← All Things Catholic with Dr. Edward Sri
All Things Catholic with Dr. Edward Sri
St.Thérèse & Trauma: The Real Story of Her Soul (Part 1)
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Do you know the real story of St. Thérèse of Lisieux? Dr. Sri delves into the depth of St. Thérèse's life, highlighting her profound sufferings, trauma, and family challenges. Dr. Sri explains how these adversities became the very context in which she encountered God’s grace and mercy—shaping the heart of her spirituality, the “Little Way.”
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This podcast is brought to you by Ascension. To discover even more free Catholic podcasts, videos and resources to help you live your faith every day, visit ascensionpress.com hi, I'm Edward Sri, and welcome to All Things Catholic, where real faith meets real life. Do you know the real Saint Therese? And do you know the real story of her soul? I think many of us might have a plastic statue understanding of Therese. What do I mean by that? I remember as a kid growing up in Catholic schools, there'd be these plastic statues of St. Therese, and she's in her habit, holding a cross and a bunch of flowers, and she's smiling at you as if to say, hey, look at me. Check out my flowers. And I think we can have a kind of artificial, plastic knowledge of St. Therese. That's not bad, but it's not the full story, and it doesn't capture her full humanity and how God met her in her humanness and did amazing things in it. So, for example, you may have heard about Therese and her little way, her spirituality of the little way, doing little things with great love and the way of spiritual childhood and trust. And that's beautiful. And you may have heard about how she said, I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth. Or how she had this great vocation to love. And how many Christians will do novenas today. And the last thing to Therese, give me a white rose for a sign so I know what to do this. Or give me a red rose if I'm supposed to do something else. These are the many popular things about St. Therese that many of us might be aware of. But do you know the real Therese and the deeper story of her life? Do you know the profound suffering she endured? Not at the end of her life. That's a fascinating story. I did a podcast on that last year on this, but I'm talking about the suffering from her childhood that left a deep mark, a deep wound on her heart. Do you know about her family trauma and her upbringing? Now, I want to be clear here. She had saints for parents. That's amazing. And I was blessed to go to Lisieux this last May, and I was there kneeling down at the tomb of Zelie and Louis Martin. And they're incredible, and they're a great inspiration. But we have to remember the saints were human. They weren't always perfect. Pope Benedict brings this out. He says, oh, the saints, they're like us, you know, they make mistakes. They got into fights, they had faults, they weren't always perfect. But even in their sin, they learn to get up and try again. They learn to rely evermore on God's grace, God's mercy to heal them. And so when the church canonizes a saint, it doesn't canonize every single thing that saint ever said or ever did. So we have to look at the full story. And I think when we take a look at the life of St. Therese, we're going to see if we can get the context of her life. We'll appreciate even more her beautiful spirituality, the little way that will offer ordinary people like you and me great help, great encouragement in the midst of the stresses, the overwhelm, the struggles that we have in our daily walk with Jesus in this world. And. And that's what we're take a look at in this week's podcast. So welcome to all Things Catholic. I'm your host, Edward Sri. And so excited. We're approaching October 1st. I love October 1st because that's the great feast of St. Therese. And she really has become my favorite saint in my adult years. As I said, it wasn't always the case. From my childhood, you know, I had that plastic statue vision of St. Therese, and I'd hear things about, oh, the little way and flowers, and just as a guy, that just didn't appeal to me. I wanted the big way and I didn't want flowers. What do I want that for? Well, it was only later, when I was in my doctoral studies, that I was taking classes on spiritual theology and going deeper into the Life of St Therese and Reading all of her writings that I just really fell in love with this amazing person that I could relate to that had many struggles, many weaknesses, and learned to find God in the midst of them, not in spite of them. I think that's what many of us Catholics do. We experience certain struggles, things we don't like about ourselves, sins we want to overcome, virtues we want to acquire, and we just want to fix it. And yes, we say, we pray, we rely on God's grace, but deep down, we just want to fix our problems. And Therese is someone that really spoke to me. She was someone that truly learned to rely on God and to find God not in spite of her weaknesses and struggles, but precisely in the middle of them. And that's what I want to take a look at here today. And I want to start by making this personal. So I want to ask you a personal question now, and you don't need to email me back a response, but you can just ask yourself these things in your own heart. Do you notice spaces in your heart where you're anxious, or you're just really worried all the time about something. Like there's some area of your life you're just always worried about, and you have this fear of something dreadful that might happen, or if this doesn't work out the way you want, it's just going to be absolutely a catastrophe. Do you struggle with depression or maybe hypersensitivity? You're always worried about. Other people think of you. What are they thinking? What are they saying? Do you struggle with perfectionism? You have to have everything perfect. And when you're not perfect, you don't send the email perfectly or the text message perfectly, or you don't do the job perfectly, or you keep the house clean perfectly. You just feel like you're a failure. Do you have a fear of failure? Do you have a fear of abandonment? Do you struggle with scruples? Or do you have doubts? Or do you