Filial Love and the Interior-Alterity of Feminine Interiority
 |
| St. Therese, 1873-1897 A.D. |
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| St. Augustine, 354-430 A.D. |
Saint Augustine and Saint Therese of Lisieux seem to be the most
different of Saints. On the one hand there is Augustine, considered an
intellectual giant, who turned from the lustful pleasures and vanities of the
world to a life of public preaching and holy writing. Then there is Therese of
the Child Jesus; a simple girl who maintained her baptismal innocence from
infancy, and died in the bloom of her youth in hidden obscurity. It would seem
justified to think that the relationship of these two Saint’s with God would be
of a starkly different nature. However the following paper shall reveal that
Therese and Augustine have much more in common with each other in the way they
related to God on earth and God to them. This will be demonstrated through an
exploration of two major theological themes present in their relationship with
God. Firstly the theme of childlike
filial love shall be explored; involving characteristics such as confidence,
joy and awe. This shall then be followed by the theme of an interiority of alterity involving the encounter
of Therese’s and Augustine’s feminine
interiority with the masculine
exteriority of the Divine Presence dwelling within. The conclusion shall
relate how these two themes are interconnected, with both the saints’ filial love the fruit of the spousal-eros love between their feminine
interiority and God’s masculine
exteriority. Drawing from this it shall be concluded that Augustine and
Therese share commonalities in the way in which they related to God on earth
and God with them; with nuances of relational difference making each of these
saints unique in the way in which they intimately loved God.
Childlike,
Filial Love
The term childlike love evokes
the sense of a simple love that is powerful in its innocence, rawness,
candid-openness and gayety. One imagines that these are the very traits that God
desires due to the words of Jesus that speak favourably on children in the
Gospels. “Whoever humbles himself like this child,
he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” says the Lord in Matthew (18:4). And
in Mark: “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like
a child shall not enter it” (10:15). If such childlikeness is a prerequisite for
entrance into Heaven, then most certainly both Therese and Augustine qualify.
Therese is renowned for
her childlike love of God, with it
being an essential aspect of her spiritual charism. After all her full name was
‘Therese of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face’. She conceived herself as a little
child that was infinitely responsible and indebted to her earthly parents and
parental figures (including Saints Joseph and Mary) as human icons of her filial devotion to God as Mother and
Father.[1]
Her childlike love of God manifested
itself in her highly passionate and needy characterisation of countless
maternal and paternal figures in her life; including her biological sister
Pauline, her ‘Pappa’ which she called her ‘dear King’, priests in her life and
her mother superiors. All of whom she displayed filial trust and confidence in. Her ardent childhood thirst for parental
affection reveals an intensely affectionate and sensitive soul which at first
longed for such affection with a human
filial love. Therese’s longing for maternal love and approval is expressed
in her autobiography, Story of a Soul
where she writes:
My little
Mamma took me in her arms and brought me to Céline’s bed. I would say: “Was I
very good today, Pauline? Will the little angels fly around me?” The answer was
invariably “Yes,” otherwise I would have cried the whole night...[2]
And in another passage:
Without Pauline’s consent I didn’t even take a
walk, and when Papa told me to come I’d answer: “Pauline doesn’t want it.” Then he’d come and ask your permission
and to please him, Pauline would say “Yes,” but little Therese saw by her look
that she wasn’t saying it with all her heart, and she’d begin to cry and would
not be consoled until Pauline said “Yes” and kissed her with all her heart![3]
Her filial love is also
expressed in relation to paternity when speaking of her father she writes: “I
cannot say how much I loved Papa; everything in him caused me to admire him”.[4]
As Therese grew both physically and spiritually
her human filial love became
progressively united to a Divine Filial
Love which typified her relation with God that intrinsically involved what
she saw as familial-others. “I believed, I felt there was a heaven
and that this heaven is peopled with
souls who actually love me, who consider me their child.”[5]
It is in her poetry however that we see most profoundly the magnitude of Therese’s
filial love for God. In the poem To My Little Brothers in Heaven she
writes “charming little Imps, your childish audacity pleases the Lord. You dare
to caress his Adorable Face”.[6]
Here she “reveals herself: She is the
one who wants to ‘caress the Face of Jesus’ and even ‘kiss’ it”; and this is
the “childish daring”, the raw, bold love of a child that Therese embodies.[7]
Such filial love speaks of a
relationship with God characterised by a deep filial intimacy of passionate joy; and an unshakable trust in God’s
infinite parental goodness.
