“What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”[1] Tertullian’s rhetorical question concerning the relationship between philosophy and the Gospel could perhaps be transposed to the relationship between St. Thérèse of Lisieux and the Dominican tradition. Little Thérèse’s overflowing affectivity, her devotion to the Child Jesus and her frequent mention of flowers and birds may perhaps appeal to a Franciscan heart but, as Timothy Radcliffe O.P. says, the Dominicans tend to take a more “robust approach”, hesitating to use “sugary and sentimental” language,[2] and the only famous story involving St. Dominic and a bird, is the one where the devil disguised as a bird distracts Dominican nuns from listening to Dominic’s preaching. Dominic resolutely captures and plucks the bird, and that is the end of it.[3]
“How distressed I should be to have read all those books; I would just have got a splitting headache and lost precious time, which I have simply spent in loving God”[4] sighs Thérèse, while the love of books found its way into the Dominican tradition at an early stage. A 14th century Dominican goes as far as claiming: “Since our own Constitutions state that the Order of Preachers was founded for the study of Sacred Scripture and the salvation of our neighbour … we ought to know that we are bound to love books!”[5]
In spite of these striking and significant differences, if we take a closer look, perhaps there is more to this relationship than meets the eye – and this not only due to the fact that Thérèse clearly loved Scripture, read and meditated it assiduously, and even said she would have liked to learn Hebrew “to be able to read the word of God in the language in which he was pleased to express himself”[6] or that she quotes the Dominican Blessed Henry Suso as her source when speaking about the spiritual danger inherent in the use of instruments of penance.[7] Are there crumbs falling from the child Thérèse’s table that the “Dogs of the Lord” might be nourished by and even savour? [8] And could those who find little Thérèse’s dishes hard to digest perhaps through the Dominican tradition receive the Gospel substance of her teaching under different species? Les videre →
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