struggle with shame? Just sometimes feeling like you're just never enough, never good enough. If you ever have any of these things, I want you to know you're in good company. Because many of the saints experienced those same things. We can see this especially in the life of the great Saint Therese. And as I mentioned, I was blessed to be on pilgrimage to Liszieu. I was leading some of our focus team directors on a pilgrimage there. And I gave. One of the talks I gave was based on a wonderful book by a Carmelite named Mark Foley. It's called the Context of Holiness. That pulled together a lot of stories that I knew, but he put it together and really in a beautiful way, to show the real suffering that Therese endured, the trauma she endured, and how it affected her. And many of us experience the same kinds of things. Those things that I just listed there, the anxiety, the depression, the hypersensitivity, perfectionism, fear of failure, scruples, doubts, all these things. These are the things Therese struggled with. And we don't often hear about that side of the saints, but it's clear in her writings. And we want to look at these. Not to drag the saints down and say, oh, cool, they're just like us. So I don't have to work that hard? No, no, no. There's a lot of work we need to do, and it's the interior work in our souls. And when we look at the saints and their struggles, it reminds us of the hope we should have in Jesus, that Jesus came and met them in those struggles and brought great healing and sanctification and interior freedom. And that's what I want to look at here today. But first, Let me just. I just want to give a little broader context about Therese and her parents, Louis and Zelie Martin. I've read a lot about their parenting, and I read from their. Some of their own letters. I've read from the canonization process, what we learned about how they parented St. Therese. And there's many beautiful things we can take away. They were truly men and women committed to prayer. They had a very intentional family life. They had high standards for Therese and all their children calling them to virtue. They were very intentional about their social interactions, who they hung out with, and they themselves were very committed Catholics. We know that Louis Martin went to adoration, eucharistic adoration. Now, I know we have adoration chapels. They're pretty common today. But back then, that was not common for a layperson necessarily to get up in the middle of the night. He did nocturnal Eucharistic adoration, and this is late 1800s France, and that would have been pretty extraordinary at the time. He also received Holy Communion during the week. Now, again, I know we have daily Masses, and it's common for lay Catholics to maybe go to a daily Mass, but back then, that would have been extraordinary. He was a man committed to really living the Sabbath. He would go for walks with Therese, and they would give alms to the poor. They would make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament. He closed his jeweler shop on the Sabbath day, on the Lord's day, even though all the other jewelers were keeping their shops open. He lost business. But he put his trust in God first and not himself. So there's a lot of beautiful things that we could learn from the life of Zelie and Louis Martin. But as in all human families, there can be a lot of messiness, a lot of hurt. In fact, we're going to take a look here at how there were some traumatic events in Therese's childhood that aren't often talked about. Let me just mention a few of them that took place early in her life when she was just an infant. She had traumatic separations, multiple ones, in her early life. When she was three months old, Zelie was no longer able to nurse her. Celie had a lot of stress. She had health issues, and the nursing wasn't going well. And for the baby to survive, they needed to find a wet nurse. So they found someone named Rose who lived outside, several miles outside of their town, out in the country. And so at three months, little Therese was separated from her mother. And we know, psychologists tell us that events like that when we're separated from our Primary caregiver, usually the mom. That can cause great trauma in a child's life that has repercussions for the rest of their life. They could be 50 years old. And there's stuff that may come up from that early separation, and we know Therese experienced that. Now, she bonded with this wet nurse as it was her own mother. That's what some of the testimonies tell us, that she was very, you know, attached to Rose, and she would come into the city on an occasion to visit her family. So Rose would bring the child back. And little Therese was uncomfortable living in the city. She was uncomfortable when she would make these visits with city people with their hairstyles and especially their hats. There was something about her hats that made little Therese very scared. And so she clung to Rose, and she was uncomfortable with her own mom, with Zelie. Zelie writes about this and says, oh, yeah, Therese is more comfortable with the working women who dressed like the country women, like Rose, the wet nurse. She's more comfortable with the working women than she is with me. That's what Zelie said. So there wasn't an attachment between Therese and her mom. There wasn't a secure attachment. Now she's out there for 15 months, you know, until she was 15 months old, living with Rose out in the country. But then when she turned 15 months, she was brought back into the town to be with her family, which on one hand was a really good thing, of course. But there was now the separation from Rose. So she was separated from her mom, and then she attaches to Rose, and now there's this separation from Rose and there's this abandonment again. She returns home, and she was super anxious. We can read about this in, again, some of the writings about Therese's early life. In her childhood, when she first came back, she just didn't want to leave Zelie's side. She would cry if she was not with her mom. So there was this great separation anxiety. So there was a lot going on in Therese's life that's under the surface. And we're going to come back to why it's important to be aware of this and why it's going to shed