Thï¿1/2rï¿1/2se of Lisieux: God's Gentle Warrior [Hardcover]

Thomas R. Nevin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 2006

Th�r�se of Lisieux (1873-1897), also known as St. Th�r�se of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, is popularly named the Little Flower. A Carmelite nun, doctor of the church, and patron of a score of causes, she was famously acclaimed by Pope Pius X as the greatest saint of modern times. Th�r�se is not only one of the most beloved saints of the Catholic Church but perhaps the most revered woman of the modern age. Pope John Paul II described her as a living icon of God. Her autobiography Story of a Soul has been translated into sixty languages. Having long transcended national and linguistic boundaries, she has crossed even religious ones. As daughter of Allah, she is venerated widely in Islamic cultures. Therese has been the subject of innumerable biographies and treatises, ranging from hagiographies to attacks on her intelligence and mental health. Thomas R. Nevin has gained access to many untapped archival materials and previously unpublished photographs. As a consequence he is able to offer a much fuller and more accurate portrait of the saints life and thought than his predecessors. He explores the dynamics of her family life and the early development of her spirituality. He draws extensively on the correspondence of her mother and documents her influence on Th�r�ses autobiography and spirituality. He charts the development of Th�r�ses career as a writer. He gives close attention to her poetry and plays usually dismissed as undistinguished and argues that they have great value as texts by which she addressed and informed her Carmelite community. He delves into the French medical literature of the time, in an effort to understand how the tuberculosis of which she died at the age of 24 was treated and lamentably mistreated. Finally, he offers a new understanding of Th�r�se as a theologian for whom love, rather than doctrines and creeds, was the paramount value. Adding substantially to our knowledge and appreciation of this immensely popular and attractive figure, this book should appeal to many general readers as well as to scholars and students of modern Catholic history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[Nevin] shows readers the flesh-and-blood Th�r�se who emerges from a careful stuy of her family history and a close reading of her entire corpus, including unpublished manuscripts, poetry, and plays. ...doubters (like this reviewer) begin to see, in the extreme integrity of her experience, what all of the fuss has been about."--hoice

"Thomas R. Nevin's life of Therese is a gem: thoughtful, graceful, and groundbreaking in its exploration of material largely ignored by others. Nevin is deeply sympathetic to the life of the cloister, understands and appreciates Catholic principles and practices, and seems entirely at home in nineteenth-century French culture. In sum, this is a masterful portrait of a very important saint." -- Philip Zaleski, coauthor of Prayer: a History and editor of the Best American Spiritual Writing series.

About the Author

Thomas R. Nevin is Professor of Classical Studies at John Carroll University. He is author of Simone Weil: Portrait of a Self-Exiled Jew, among other books. He is currently working on a study of the last autobiographical manuscript of Saint Th�r�se of Lisieux.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (October 12, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195307216
• ISBN-13: 978-0195307214
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,236,732 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, April 1, 2007

By 

Margaret Dybala "too many books, too little time" (Pearland, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Thï¿1/2rï¿1/2se of Lisieux: God's Gentle Warrior (Hardcover)

I originally purchased this book for a bit of pious reading. To be honest, I did not expect anything "new" could easily be found or said about our beloved Therese and her family. What I found was an outstanding study that looks at Therese with "new eyes," so to speak. And the conclusions are extremely powerful and spiritually very strong and nourishing. I especially appreciated Dr. Nevin's use of new sources (the circulaires read in the refrectory during St. Therese's life that would have been a source of inspiration to Therese), along with some photographs that I don't think had ever been published before. I recommend this book highly.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Remarkable, Breakthough Study of a Great Saint, March 15, 2007

By 

J. C Marrero "alithere" (new orleans, la United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Thï¿1/2rï¿1/2se of Lisieux: God's Gentle Warrior (Hardcover)

