The Last Years of Saint Thérèse: Doubt and Darkness: 1895–1897 by Thomas R. Nevin (review)

Thomas R. Nevin begins his authoritative work by discussing the influence of the Spanish masters on St. Thérèse of Lisieux: Ss. Teresa of Jesus and John of the Cross. This is certainly important information, but this reviewer wonders if the author has not underestimated Teresa’s influence on her spiritual daughter. The author certainly does recognize the important place of John of the Cross in her spirituality.

The author then turns to Sacred Scripture. We know that Thérèse had a great appreciation for Sacred Scripture and quotes from it more than 1000 times. His remarks about the psalms are somewhat surprising. This reviewer doubts that Thérèse would have found their keynote to be hostility (p. 48). The section on the New Testament indicates that for Thérèse,

Jesus’ mission is the search for a requital of God’s love. Almost all of her writing expresses in one dimension or another the bounteousness of this love and the urgency she felt in meeting it, embracing it, celebrating it, despite and yet through her own feeble self.

(p. 60)

This is a good assessment.

Nevin refers to Thérèse’s “science of love” (p. 69). Although this is not an unusual translation, this reviewer, who has some limited experience in translation work, questions whether she had any such thing. Could this not mean her understanding, her experience of love?

The author provides a fine chapter on the cross that community life represented for Thérèse. His argument is that, long before she came to the table of sorrow, her experience of community life in Carmel prepared her for her arrival at the table of unbelief and its bitter bread. His point is well illustrated.

The chapter on Thérèse’s spiritual brothers, Hyacinthe Loyson and Leo Taxil, is most informative. The author relates that Thérèse maintained that it was more painful for her to be humbled by the righteous, her sisters in Carmel, than by the unjust, by sinners. Nonetheless, these men “furnished the bitter bread” (p. 146) she ate at the table of sinners.

In his chapter on final charity the author explains that Thérèse saw herself as God’s lowly tool through which others were being served. This gives meaning to the table at which she sat: serving others in suffering (p. 188). The author’s remarks on Thérèse and the Beatitudes are most insightful. Her Little Way is indeed bound up with true poverty of spirit. Her confidence meant that she could rely only on God. Furthermore, she was merciful both to those seated at the table of sorrow and her neglected Carmelite sisters. She also attained purity of heart by praying on behalf of others in darkness, identifying with them and acknowledging with them her own helplessness.

In his conclusion the author states that Thérèse arrived at that station of darkness by the experience of prolonged doubt. By regarding doubt in a compliant rather than defiant way, she overcame herself. She believed that Jesus allowed the darkness of doubt to descend upon her and that was her way of finding strength in his testing of her (p. 198).

In appendix 2 the author makes a significant point in commenting on one of Teresa’s “Outcryings of a Soul to God.” Teresa’s exclamation may have inspired Thérèse’s prayer for divine light on behalf of the lost ones at the table of sorrow. The difference between Teresa’s prayer and her daughter’s, he claims, is that Thérèse in hers received the supreme grace of praying not merely for but among the lost (p. 208).