Teresa de Lisieux
Teresa de Lisieux fue una monja carmelita francesa del siglo XIX conocida como la «florecilla de Jesús». Desde su niñez quiso ser santa y perfeccionarse en Dios. Su gran deseo de permanecer constante con la voluntad de Dios, con su sabiduría y su amor llevaron a Teresa a vivir una vida de sacrificio e inmolación propia, y a poner todas las fuerzas del amor de su corazón en atraer a las almas hacia la luz de Jesucristo. Ascendió al término de su corta vida.
Su vida
Nació como Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin, el 2 de enero de 1873, en Alenzón (Francia). A los catorce años de edad Teresa tenía un deseo tan ardiente de entrar en el convento que, en un peregrinaje a Roma con su padre, atrevidamente pidió permiso al papa León xiii, durante una audiencia pública, para poder entrar en el Carmelo a los quince años de edad. Él respondió que entraría «si Dios lo quiere». Al año siguiente su solicitud fue concedida por el obispo de Bayeux y el 9 de abril de 1888, entró en el Carmelo de Lisieux, donde asumió el nombre de hermana Teresa del Niño Jesús y la Santa Faz.
Llegó a ser maestra de novicias en funciones en 1893 y consideró que su misión era enseñar a las almas su «caminito». Su sendero era un sendero de amor, porque, escribió ella, «sólo es el amor lo que nos vuelve aceptables ante Dios». Sus obras favoritas eran las de san Juan de la Cruz, los Evangelios y La imitación de Cristo. Deseaba sólo «hacer que amaran a Dios como yo Le amo, enseñar a las almas mi caminito», el camino de la «niñez espiritual, el camino de la fe y la absoluta renuncia».
Con el fuego de la constancia y el celo de los apóstoles, tomó la determinación de ejemplificar el sendero de la sencillez en medio de un mundo de sofisticación. En abril de 1896 Teresa fue considerada merecedora de la iniciación de la crucifixión. Tuvo una hemorragia en los pulmones y durante un año sufrió la agonía de la cruz que Jesús tomó sobre sí como expiación por la conciencia de pecado de la humanidad. Teresa llevó su carga con la misma devoción y fe en Dios que había marcado su misión desde el principio. En julio de 1897 fue enviada a la enfermería, envuelta ya en el éxtasis de los fuegos de la resurrección. Repitió las siguientes palabras día y noche: «Dios mío, te amo». El 30 de septiembre de 1897, a la edad de veinticuatro años, regresó al corazón de su amor más grande.
Durante los últimos dos años de su vida, Teresa recibió la petición de que escribiera sus memorias de la niñez y su vida religiosa. El manuscrito se publicó un año después de su muerte en un libro titulado Histoire d’une Ame (Historia de un alma). Pronto se convirtió en uno de los libros espirituales más leídos.
Dos de las frases por las que más se recuerda a Teresa son: «Quiero pasar mi cielo haciendo el bien en la tierra»; y: «Tras mi muerte haré caer una lluvia de rosas», pues previó que después de su muerte su actividad tendría largo alcance y su misión de «hacer que otros amen a Dios como yo le amo» continuaría. Las estatuas de la santa la representan llevando un ramo de rosas.
Cuando murió, Teresa no perdió tiempo en hacer ese bien en la Tierra. El convento recibió miles de historias que hablaban de curaciones, conversiones e intercesiones atribuidas a Teresa. En una historia conmovedora, Teresa se aparece a la priora de un convento empobrecido de Italia para darle quinientos francos, necesarios para la deuda de la comunidad.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content Durante la Primera Guerra Mundial muchos soldados que habían leído la autobiografía de Teresa llevaban consigo reliquias suyas y colgaban su imagen de las paredes sucias de las trincheras. Un soldado francés cuenta sus espeluznantes experiencias en el frente. Él y otros rezaban el Rosario, y llamaban a la Hermana Teresa. Mientras la batalla se recrudecía, de repente la vio a los pies de uno de los cañones. Sonriendo, ella le dijo: «No temas, estoy aquí para protegerte». Ninguno de los soldados cayó; y pronto volvieron de la batalla sanos y salvos»Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content.
Teresa fue canonizada el 17 de mayo de 1925, menos de 28 años después de su muerte. Se le han atribuido muchos milagros a Teresa. En 1927 fue declarada patrona de las misiones extranjeras y de todas las obras por Rusia. Su fiesta de guardar es el 1 de octubre.
Lecciones de su vida
Algunas veces pensamos que los santos «han nacido santos». La vida de Teresa nos muestra que no es así. Teresa es recordada con frecuencia como dulce, amorosa y obediente. Pero eso no le llegó con facilidad. De hecho, la Sra. Martin caracterizó a su hija como una «testaruda incorregible»Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content.
Teresa aprendió a convertir su testarudez en una voluntad de hierro. Ella describe cómo consiguió una «gran victoria» en «cierto combate»:
There is in the community a sister who has the faculty of displeasing me in everything, in her ways, her words, her character, everything seems very disagreeable to me. And still, she is a holy religious who must be very pleasing to God. Not wishing to give in to the natural antipathy I was experiencing, I told myself that charity must not consist in feelings but in works; then I set myself to doing for this Sister what I would do for the person I loved the most.... I wasn’t content simply with praying very much for this Sister who gave me so many struggles, but I took care to render her all the services possible, and when I was tempted to answer her back in a disagreeable manner, I was content with giving her my most friendly smile and with changing the subject of the conversation....