a lot of light on the beautiful spirituality of St Therese and the power of God's grace to bring healing from these things. But let's continue painting our picture. Foley goes on to talk about not just the traumatic separations in Therese's life, but the anxiety of Therese's own mother. You see, Zelie Martin did not have a happy childhood herself. She did not have a close relationship with her own mom. She wrote about how her mother was very severe with me. So she lacked a maternal bond herself and she didn't have that maternal role model for her, how to be a mom as well from her own mother. And so there was a lot of anxiety, uncertainty in her own parenting. Another thing to add on, and this is so, so sad. I mean, think about what, what Zelie went through. She, in the period of just 17 years, went through eight deaths, eight close family members dying in the span of just 17 years. Both of her parents died, her sister died, her father in law died. And then tragically, four of her own children died. So this was so hard for Zelie. She had a lot of suffering. And my heart goes out to her thinking of all this. And you can just imagine, you know, she's lost, she just lost a child. And then she shortly later conceives of Therese. And you can imagine the worry about this, the anxiety over Therese's health. You know, during the pregnancy. Zelie writes about how she had nightmares about the health of Therese, the baby in her womb. She had nightmares about her every night. Just feel it, feel the weight of just. This isn't just, oh, she's a little worried. She is going through severe anxiety every single night. She's having nightmares that Therese might die. So this is the, this is the space in which Therese is living inside the womb of a very, very anxious, stressed out mom. And then after Therese is born, there's still this fear over, is this going to be the fifth baby that I have that dies? And she's worried, Teres very anxious about this. And Zelie even writes about this. She says, I have no rest day or night. I fear losing her. So there's a lot going on in Zelie's own life. There was the separations from Therese's childhood, but then there's something else going on in the family. I don't know if you know about Therese's sister, Leonie. She was mentally slow, emotionally unstable. She had these big outbursts of anger. It was an embarrassment to the family and a great stress for the parents. But you can imagine Therese comes back from the wet nurse as a 15 month old. And then there's this Leonie just with these big outbursts, these big emotions, loud raging and anger. That would have been a very unsettling environment for her. We know that Zelie also had the stress of running her own home business of lace, lace making. And then she had her own health issues. She was diagnosed with breast cancer. So you can imagine the weight of Zelie, the mother of St. Therese, just knowing she's going to die. Not today, not tomorrow, but maybe in a few years, maybe in a few months. Just having that looming over her, knowing she's approaching her end. All of this would have been a really hard environment for any child. We know the emotional state of the mother is contagious. It impacts the child deeply. But how much more traumatic this would have been for a child like Therese because of her previous separations in her infancy years. This would make her apprehensive that something dreadful is about to happen. She fears separation. She fears her mother will abandon her. And this all comes out. We're going to see in her as she grows up, and it's going to be a key part of our context of understanding her little way. But let me share with you one insight here. So this is from the book, from Mark Foley, and he's quoting a psychologist that's looking at all this and analyzing the impact that this would have had on Therese's life and how her own mom was not able to be fully, emotionally present, understandably. I mean, again, doesn't your heart go out for Azalea? You think of all that she's going through. She lost all these children. Four. Four of them died. I'd be stressed out and anxious, you know, and. And then she's got the. The special needs child with Leonie and all the stress of that, and then she knows she's dying. I mean, all of that, that would crush anyone. But it did affect Therese. And it's interesting, Therese, in her story of a soul, in her letters, she does mention her mother on occasion. You know, there's not tons of stories from her childhood about her mom. But what's fascinating is one of the stories that Therese remembers that's imprinted in her memory, one of the stories that she felt compelled to write about for some reason, is a simple little story that's packed with a lot, a lot of meaning in it. It's a story of how she was coming home from someone else's house, and that family had given her two sugar rings, so little candies, you know, that she could give, you know, one for herself. And she was excited because she wanted to give the second one to her sister Celine. And on the way home, it was put in a little basket. And all the way home, one of the sugar rings fell out. And Therese was filled with grief. She was just so sad. And she wanted to, like, find that other sugar ring, you know, so she can have the gift to give to her sister. And she asked her mom, as she's walking home with her mother, Zelie says, can I go back and retrace my steps? I want to find the ring. And she says, my mom just didn't pay attention to me. It's as if she didn't even hear me. And I know this sounds like a little story, but listen to La Trez's own words. She said, mama seemed to pay no attention to me. This was too much for me. And my tears were followed by loud cries. I was unable to understand why she did not share my pain. And this only increased my grief. You see, Zelie was not able to be empathetically present to Therese in this story. And you get the sense that this is one story reflecting a pattern that was throughout her upbringing. We get this sense from these other, other pieces we've been looking at. This particular psychologist that Mark Foley quotes here says the above memory is not only a particular event, but also one that represents a pattern in Zelie and Therese's relationship. Zelie was not able to respond to or