our humanity. Why do we spend so much of our energy trying to escape our weaknesses when the Lord spent so much of his entering into them? Thérèse’s precious remains prophesy that we will meet him there, perhaps more powerfully than anywhere else, on the holy ground of our ‘extreme weakness’ where grace cannot be faked or mistaken.
But if the truth is what transforms us and our weaknesses are the main artery to that truth, what lies at the heart of Thérèse’s prophetic message? Above all what will she be preaching? Trust and Love. These are the two wings of her Little Way to God. And for her these were never abstractions. They are a living person – Jesus Christ. And he, primarily, is the one this prophet comes to proclaim. ‘I would like to travel the earth, preaching your name…’ Moreover, Thérèse teaches in her simple, compelling way that Trust and Love are the highest destiny and deepest identity of all human flesh.
This is our essential vocation. In one of her poems, written shortly before she died, Thérèse describes herself as an unpetalled rose, whose petals have been gradually plucked off one by one. It’s an arresting, if uncomfortable, image of how she had ‘squandered’ her life, giving herself away in love in imitation of her Lord. In this poem Thérèse uses the word ‘debris’ to describe this gift of herself. The opportunity to pray in the presence of her relics will surely help to make us conscious of that precious debris. And of the debris we are all called to become. The dust and debris of these bones will be silently, but expressively, preaching that ‘love is giving’, as she put it so concisely in her last poem, indeed that ‘it is giving your very self.’ The prophetic message of her precious bones: ‘love alone matters’, a life well spent is a love well spent. And the key to such love? Confidence. ‘ It is trust and nothing but trust that must lead us to Love.’
When Elijah ascended into heaven at the end of his life, he left behind his cloak, a tangible sign that Elisha was to inherit his master’s spirit (2 Kings 2.1-15). In some icons you see Elisha holding tightly onto Elijah’s mantle as he ascends in his fiery chariot. In her writings Saint Thérèse recalls this moving scene. Explicitly borrowing Elisha’s own words she transposes them into an expression of her daring desire to inherit the spirit of the saints: ‘Give me a twofold share of your Spirit!’ As we take the opportunity to approach her relics in the coming months and touch the mantle of her remains, may this simple action evoke this episode from Elisha’s story. May it express our desire to receive in our lives a share in the spirit of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux – a passion for the truth, a rejoicing in our weaknesses, an indomitable trust, an all-consuming love. May our visit to her relics be the proof of the truth that, like her father Elisha, ‘even in death her body prophesies… and in death her deeds are marvellous.’