Augustine’s filial relationship with God is equally
as intense as Saint Therese’s. The expression of his filial love is however of quite a different nature. Since drawing
from the parable of the prodigal son, it could be said that Therese’s filial relationship with God resembled
that of the older brother, not in regards to his jealousy, but in her continual
abiding within the shelter of her Father’s House. Her filial gratitude thus takes the form of thanksgiving for not being
abandoned by God into mortal sin, and thus remaining by His grace as a “little
angel” instead of “a little demon”.[8]
However Augustine’s filial
relationship with God resembled that of the prodigal son, since he ran away
from the Father’s house by fleeing from his mother Monica’s shelter of wisdom
(representative of the Virgin Mary, House of the Lord), into the world of
lustful pleasure and heresy; only to return in repentance of his ignorant sins,
so as to be welcomed by the Father’s merciful embrace. His filial love thus takes the expression of a son who is eager to
repay throughout eternity the excessive mercy shown unto him by the Father who
he abandoned in the blindness of the exteriority of the world.[9]
In his Confessions Augustine tells in
a scenario of repentance, similar to that of the return of the prodigal son, of
the emergence of a filial love for
God that was to remain and grow in him throughout the remainder of his life.
Martindale writes on this occasion:
“Behold a vision of the chaste dignity of
Continence, serene in cheer...smiling and calling me.” It was the army of the
pure, boys and girls, men and women, virgin equally. “What they could do,
cannot you?” The words came back and back. Bursting into a storm of tears,
Augustine tore himself from Alypius, ran to the farthest part of the garden,
flung himself on his face beneath a fig-tree, and sobbed and prayed. A child’s
voice reached him, singing from the neighbouring house some trifling rhyme:
“Take it, read it! Take it, read it!”...[he] opened his scroll and read:
“...Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in
its lusts.” In calm and silence, the miracle was worked...he went direct to
Monica, and the old life dropped from him like a garment.[10]
The child’s call from the “neighbouring house” speaks of the child Jesus
who dwells in the interiority of the Father’s House within, beckoning him to
return to the childhood innocence and purity of Eden. He responds by repenting
of his sins besides Christ who weeps in the Garden of Gethsemane. His return to
his mother symbolises his entrance back into the Father’s House, and manifests
an awakened filial love with distinct
tones of a childish candour, and filial
awe at God’s Mercy; experienced primarily by Augustine in the Maternity of the
Divine Paternity. His deep filial love
with its childish candour fuels the deeply sorrowful outpouring in his Confessions, and reveals a relationship
with God grounded in a profound humility of childlike littleness. The filial awe and gratitude that
accompanies his childlike love is
resounded perpetually by Augustine, who writes:
When others read of those past sins of mine,
or hear about them, their hearts are stirred so that they no longer lie listless
in despair, crying ‘I cannot’. Instead their hearts are roused by the love of
your mercy and the joy of your grace...for no small good is gained, O Lord my
God, if many offer you thanks for me.[11]
This reveals an aspect of Augustine’s filial relationship with God as a young boy in Christ the Child
Jesus, who gapes in wondrous Adoration of the Might of His Father, the Creator
of the World; while ‘embracing firmly’ the Maternal Spirit in his ardent “love
of wisdom”.[12]
An
Interiority of Alterity: The Encounter of God through Memory
Interiority speaks of the inner
or interior life of man; involving the realm of the psyche yet going beyond
into the infinite universe of his soul.[13]
All people are called through prayer to live in varying degrees as ‘inner men’.