emotionally connect with Therese when Therese was emotionally distressed and in need of calming and soothing attention. This pattern of relationship is typical of mothers and infants who are insecurely attached. They don't have a secure attachment. Zelie apparently was not emotionally available to Therese during the beginning of the trip, when Therese remembers crying, but doesn't understand why. Therese experienced her mother's emotional absence and failure to respond to her feelings. And she wonders why her mother was not able to share her pain. Now, again, I don't want to get into all the psychology of all this here. I'll leave that to Foley and others. But we know enough that those little events of a consistent pattern of a mother, primary caregiver not emotionally present has a great impact on our lives. So I'm just painting a picture for you, my friends here, of the suffering, the trauma, the difficulties that Therese experienced growing up. And then, of course, Zelie eventually does die. And when Therese is four and a half years old, and that is another loss, a great. Another feeling of great abandonment. And the family ends up leaving their original home and they move to Lisieux and they move to this beautiful little home called Les Boussine. And I may not be pronouncing that correctly, My. My wife always points out she's. She was the French student and, and I. I don't have the best French pronunciation, but it means little bushes. Les busonnet. I want to talk about this time, because this was a time of great healing for Therese as she moves to a new place. And it was out a little bit on the edge of town, a little more secluded. And while they were there, the Martins just had like, a little. They were a little more sequestered, if you will. They were a little less social. And Therese was just enveloped in the warmth of her family. And she's developing great bonds with her sisters and her dad. Leonie is away at boarding school at this time, so you don't have the stress of Leonie's big emotional outbursts at home and just the stress of dealing with Leonie. And Luis was able to just. The father was able to really give a lot of concentrated time and attention and care for his beloved daughter, Therese. So living a simpler life, he wasn't as consumed by Zlie's illness and having to deal with Leonie and all. And so every day he had a little more of a regular routine. And every day he could invest himself emotionally into Therese and connecting with her. It's a beautiful story about this wonderful father and his beautiful daughter. Therese writes about how she just loved this time with. With her dad, that every day they could go for walks, they played together, they talked together, and she called her dad my king, and she was her little queen. So it was this great close bond and connection. So this was a period of great stability, of great healing, of great connection for Therese. So I don't know if you knew a lot of this story, but I find this really fascinating because it's going to shed a lot of light on her little way. And what we're going to see is that this period of healing was wonderful. But the clouds are looming, and there are two new traumatic events that are going to completely devastate Therese, and it's going to lead to a complete meltdown in her life, in her childhood. These two dramatic events, they not only leave her with great anxiety, hypersensitivity, severe depression, these events also manifested themselves physically. She had this very strange illness, these horrible headaches, a rash, a loss of appetite. She couldn't sleep, she had a fever, her body was shaking uncontrollably. And the family thought she was under spiritual attack. They really thought that the demons were attacking her at this time. And what was going on with Therese? What led her to this meltdown? And how did God come to rescue her? And how was that the context for giving us this beautiful spirituality of the Little Way? That's we're going to take a look at next week. So I'm going to leave you on that cliffhanger here. But next week was when we're going to unpack it all. So we'll get to this really low point in Therese's life. But it's going to be a great model for us because that's a lot of the model of her own little way of daring to go and meet God in those places of our great fears, our great hurts, our great brokenness, our sins, our weaknesses, those areas where we feel completely unable to change. If you have areas like that, that you just notice a pattern, that you just snap at your. At your husband or your wife all the time, or you, you get frustrated with your kids really easily, or you get really worried about what people think at the office and anxious that you're not going to perform well. And if you notice those things going on in your life again, Therese and many of the saints experience that. But what we're going to see is Therese dared to meet God in the midst of those trials, in the midst of those fears and sufferings, not in spite of them. In fact, let me read you this beautiful line from Foley from the book I've been referring to here. Foley says Therese does not apologize for her fears. She does not berate herself for feeling like a child. Rather, her fears and insecurities are the context within which she places her trust in God. It's as if Therese is saying to all of us, there are many situations in life that trigger the deep seated fears of childhood. I have come to see that this is a normal part of daily life. I've also come to understand that our childhood wounds are not obstacles to our spiritual growth, but are, in some mysterious manner, the path on which we find our way back to God. The deep seated fears of my life have forced me to abandon my self sufficiency and to rely upon the grace of God. So if you want to learn more about how to rely on the grace of God, you want to learn more about how to meet God in the midst of those fears and those hurts and those sins and those patterns that you can't change on your own. Stay tuned next week where we'll learn more about how Therese herself encountered the living God in his grace and his mercy, in her weakness, in her fears, in her wounds, in her littleness. Thanks for listening, my friends. Look forward to being with you next week. God bless.