Frequently, when ... I had occasion to work with this Sister, I used to run away like a deserter whenever my struggles became too violent.... Never did she suspect the motives for my conduct, and she remained convinced that her character was very pleasing to me.[1]
The path of discipleship
The ascended lady master Thérèse of Lisieux has given some insights into her experiences in the heaven-world:
Following my ascension, I was accorded the grant to spend a portion of my heavens on earth. But for another portion, the Father did assign me to study under the three masters El Morya, Koot Hoomi and Djwal Kul. These three wise men, adepts of the East who did come and tend the birth of the Lord Christ, therefore did tend with me the full flowering and birth of that Christ in my being multiplied many times over by their presence after my ascension.
Therefore, through their hearts I did learn the mysteries of the East, the profundity of the message of the Buddha and his oneness with our Lord. Thread upon thread, they did assist me in weaving and weaving again the fullness of the garment of light that does comprise the whole complement of the teaching of God to this age.
Therefore, beloved, I had full opportunity to receive that instruction that did fill in for me all of those sacred mysteries that had not been revealed through the established Church. Therefore you understand that much teaching that is given to you in this hour I received at inner levels after my ascension.
As I did say recently, there are many in the Church who have had the holiness and the sanctity and the purity [prerequisite for sainthood] but because the powers that be in this world who have seated themselves in these positions of power in the Church hierarchy have not seen fit to deliver the Everlasting Gospel to the people, those who qualified for the ascension and for sainthood could not receive that promotion, and therefore they did reincarnate.
Blessed ones, I desire not to give you any cause for personal pride or spiritual pride, but I am here to tell you that some who are in this place are among those who have reincarnated because they have been “shortchanged,” as you would say, by the Church and its tradition.
Therefore, beloved, I come to tell you that the way of discipleship can be seen by you as a thousand stairs upon a thousand-tiered golden spiral, and that step by step there is an orderly path of discipline. These masters who have sponsored your messenger and this activity, who have supported Jesus in establishing through the messengers the true Church Universal and Triumphant on earth, have seen fit to also establish an ordered ritual, for they are fully aware what it takes to mount one of these steps.
The figure of the nun burdened with the cancer in her body, concealing this from all others and occupying herself with the humble task of scrubbing the stairs of the enclave[2] must be seen as archetypal of the soul who, bearing her karma, recognizes that she must clear the debris in each step of consciousness, scrubbing by the violet flame until that level of record and ideation is fully and wholly transmuted. In the process, she may mount a single step. In past ages it would take a soul perhaps an entire lifetime to mount a single step, for the only purging of karma and record and self, as well as its outcropping in the body as disease, would be manifest through prayer and works of penance.
Thus, beloved, to know “how great, how great thou art, O God, my Father, my Mother, how great is the gift of the violet flame!” you must establish a co-measurement, a sense of realism that such a gift is also an experiment. For it is a dispensation for which ascended beings of the seventh ray, not the least of whom being your beloved Saint Germain, have given this opportunity. And after a certain lapse of cycles, they will give accounting before the Lords of Karma and the four and twenty elders who stand round the great white throne, and they shall determine whether a people have taken that flame and used it only to deliver themselves of their discomforts, or whether they have used it seriously for the path of initiation as an adjunct, as a mighty assistance to the soul’s entering in.
You must therefore understand that you are watchmen of the night, keeping the watch in your time and in your place as many who have gone before you have kept that watch. In this dark night of the age of the Kali Yuga,[3] you bear violet-flame torches and torches of illumination with the beloved Mother Liberty. Therefore, beloved, understand that all holy orders have had their rituals and their disciplines and their rules.
Therefore, those who would serve to keep the flame of this nation must come into alignment, as must those of every nation and city, to understand that it is both the spirit and the letter of the Law that must be fulfilled and obedience in the details of service and the givingness of self. It is this that will lead most swiftly to the desired goal of light in the seven chakras balanced in the supreme blessing of the Father-Mother God.[4]
Sources
Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Masters and Their Retreats, s.v. “Thérèse of Lisieux.”
- ↑ Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, trans. John Clarke, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1976), pp. 222–23.
- ↑ Saint Bernadette (1844–1879), a devout peasant to whom the Blessed Virgin appeared 18 times in a grotto near Lourdes, France, when she was 14, endured the painful and debilitating disease of tuberculosis of the bone for more than seven years while she served as a Sister of Notre Dame at the Convent of Saint-Gildard. During the last two years of her life she developed a large tumor on her knee, which she kept a secret as long as she could so she would not be relieved of her duties, as portrayed in the film The Song of Bernadette (1943) based on Franz Werfel’s novel by the same name.
- ↑ Kali Yuga is the term in Hindu mystic philosophy for the last and worst of the four yugas (world ages), characterized by strife, discord and moral deterioration.
- ↑ Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, “Outside the Church,” Part II, Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 31, no. 39, July 13, 1988.