To live this life of interiority is to live in God’s Presence within the inner
temple of one’s being (1 Cor 3:16). Edith Stein explains:
The personal
I is most truly at home in the innermost being of the soul. When the I lives
its life in this interiority...[it is] closest to the meaning of every
event...[furthermore] the soul in its interiority feels what it is and how it
is. This is a dark feeling that cannot be expressed in words, but it indicates
to the soul the mystery of its being (as mystery), without clearly
revealing this mystery.[14]
As Levinas asserts, the essence
of one’s being is alterity (or exteriority); and the return to this primordial
state of being as otherwise is the
purpose of an ethically transcendent spiritual life.[15] This Levenian
understanding does not oppose a life of interiority as explained by Stein; since
true interiority can be said to be true alterity, for within the self, one
encounters God the Other in whom all others abide. Stein also relates how the
act of remembering in the light of God’s Wisdom is a primary mode of one’s
inner penetration.[16]
Within this vein memory must be understood to be “as much or more about the future as it is
about the past” and thus “to ‘remember’ is not to list carefully researched
facts, but rather to put the story of one’s life...together afresh, for the
sake of going forward”.[17]
Remembering the events of one’s life in God’s grace is thus an act of interior-alterity since to remember in such an instance is to encounter
God the ‘Other’ who is “the meaning
of every event”.[18]
Interior-Alterity as Feminine
Interiority
The
introspection of remembering is an act of interior-alterity
which is itself an act of feminine
interiority, since it opens the soul’s womb to the Divine Presence that
dwells within. Thus creating through its passivity the space for the encounter
between soul and God, the ‘I’ and the ‘Other’, in whom the drama of all other’s
is played out. Feminine interiority is
inherently receptive, and its giving or alterity consists in its
passive-receptivity to the masculine exteriority
of the Divine Presence that dwells within and beyond the ‘womb’ or ‘heart’ of
the soul.[19] The
procreative act is analogous of this, whereby both female and male give to each
other and receive from each other in their single act of alterity. The feminine
soul through her alterity of passive-interiority
encounters the masculine Divine Presence through His alterity of active-exteriority. Without this feminie interiority or interiority
of alterity, one remains outside of themself without self-knowledge, thus
remaining a prisoner of one’s false-self and ego which causes one to conflate
in pride, like an arrogant adolescent who rebels against the rightful authority
of their parent.[20]
An interiority of alterity is thus
essential to developing the humility of a filial
love of God.
Augustine and Therese’s
Interiority of Alterity: Divine Encounter through Memory
Both
Augustine and Therese are deeply introspective individuals, with Augustinian
and Carmelite spiritualities indicative of this. Through their interiority of alterity in remembering
various events in their lives, both saints hope to plunge deeper into
themselves and thus into a deeper encounter with God who is the fullest and incompressible meaning behind every event.
Therese naturally does this in her poetry and her autobiography, and likewise
does Augustine in Confessions. With
Divine Hindsight both saints come to encounter the hidden Presence of God in
the events of their past; and in a sense through prayerful introspection they
come to relive the often obscure and sometimes imperfect past so that every
event in their lives may be atoned for and serve the Glory of God.[21]
Scripture speaks of this when it says: “all things work together for those that
love God”, thus even the sinful past is redeemed through God’s remembrance of
His Mercy (Ps: 25: 6)[22],
a remembrance which both Augustine and Therese deeply entered and shared with
God. This is indicated in Therese’s account of the intent she has behind her
self-reflections in Story of a Soul:
It is to you
dear Mother...that I come to confide the story of my soul...it seemed to me it
would distract my heart by too much concentration of myself, but since then
Jesus has made me feel that in obeying simply, I would be pleasing Him;
besides, I’m going to be doing only one thing: I shall begin to sing what I
must sing eternally: “The Mercies of the
Lord.”[23]
Such introspective remembrance
reveals that Therese’s relation with God is characterised by her reception of
God’s Mercy, in which through recalling her past she seeks to uncover the
infinite array of hidden notes of mercy that lie behind and within the events
of her life. Her interiority is thus rightly a feminine interiority of alterity because her search into the abyss
of her memory is the journey of her confession to God. It is the means through which she hopes to encounter God
through the traces He has left in her past, traces which are stored in the
memory and are made present through the act of remembering. Augustine is very
similar, for as he relates: “all this I do within myself, in that huge hall of
my memory”, for he like Therese, relates to God through the same medium of feminine interiority.[24]
“To confess, then” for both
these saints “is to praise and glorify God” as “an exercise in self-knowledge
and true humility in the atmosphere of grace and reconciliation”.[25] This
is evidenced within both Therese’s and Augustine’s lives of interior-alterity,
since through their narrative-confessions they sing in praise of ‘the Mercies
of the Lord’; with their songs remembering in and with the living memorial
of the Word; as they sing with the language of the Holy Scriptures in a dialect
of their own.[26]
Augustine
and Therese’s Feminine Interiority: Intimacy with God
Augustine and Therese through their feminine
interiority of alterity relate to God as the masculine exteriority of
the Divine Presence which calls out from within: “Behold, the bridegroom! Come
out to meet him” (Mt 25:6). The exteriority or alterity of ‘going out’ to meet God
for both saints involves the interiority of ‘going in’. This ‘going in’ is thus
their interiority of alterity, a ‘going in’ for the sake of the Other
who beckons from within. It is rightly described as a feminine interiority because
both saints speak with the tongue of a sanctified eros towards the masculine
Divine Presence within. This is revealed in Confessions where
Augustine writes:
Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient
and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast within and I was
without, and I sought thee out there...Thou wast with me, but I was not with
thee....Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness...Thou
didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee.
