Without leaving your arms : union of love in Thérèse of Lisieux Doctor of the Church 1873-1897

Abstract

"Without Leaving Your Arms," in a nutshell, is the expression that Therese of Lisieux used in order to describe how she wished to perform her apostolate as "love in the heart of the Church," from the very state of union which she enjoyed with God whose presence in her life, particularly during the last eighteen months of her life, she experienced rather as an absence. Hans Urs Von Balthasar opines that this transcendent point of unity (between contemplation and action) was the "ultimate knowledge" bestowed on Therese of Lisieux. While it was Tertullian who first spoke of the consecrated virgin as a Sponsa Christi, the Church owes the spousal term of "spiritual marriage", or "union of love," in order to describe the highest spiritual state that a soul can attain to on this earth, to Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, both Doctors of the Church and parents in religion to Therese, who entered the Carmelite Monastery of Lisieux at age fifteen in 1888. This dissertation traces the spiritual development in Therese which led to her becoming constantly consumed by Love unto her early death at the young age of twenty four in 1897. To address this objective, while gauging Therese's state of soul in terms of what Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross write when describing the various states of soul that lead to the ultimate stage of "spiritual marriage," the author makes special use of a simple description of this splendid state provided by Kees Waaijmun, who captures it beautifully in terms of three perspectives: the soul stepping out of herself: going forward to meet her Beloved, God approaching the soul in loving response, and the balance that holds sway between these two love-movements, "a reality that is called spiritual marriage."