Sep 27., 2020   /   Features, General, Homilies, Soul Food

Transforming Gentleness: the Grace of St. Thérèse Couderc

Homily of Fr. Daniel Patrick Huang, SJ on 26 September 2020, Feast of St. Thérèse Couderc in Rome.

I hope you don’t mind, but this afternoon, I would like to reflect a little on your Mother, St. Thérèse Couderc, as a water purifier or filter. I realize that it’s not a very dignified or poetic image, but I hope that it helps explain what has struck me most these days about St. Thérèse: what I would call her transforming gentleness or her fruitful non-violence.

A water purifier. This is not an original image, but one I learned from the spiritual writer Ron Rolheiser when he describes how the suffering of Jesus on the cross takes away the sins of the world. How does Jesus, the grain of wheat who dies, bring forth new life? Rolheiser suggests he does what a water purifier or a water filter does. “It takes in the water that contains impurities, dirt, toxins and occasional poisons.” The filter “does not simply let the water flow through it.” It “holds the dirt and toxins inside of itself and gives back only the pure water.” (1) This is what Jesus does on the cross: he holds in himself, bears in himself, the hatred, envy, anger, and violence of humanity, and instead of simply passing it on, somehow purifies all this in his own person, so that what flows out of him instead is love, graciousness, blessing, forgiveness, peace.

Doesn’t this describe too what Thérèse Couderc lived in her sufferings? Reading various accounts of her life, I couldn’t help but be struck by the suffering and humiliation she went through, at the hands of a Jesuit Provincial and her own sisters. Looking back, one can see that Fr. Renault’s decision to replace Thérèse as superior general and foundress with a rich widow who had barely begun novitiate was not only ill advised but actually idiotic! What was he thinking? Till today, the writers I consulted struggle to explain Mother Charlotte Contenet’s inexplicable animosity towards Thérèse. I found myself asking: Why didn’t Thérèse fight back? She certainly would have had reason and justice on her side. Or why didn’t she just leave? Why didn’t she just start again, with a group of more congenial companions?

Earlier accounts of Thérèse explain her response as humility: Thérèse as “une grande humble.” This seems to have been what was emphasized in her canonization process 50 years ago. But, as some of your sisters have pointed out (2), these accounts tend to speak of the humility of Thérèse in terms of uncomplaining submission, self-abasement, blind obedience to ecclesiastical authority, usually male. Although there is no doubt that Thérèse was deeply humble, this version of humility sounds suspiciously ideological.

The more I reflected, the more I realized that Thérèse’s silent suffering was, in fact, less self-abasement, and more like the Gospel beatitude of meekness, what I have called transforming gentleness or fruitful nonviolence. Like her Lord, her dying was akin to the work of the water purifier. Instead of responding to stupidity, prejudice, pettiness, injustice in an aggressive, violent way, which would have continued the cycle of violence, Thérèse takes in all this and holds it in herself, and through the workings of grace in her deepest person, gives back instead kindness, reconciliation, peace, new life. By somehow absorbing in her person all this negativity, at great personal cost to herself, she kept the fragile congregation she so loved alive and united, for the sake of the work she so believed in, the revolutionary, till-that-time-unheard-of work of women religious giving the Spiritual Exercises.

Even towards the end of her life, when she went through her “dark night” and could be seen weeping while she prayed for hours in the chapel in Lyons, she brought into her person all the pain and suffering of the Church, her beloved France, humanity estranged from its Creator. Somehow, mysteriously, like a water filter, what emerged from her was light and peace. There is that lovely story of the troubled novice who saw Thérèse in the novitiate in Versailles in 1880, not knowing who the elderly religious was, only seeing somehow light emanating from her, and feeling a deep sense of peace when that older sister looked into her eyes. (3)

That this process involved crucifying pain for Thérèse seems clear. How did she do it? Where did she get the inner strength to respond with transforming gentleness to what would have provoked many of us to retaliation or escape? One of the favorite words of our former Superior General, Fr. Adolfo Nicolas, was the word depth, depth in the midst of a world of distraction and superficiality. I believe too that depth is the only word to describe Thérèse Couderc. Although her vision of goodness and her Se Livrer came decades later, those two documents capture the depth of her vision and her love throughout her life.

Unlike many of us who can only see the surface of things and events, Thérèse was blessed with a vision that pierced beneath the surface to perceive the infinite goodness of God, like “letters of gold,” (4) gleaming and beautiful, present and active in the depths of all reality. And unlike those of us whose attention and desire are distracted and captured by so many lesser things, Thérèse was a profoundly centered woman, whose loving act of total surrender meant being so spiritually free that she held nothing back from God and lived completely from and for God.

Because of the depth of her vision and the depth of her love, Thérèse was able to respond with depth to the events, even the most painful and difficult, of her life. Perhaps that is the reason why she so valued the ministry of the Exercises that her sisters were engaged in. It is precisely a ministry of depth that invites people to delve deeply into themselves to see the good God at work in their lives and in their world, and to respond with loving surrender to this God who “is not just good, but is goodness itself.”

Transforming gentleness, fruitful non-violence, borne of a depth of vision and love. Perhaps this is one way to appreciate Thérèse Couderc, the water purifier, the grain of wheat who died to bear much fruit. Surely, we have need of her grace for our world today: a world of superficial, undiscerned reactiveness; a world in which anger is the dominant and most immediate emotion, and in which polarizations and divisions abound, made worse by the pandemic we are going through. It is a world deeply in need of a vision and an experience of God’s infinite goodness. It is a world that needs to be persuaded that surrendering to God is not servitude and unfreedom, but the path to deepest joy and peace. It is a world terribly in need of those who, like Thérèse, can help take away the sins of the world, not simply passing on hatred and anger, but somehow holding these in themselves, and by God’s grace, transforming them, so that what is poured back into this broken world is love, compassion, blessing, forgiveness, peace.

Un breve riassunto in italiano. Ho usato l’immagine inelegante del filtro dell’acqua per descrivere Thérèse Couderc. L’acqua passa attraverso il filtro, che trattiene lo sporco e le impurità, in modo che ciò che ne esce sia solo acqua pura. Così con il nostro Signore, che sulla croce ha preso tutto l’odio e la violenza dell’umanità, l’ha tenuta in sé, e ha riversato solo amore, compassione, pace. Così con Teresa. Ha attraversato la sofferenza e l’umiliazione, ma non ha reagito e non se n’è andata. Ha accolto la meschinità, la rabbia, l’ingiustizia, e l’ha tenuta in sé, e ha riversato invece gentilezza, riconciliazione, nuova vita – una nuova congregazione con la pratica rivoluzionaria delle religiose che danno gli esercizi spirituali. Ha potuto vivere questa dolcezza trasformatrice, questa nonviolenza feconda, solo grazie alla sua profonda visione della bontà di Dio e al suo profondo abbandono a Dio. Il nostro mondo di oggi, di superficialità e di violenza, ha un grande bisogno della grazia di Thérèse Couderc.

At this Eucharist, as we pray in thanksgiving for the grace of Thérèse Couderc, we pray too, in thanksgiving and in supplication, for you, her sisters and daughters, who keep alive her story, her gifts and graces for our world. Buona festa!