I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for
thy peace.[27]
Therese likewise as a passionate spouse in love with God reveals her feminine
interiority with her appropriation of the words of Saint John of the Cross:
“In the inner wine cellar I drank of my Beloved...now I occupy my soul”.[28]
Writing in another place: “When I love Christ and when I touch him, my heart
becomes purer, I am even more chaste. The kiss of his mouth has given me the
treasure of virginity”.[29] Common
to both saints within the above excerpts of writing is their experience of
‘touch’ with God. This ‘touch’ describes the encounter between their feminine
interiority as Bride and the masculine exteriority of the Divine
Presence within as Bridegroom. This reveals that both saints had a profoundly
intimate relationship with God. Augustine however describes being touched by
God (“Thou didst touch me”) whereas Therese describes touching God (“when
I touch him”).[30],[31]
What this reveals is that Augustine’s relationship with God went to the extent
of his feminine interiority ‘meeting’ and ‘receiving’ the Divine Touch
of God’s masculine exteriority. A unique nuance to Saint Therese’s relationship
with God is that her feminine interiority went beyond the extent of
‘receiving’ the Divine Touch of God’s masculine Love; by touching God
with His very own Love through her femininity.
The following metaphor can
be applied to distinguish Augustine’s and Therese’s relationship with God.
Augustine’s feminine interiority was at the point of bridal-femininity
in honeymoon intimacy; where God’s masculine exteriority touched his feminine
interiority.[32]
Therese’s feminine interiority was beyond this point, resembling a maternal-femininity
in spousal intimacy; where her feminine interiority touched the masculine
exteriority of God. This touch of Therese’s is the touch of her bold and
confident filial love through her feminine interiority. For
indeed there is no greater gift that a spouse can give her husband than a
child. Augustine’s filial love for God could be said to be at the stage
of conception. A love equally perfect, yet passive as opposed to active like
Therese’s filial love. In her original poem “To the
Sacred Heart of Jesus” Therese reveals the extent of her feminine interiority, when
with bold and almost shockingly confident filial
love exclaims: “You heard me Creator of the world, for my love alone you became man”. [33] It is no wonder that her sisters made her
change this verse completely, since the remarkably deep feminine interiority
of Therese along with her bold filial love that characterises her
‘Little Way’, marks a new movement of the Spirit and until recently was almost
entirely unique to Therese.[34],[35]
Indeed both Augustine and Therese give perfect glory to the Lord, since both
perfectly cooperated with the graces they were given, yet as different parts in
the Mystical Body of Christ they do so in different ways.
Conclusion
Augustine’s relationship with God as the ‘Doctor of Grace’ is one that
is marked by a feminine interiority of unique receptiveness to the
abundance of God’s Merciful Grace. This is characteristic of the gratuitous filial
love of a prodigal son. On the other hand, Therese’s relationship with God
as the ‘Doctor of Love’ is one that is marked by a feminine interiority of
unique reciprocity to the Merciful Love of God.[36] This
is characteristic of a bold and confident filial love of a faithful
older son who has dwelled always in the Love of His Father’s House. It is most significant that both Augustine
and Therese are Doctors of the Church; and thus they must share a similar place
in the role of the Mystical Body of Christ. Perhaps it is the heart of the
Mystical Body that the Doctors of the Church can be said to compose; for
through them the Lord pumps forth the richness of the teachings of His Word.
The heart can be said to be the garden of the Mystical Body, and the Doctors of
the Church the plants of which it is composed. Within this garden is Therese
the ‘Little Flower’ and Augustine the Mighty Tree. Both flower and tree
perfectly extol the praises of God’s Merciful Love. Therese the Little Flower
sings of its ineffable joy and innocent beauty; whilst Augustine the Mighty
Tree tells of its unfathomable grandeur and excessive generosity.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Bibliography
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“Facing Each Other: Saint Therese of Lisieux and Emmanuel Levinas.” Spiritus: A Journal
of Christian Spirituality.
(2004): 24-43. Accessed 17 August, 2013.
doi: 10.1353/scs.2004.0001.
Augustine. Augustine
Confessions. Translated by Albert C. Outler. Fordham University, 1994. http://www.fordham.
edu/halsall/basis/confessions-bod.asp.
Augustine. Confessions. Edited by Betty Radice and translated by R.S.
Pine-Coffin. London: Penguin Books,
1961.
Elber, Mark. “Levels of Soul.” Accessed
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Frohlich, Mary. “Therese of Lisieux and Jeanne d’ Arc:
History, Memory, and Interiority in the
Experience of Vocation.” Spiritus 6
(2006): 173-195.
