Fatherhood by Way of the Little Flower
The feast day of Thérèse of Lisieux is a joyous occasion for Carmelites, of any observance, and so many of us in the church...
The feast day of Thérèse of Lisieux is a joyous occasion for Carmelites, of any observance, and so many of us in the church. Oftentimes, the particular spirituality offered by this formidable Doctor of the Church can be tempting to dismiss, adorned as it may be, by the ornate dimension of her prose. We must not, however, fail to understand the efficacy and applicability of her ‘little way,’ particularly as it applies to our lives as husbands and fathers.
Thérèse presents us with an intrinsically humble means by which to work towards sanctity, inspired by an initial sense of inadequacy that she had regarding great saints and great feats of spiritual magnitude and prowess. In a seemingly sudden realisation, she recounts in her autobiography, how:
It pleases Him to create great Saints, who may be compared with the lilies or the rose; but He has also created little ones, who must be content to be daisies or violets, nestling at His feet to delight His eyes when He should choose to look at them. The happier they are to be as He wills, the more perfect they are.
In our own vocations, more often than not, centred on the service and guidance of our families, Thérèse’s notion of the ‘little saints’ speaks with a particular poignancy. There are fewer pursuits more disarming and humbling than parenthood, with its innumerable challenges, follies and fait accompli. As a new mother, or father, you are pitted forevermore at the service of the most innocent, demanding and beguiling, beautiful tyrants that God’s creation has seemingly ever seen. You are wedded, evermore, to the irrepressible charms and innumerable challenges of every soul in your charge. Seemingly capable of stripping you of every ounce of resolve, fervour, vigour and vim, your children will reduce you to a humble, yet critical servitude that pits your fleeting and fickle concerns against the despotism of their very real, and reasonable needs.
Compounding all this, of course, is the redefinition and renewal of your marriage, forever reshaped by its fruition into a love that extends beyond the two of you, into something so real, so tangible and permanent that it’s damn near terrifying in the moment you’re leaving the hospital and realising that you’re actually being entrusted with such a delicate, wonderful being. You thought you knew each other. You thought you had this down. And you did. Did. Past tense, because all things are made anew in light of a new life, as it should be. Thérèse tells us “Our Lord’s love shines out just as much through a little soul who yields completely to His Grace as it does through the greatest.” To welcome this life and the maturation of your marriage, whether it be your first, or your ninth (trust me on this one), is to acquiesce to the beauty and wonder of God’s will in a manner that no other demand can. Inasmuch, the widespread abandonment of the Catholic vision for marriage and family has been as toxic, self destructive and self-reverential as the degradation of liturgy, I contend, in the lives of the faithful.
As father and mothers, Thérèse’s advice to “miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love,” grants our lives with a spiritual potency that strips the struggle of its sting. The temptation to despair will be there, at numerous points of your life as a parent, facing challenges of a nature and complexity that you never anticipated. One of the major ones for myself, and so many other, has been sleep deprivation. It’s all well and good for one child to wake you several times throughout the night, but for five kids to wake sporadically and cyclically throughout a given night is damn well close to torture, as you scrape by on fifteen rounds of twenty minute fragments of sleep on a given night. Seeing these as moments (or nights, weeks or months) of service, humility and edification, both strengthen and embolden the believer, who knows that to serve any of His beloved, is to serve Christ.
Furthermore, Thérèse presents us with a portrait of a father that should make any of us take great note. Her depiction of her father, St Louis, is nothing short of inspiring. He was a man gripped by faith, having been lead by God into family life, after both he and his wife had been rejected from religious life, to serve a different purpose, a different vocation to the benefit of us all. We can take great inspiration from the faith, the formation and the fidelity which Louis granted his children. A particularly inspiring image for me, personally, was his walks with his “little queen” to innumerable local churches to adore the blessed sacrament. She recounted how the sight of her father at prayer, was undoubtedly the image of a saint in rapture - God willing that any of our children could say the same of us. And a testament to their faith and sanctity was the pursuit of religious vocations for so many of their children, despite the suffering and loss that marked their family’s journey, with Zelie’s young death not least amongst these challenges.
Louis also, shows us the critical importance of fostering strength and independence in our children, having shocked Thérèse into a newfound senes of maturity and agency in declaring it would be her last year to receive gifts in the childlike and innocent custom of the age. Whilst we must do all we can to love, support and nurture our little ones, we must also know when to moderate our tenderness, in order to foster a growth and self-determination that befits their age and state of life.
For all her tenderness and mercy, we should never forget Thérèse’s offering of her very self as an act of oblation. She asks Our Lord:
In order to live in one single act of perfect Love, I OFFER MYSELF AS A VICTIM OF HOLOCAUST TO YOUR MERCIFUL LOVE, Asking You to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within You to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of Your Love, O my God!
May this martyrdom, after having prepared me to appear before You, finally cause me to die and may my soul take its flight without any delay into the eternal embrace of Your Merciful Love.
Would that we could ask so much of Christ in our own lives as husbands and fathers. May we be consumed, martyred, in the absolute destruction of sin, pride, self-will, in the service of our wives and children. May we know immolation in the love we bear to our families, our Lord, in a service that gives glory to God, rather than seeking a glory of our own.
St Thérèse, pray for us.
By Gaetano Carcarello