Recently, while praying Psalm 18, St. Thérèse of Lisieux came to mind at the words:
You gave me your saving shield.
You upheld me; trained me with care.
You gave me freedom for my steps;
my feet have never slipped.
A prayer of gratitude, it seemed a perfect echo to Thérèse’s sentiment after she entered Carmel and was interviewed by a visiting priest, Father Pichon. He confirmed the unblemished state of her soul and helped to dispel any remaining remnants of scrupulosity from her mind.
She described the life-changing moment in her memoir, Story of a Soul, and wrote:
My interview with the good Father was a great consolation to me, but it was veiled in tears because I experienced much difficulty in confiding in him.
An ongoing trial to describe her inner life to others, she persevered and laid bare her soul. Although she withheld the details of her words to him, based upon her other writings, it is certainly probable she revealed her prayer life, guided by faith alone, her daily trials and sacrifices known only to God the Father “who sees in secret,” and her immense and burning desires to offer her life for the Church, and especially to pray for priests. Surprised, Father Pichon said he had been observing her at prayer the evening prior and mistakenly deemed her interior fervor childish and her path sweet.
Following his comment, Thérèse wrote:
I made a general confession, something I had never made before, and at its termination he spoke the most consoling words I ever heard in my life: ‘In the presence of God, the Blessed Virgin, and all the saints, I declare that you have never committed a mortal sin.’
Then he added, “Thank God for what he has done for you; had he abandoned you, instead of being a little angel, you would have become a little demon.”
Thérèse was ecstatic. “Gratitude flooded my soul,” she wrote. “I had such a great fear of soiling my baptismal robe that such an assurance coming from the mouth of a director such as St. Teresa [of Ávila] desired, i.e., one combining knowledge and virtue, it seemed to me to be coming from the mouth of Jesus himself.”
Thérèse was not surprised by Father Pichon’s “little demon” caveat. She was familiar with the letter her mother had written when Thérèse was a toddler, describing her as having “a heart of gold,” but also as “a little imp,” with a stubborn streak that is “nearly invincible.” At age 9, after experiencing the trial of unrequited love by several of her classmates at school, for the first time, Thérèse realized the cost of her sensitive and affectionate nature and realized the ease with which she could have compromised her integrity in order to gain the affection of creatures. Instead, she turned to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament for companionship and found peace. What, then, empowered her to hate sin and love God above all else? She now understood it was through prevenient grace, an unmerited gift according to God’s merciful love, and wrote, “He has willed that I KNOW how he has loved me with a love of unspeakable foresight in order that now I may love him unto folly!”
Here, Thérèse provides a beautiful way to also understand the “unspeakable foresight” of grace granted to Mary. But for her, in an entirely unique manner. As Pope Pius IX defined it in 1854:
The Most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from the stain of original sin.
Mary herself confirmed this grace on March 25, 1858, when she appeared to Bernadette Soubirous in the grotto of Lourdes. There, as Bernadette knelt and asked “the lady” to reveal her name, as if to acknowledge the lowliness of her human nature, Mary first opened her palms and extended her fingertips toward the earth below. Then, folding them again at her breast, she raised her eyes to heaven, perhaps recalling the words of her song, God who is mighty has done great things for me, and said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
During the weeks following, when a sculptor asked Bernadette to reenact for him Mary’s appearance and gestures at that moment, he later testified, “Neither Angelico, nor Perugino, nor Raphael ever painted anything so appealing and at the same time so profound as the look of that young girl.”
As if radiating a similar “look” of understanding, Thérèse composed a parable to explain more fully the mystery of God’s mercy in her life, as I see it, a story also applicable to Mary.
She began by imagining a boy stumbling over a stone and breaking a limb. His father, a “clever physician,” seeing the disaster from afar, runs and rescues his son and leads him to full health. Cured, the boy shows gratitude to his father. But, Thérèse asked, what if the father had foreseen danger ahead and removed the stone, but without his son or anyone else knowing about it? Would not the child, later learning of the tender foresight and love of his father, not love him more?
“Well, I am this child,” she said, “the object of the foreseeing love of a Father who has not sent his Word to save the just, but sinners. He wants me to love him because he has forgiven me not much but ALL.”
It was in gratitude for the “saving shield” of God’s merciful grace that both Thérèse and Mary poured out their lives in loving sacrifice for the salvation of souls. Forever, as the inspired words of Psalm 18 indicate, they experience “freedom of step” before the throne of God as they continue to intercede in prayer on behalf of all poor sinners.