Gennari, Giovanni
and a discalced Carmelite nun, An Echo of
the Heart of God & Studies of the
Self-Offering of St. Therese of Lisieux. Nedlands: Carmelite Monastery,
2001.
Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality
and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne
University Press, 1969.
Martindale, G. C. “A Sketch of the Life and Character
of St. Augustine.” In St. Augustine: His Age, Life and Thoughts. M. C.
Darcy, et.al. New York: Meridan Books Inc., 1959. 80-101.
Stein, Edith. “The Interiority of the
Soul.” Logos: A Journal of Catholic
Thought and Culture. 2 (2005):
183-193.Doi: 10.1353/log.2005.0022.
Therese of
Lisieux. Story of a Soul, 3rd ed. Translated
by John Clarke. Washington, DC: ICS Publications,
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Therese of
Lisieux, The Poetry of Saint Therese of
Lisieux. 3rd edition. Translated by Donald Kinney.
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Watkin, E. I.
“The Mysticism of St. Augustine.” In St.
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[1]Ann W. Astell, “Facing Each Other: Saint Therese of
Lisieux and Emmanuel Levinas,” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian
Spirituality, 4 (2004): 24, accessed
17 August, 2013, doi: 10.1353/scs.2004.0001.
[2] Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 3rd ed., trans. John Clarke (Washington, DC: ICS
Publications, 2002), 23.
[3] Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 44.
[4] Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 48.
[5] Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 191.
[6] Therese of Lisieux, The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux,
3rd ed. Trans., Donald Kinney (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996), 182.
[8] Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 83, 149.
[9] Augustine,
Confessions, ed. Betty Radice, trans.
R.S. Pine-Coffin (London: Penguin Books, 1961), Book VIII, Chapter 7, 169.
[10] G. C.
Martindale, “A Sketch of the Life and Character of St. Augustine,” in St. Augustine: His Age, Life and Thoughts,
M. C. Darcy, et.al., (New York: Meridan Books Inc., 1959), 95-96.
[11] Augustine,
Confessions, Book X, Chapter 3-4,
208-209.
[12] Augustine,
Confessions, Book III, Chapter 4, 59.
[13] Mark
Elber, “Levels of Soul,” accessed October 29, 2013, http://www.netplaces.com/kabbalah/kabbalah-and-creation/levels-of-soul.htm.
[14] Edith
Stein, “The Interiority of the Soul,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and
Culture 2 (2005): 187, 190, doi: 10.1353/log.2005.0022.
[15] Emmanuel
Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay
on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University
Press, 1969), 292.
[16] Edith
Stein, “The Interiority of the Soul,” 184.
[17] Mary
Frohlich, “Therese of Lisieux and Jeanne d’ Arc: History, Memory, and
Interiority in the Experience of Vocation,” Spiritus
6 (2006): 174.
[18] Edith
Stein, “The Interiority of the Soul,” 187.
[19] The
terms feminine and masculine are used here in a spiritual, not a literal sense.
And this shall apply for the entirety of this paper.
[20] Edith
Stein, “The Interiority of the Soul,” 189-192.
[21] Edith
Stein, “The Interiority of the Soul,” 192.
[22] “Remember
your mercy O Lord” (Ps 25:6).
[23] Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 13.
[24] Augustine,
Augustine Confessions, trans., Albert
C. Outler (Fordham University, 1994), Book X, Chapter 8, http://www.fordham. edu/halsall/basis/confessions-bod.asp.
[25] Augustine,
Augustine Confessions, Introduction.
[26] Augustine,
Confessions, Book VI, Chapter 16,
131. “Praise and honour be yours, O Fountain of Mercy.”
[27] Augustine,
Augustine Confessions, Book X,
Chapter 27.
[28] Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 178.
[30]Augustine,
Augustine Confessions, Book X,
Chapter 27.
[32] E. I. Watkin, “The Mysticism of St. Augustine,”
in St. Augustine: His Age, Life and
Thought, M. C. D’Arcy, et.al., (New York: Meridan Books Inc., 1959), 109-110.
[33] Therese of Lisieux, “General Introduction,” in The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux,
trans. Donald Kinney, 29.
[34]
Giovanni Gennari and a discalced Carmelite nun, An Echo of the Heart of God & Studies of
the Self-Offering of St. Therese of Lisieux, (Nedlands: Carmelite
Monastery, 2001), 80-81.
[35] Therese of Lisieux, “General Introduction,” in The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux,
29.
[36] Giovanni Gennari and a discalced
Carmelite nun, An Echo of the Heart of
God & Studies of the Self-Offering of St. Therese of Lisieux, 47-52.
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