Having read much about her and visited her conventual home in Lisieux, I did not expect this book to be more than another take on the life and spirituality of this most beloved of modern saints. Yet, this book reveals much new biographical detail and sheds new light on the theological writings of this remarkable young woman. Dr. Nevin has also somehow retrieved photographs associated with St. Therese and her family that were not, it seems, available to the general public, including a previously unpublished photograph of the saint's mother. Here, the saint and her family emerge as people with practical problems, wrestling with poor financial investments, billeted soldiers, the death of loved ones and perplexing life choices. In this book, the struggles, character flaws and uncertainties are not airbrushed out. But neither does Dr. Nevin set out to find villains to slay among the Martins or the nuns with whom Therese shared her convent life. In the end, this book is about the love-centred, Jesus-focused path that Therese chartered at the end of her life. Eschewing excessive preoccupation with dogma and self, she dispensed with a mercantile approach to religion (if you're good to God, God will be good to you) and plunged head on into the abyss of love. Dr. Nevin discusses, with awesome command of the biographical facs and the primary sources, the still unfolding implications of Therese's writings. She died at 24, but not a moment of her life was wasted.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good book, but..., March 22, 2008

By 

David H. Werning "dhw43" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Thï¿1/2rï¿1/2se of Lisieux: God's Gentle Warrior (Hardcover)

