St. Thérèse of Lisieux is the greatest phenomenologist in the history of the Church.
She heard God’s voice in stereo.
“I came out of the mouth of the most High, the firstborn before all creatures: I dwelt in the highest places, and my throne is in a pillar of a cloud. And have stood in all the earth: and in every people, And in every nation I have had the chief rule: And by my power I have trodden under my feet the hearts of all the high and low: and in all these I sought rest, and I shall abide in the inheritance of the Lord. He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin. They that explain me shall have life everlasting.”
~ Sir 24:5, 7, 9-11, 30-31
St. Thérèse of Lisieux is the greatest phenomenologist in the history of the Church. I formed this opinion after years of contemplating her book, The Story of a Soul. The question, then, is what a phenomenologist is, particularly as understood in the Carmelite spirit of St. Thérèse.
I define phenomenology in simplistic terms. Having spent most of my adult life as a phenomenologist without even knowing it, I spent the last twelve years deliberately codifying my spiritual model in the footsteps of Thérèse and using her spiritual sister, St. Joan of Arc, as my point of entry. This is how I developed my “Phenomenology of the French Royal Hearts of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.” Based on my life experience, the influence of Thérèse and Joan, and the luminous writings of the phenomenologist St. Edith Stein, I concluded that phenomenology plays a vital role in the life of Catholic contemplative mysticism. In fact, phenomenology is not so much a philosophy or mysticism in its own sense but a methodology for the discernment of meaning, mission, and gestalt understanding through our contemplative life. It helps us “think about how we think.” Through the phenomenological method, we construct meaningful models from the fruits of our contemplation. We build an angelic, Dionysian stairway to Heaven with the aid of God’s grace. I discovered St. Thérèse and St. Joan reaching down from Heaven to draw me upward on the stairway precisely using this method.
So, what is it? How did I learn this phenomenological method from St. Thérèse and St. Joan? My simplistic methodology is as follows:
· Givenness
· Possibilities
· Lines of insight
· Logical inferences
· Holy expressions
The first bullet is what I call an “unreflective certainty” using Edith Stein’s terminology. It is the moment of meaningful awareness that reorients our perceptual intentionality. The last bullet led me to describe my spiritual model as, “A Holy Expression of Jehannian-Thérèsian French Catholic Spirituality.” Everything in-between is an experiential construct using Stein’s reconciliation of modern-day phenomenology with medieval Thomist scholasticism. I refer to this as “walking the Trail of the Dogmatic Creed” with St. Joan and St. Thérèse.
What this methodology leads to is a meaningful connatural knowledge that informs our intellect through correlative insight. Through our life experience, we come to know, connaturally and empathically, the combined hearts of St. Joan and St. Thérèse, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the through Mary the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Following this general theme in her autobiography, Thérèse sought to reflect more on what she had received from Our Lord than on a self-centered critique of her life. This is what Cardinal Godfried Danneels refers to as listening in “stereo” as opposed to “monophonie.” Most autobiographies are written in one voice, from one perspective, that of the author. Thérèse, however, wrote not from her own ego-centric mono-perspective, but in terms of how she perceived the “givenness” of God – she heard God’s voice in stereo. For the French speakers:
“Dans toute autobiographie, l’auteur s’écoute soi-même. En règle générale, il n’entend que sa propre voix, il s’auto-analyse, souvent d’ailleurs pour en tirer quelque titre de gloire ou du moins de fierté. Il n’entend sa propre histoire qu’en monophonie,
Thérèse, au contraire, à travers tout ce qu’elle a vécu dans son corps et dans son âme, à travers toute son histoire, perçoit la voix de Dieu. Thérèse écoute en stéréo : elle ne s’analyse pas elle-même, elle découvre les merveilles de Dieu dans sa vie.”
~ Excerpt from Histoire d'une âme, Meester De Conrad. This material may be protected by copyright.
We see this proclivity toward givenness clearly in the opening explanation of her goal in writing:
“So, it will not be my life properly speaking, that you will find in these pages, but my thoughts about the graces which it has pleased Our Lord to bestow on me.”
~ St. Therese of Lisieux. The Story of a Soul (Illustrated) (p. 15). Kindle Edition.
Thérèse then reflected on truth as presented through the possibilities she perceived coming from God. Humility is the recognition of what God has done in one’s life.
“If a little flower could speak, it seems to me that it would tell us quite simply all that God has done for it, without hiding any of its gifts. It would not, under the pretext of humility, say that it was not pretty, or that it had not a sweet scent, that the sun had withered its petals, or the storm bruised its stem, if it knew that such were not the case.”
~ St. Therese of Lisieux. The Story of a Soul (Illustrated) (pp. 15-16). Kindle Edition.
She then developed lines of insight and drew logical inferences from them.
“Instead of being discouraged, I concluded that God would not inspire desires which could not be realized, and that I may aspire to sanctity in spite of my littleness.”
~ St. Therese of Lisieux. The Story of a Soul (Illustrated) (p. 93). Kindle Edition.
Finally, she constructed a holy expression with universal applicability represented by her phenomenological understanding.
“I will seek out a means of getting to Heaven by a little way--very short and very straight, a little way that is wholly new.”
~ St. Therese of Lisieux. The Story of a Soul (Illustrated) (p. 93). Kindle Edition.
Thérèse’s “little way” is nothing short of a phenomenologically derived holy expression developed through her receptivity to the “givenness” of Our Lord’s graces and constructed connaturally through lines of insight and logical inferences. In the phenomenology of my own life, I found Thérèse to be the perfect model for seeking the holy expression of the Kingdom of God and, in fact, she whom I had received in “givenness” from Our Lady at the time of my conversion without me even knowing it. Through the Jehannian hermeneutics of her plays and poetry, Thérèse revealed the staircase to the Kingdom of Heaven through Joan of Arc’s heart as my point of inquiry.
“I came out of the mouth of the most High, the firstborn before all creatures,” is a revelation of givenness we receive from God on high in a “pillar of a cloud.”
“He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin,” is the grace to connaturally experience the movement of God in our souls through a phenomenological understanding.
“They that explain me shall have life everlasting,” is the reward for those who “seek first the Kingdom” in the conscious development of one’s holy expression following in Thérèse’s footsteps.