There is much that is good about Thomas Nevin's book on St. Therese. As the notes on the dust jacket report, he does offer new readings and even new material concerning the "little flower" (as Therese is known). He begins the book by offering the reader a glimpse into the France of Therese's time: the cultural situation and currents of thought during the late 19th century. He moves on, helpfully, to consider the correspondence of Therese's mother, Zelie Martin, and extrapolates from the letters many insights about Therese's family life and her own development. Another chapter places Therese in the context of the Carmelite tradition, and specifically how the French Carmelites supported and formed her. Nevin also brings Therese's plays and poems to the fore as few others have done (most biographers have preferred to consider only The Story of the Soul and Therese's correspondence), and he summarizes the major themes and ideas of her writings. Perhaps the most interesting chapter focuses on Therese's illnesses and the treatments she received. One gets a good sense of French medical practice in the 19th century, particularly in its treatment of tuberculosis, which allows one to appreciate what Therese suffered during the last year-and-a-half of her life. Indeed the reader begins to marvel at the fact that Therese was composing Manuscript C, letters, and poems during her final illness.
What is surprising about Nevin's book is that despite the evident scholarship employed in writing it, the book takes a decidedly acrimonious and polemical turn in the last two chapters. The catalyst for this change in mood is what Nevin calls Therese's "sense [of] the non-existence of heaven" which he says she experienced during her dark night (297). If he had stopped here, with the use of the word "sense," then he could have maintained an objective point of view. Anyone who has read The Story of a Soul or Therese's correspondence knows that she experienced the loss of any consolation or good feeling connected with belief in heaven. Nevin even quotes one of the sisters living with Therese, Sr. Teresa of St. Augustine, who reported Therese's "disbelief" in heaven. What Nevin fails to add is that Sr. Teresa also reported that Therese spoke of this "disbelief" as a temptation. In other words, Therese knew it was false, despite her very strong and very real temptation not to believe. Therese herself wrote on numerous occasions that although she did not have the feelings of faith, she did the works of faith (she said the same thing about love; there was a particular sister that Therese was not attracted to, but she chose to treat the sister with charity).
But Nevin goes beyond Therese's words and says that she no longer had any faith or hope in heaven. He writes about St. Therese's "disbelief" so relentlessly (the last chapter never leaves the topic and is 39 pages long) that one begins to sense that Nevin has lost sight of Therese and is concerned only with his thesis. He begins to sound like a crazed defense attorney, anticipating objections and piling on evidence. He takes pot-shots at ecclesial authority figures, creedal formulations, and even works in a slam against President Bush for invading Iraq (if you can believe it). Not content with disbelief about heaven, Nevin also says that Therese did not believe in hell either, but he provides no citations for this claim.
The book began as a helpful guide to the times and seasons and idiosyncrasies of Therese's world, outside and inside the Carmel. It ends as a diatribe against dogma (even though Nevin himself can write dogmatically). Anyone who has read Therese's manuscripts or letters or poems knows intuitively that Therese had a deep, down faith (to borrow Gerard Manley Hopkins words). Nevin could have stopped with his notion that Therese rejected the common understanding of heaven at the time; one can readily agree to this. But to say that she no longer had any hope or faith in heaven seems obnoxious at best and subversive at worst. For example he never considers Therese's often indulgent use of exaggerations and exclamation points in her writing and how such a style might affect meaning.
Nevin says that what motivated Therese was the search for truth and love of God and neighbor; she was not satisfied with anything else. However, if Therese had discovered that heaven did not exist, then why would she continue to speak to her sisters and write to others about heaven? Is this love or respect for the truth: to allow the beloved to remain in ignorance? And why would Therese refrain from speaking about her dark secret in order not to blaspheme if she really believed heaven's non-existence to be the truth? To blaspheme is to say something contrary to the truth, is it not? (In other words, Therese knew deep down that her sense of the non-existence of heaven was blasphemous and, hence, false.) Why would Therese offer her last communion for the soul of a lost priest, if not to help him to heaven and to avoid hell? Finally, Nevin writes constantly of Therese's "testing." What testing? Was God testing Therese's love for him? Nevin says no; Therese's love for God was constant and was the very virtue that carried her through to the end. So what could the testing consist of if not faith and hope?
What's most disturbing about Nevin's strange turn at the end of God's Gentle Warrior is that he calls all writers who disagree with him whitewashers (300). They, Nevin contends, are trying to sanitize Therese's loss of faith and hope. On the contrary, they are not trying to use Therese to advance their own theses. A case in point: Joseph Schmidt's recently published meditation on St. Therese's life, Everything is Grace, is very much aware of Therese's dark night of the soul during which she lost the consolation of faith. Yet he reaches a very different conclusion from Nevin. Schmidt--basing his opinion on the same sources as Nevin--says this of Therese during her time of trial: "In love, with all the power and courage of her mighty will, she clung to faith" (279). He also supports his opinion with this quote from Therese herself: "[God] knows very well that while I do not have the joy of faith, I am trying to carry out its works at least. I believe I have made more acts of faith in this past year than all through my whole life" (279). And Schmidt, when he is writing about Therese's dark night, provides many other quotes from Therese to show that her will was engaged regarding the existence of heaven even when her feelings were not.
Whereas Nevin's book concentrates on the outside influences bearing upon Therese, Schmidt focuses on the heart and mind of Therese through a close reading of her words. Therese states at the beginning of Story of a Soul that she wants the reader to understand how the mercies of God have shaped and formed her, and Schmidt offers a compelling monograph in Everything is Grace that follows Therese's spiritual growth from birth to death. And Scmidt is no whitewasher or fawning admirer; he looks at Therese objectively and lovingly. In 46 chapters that are arranged chronologically to match Therese's maturation, Schmidt reveals her weaknesses and strengths, her obstacles and advantages. Schmidt argues convincingly that Therese took everything she was given--family, culture, personality, faults, and natural abilities--and learned over time how to filter all through God's grace and, thereby, become grace-filled herself. Another way of saying the same thing is that Schmidt uncovers for us through Therese's writings the development of her little way, a spirituality that depends on God's grace and is open to everyone to emulate.
The value of Schmidt's Everything is Grace is that the reader is better able to see Therese as a real, flesh and blood, human being. Therese had to acknowledge, accept, and assimilate personal, familial, and cultural influences, and she did so thoughtfully, prayerfully, and most importantly, through God's grace. The influences were both positive and negative, but Therese was able to integrate them all through her relationship with God. For example, the positive influence of an intimate and loving family gave her the stability and foundation to develop her relationship with God. At the same time, her close-knit family life meant she had to struggle to leave the safety and comfort of home and open herself to new relationships in the convent, even to other women for whom on a natural level she had no attraction whatsoever. Part of Schmidt's objective is to show that Therese really had an ordinary life, full of the same kind of feelings, activities, fears, and hopes that all men and women have. She had her daily chores; she had to persevere in prayer; she struggled in getting along with others--and during her ordinary life she was trying to yield more and more to God. In other words, Therese is like us. And as Schmidt details the development of Therese's life, the reader gains many valuable insights about living with God. Therese is an ordinary woman, who accepted God's grace in an extraordinary way. Schmidt says that we should not be awed by this achievement of Therese, but heartened because--as Therese knew--her way is open to all.
Both books are very helpful in appreciating St. Therese (with the exception, in my opinion, of Nevin's last two chapters). If the reader wants to know about Therese, then read Nevin's God's Gentle Warrior. If the reader wants to know Therese, then read Everything is Grace. Or better yet, read both, because coming to know Therese better will lead to her stated goal in life: to desire and to love God more and more, and to live only by his grace.