MAURICE BELLIERE IS ME/SAINT TERESA YOU’LL NEVER BE: Recently finished Patrick Ahern’s Maurice and Therese: The Story of a Love, reprinting and discussing the correspondence between St Therese of Lisieux and a young seminarian/missionary. (Alternate title for this post, credited to a friend of mine: “This is a toast to St Therese of Lisieux; and for all you pagans, it’s also a toast to beautiful women.”)

I… don’t have a lot to say about this book. Ahern’s chewing over the cud of the letters gets tiresome, but it’s written with a surprising degree of suspense. I was most struck by the “Diana Vaughan” incident, and the public humiliation and private desolation Therese suffered as a result. And also, of course, by the astonishing good work done by people who often don’t know what they’re doing, and live in terribly straitened circumstances.

Therese’s doubts and fears make me wonder why her namesake’s desert of the heart was any kind of news.

Once again, with this book I proved that I am no good at Carmelites. This was recommended as a picture of friendship very different from that presented by St Aelred in Spiritual Friendship; and so I should say that his depiction of friendship feels much more like mine than the depiction in Maurice and Therese. (Although Alice von Hildebrand’s–and Augustine’s–are closer yet.) I can “get” how to apply Aelred to daily life in a way that I find more difficult with Therese’s spirituality. I just don’t understand that spirituality; it feels deeply alien (and sometimes twee or sentimental) to me. There are two possible responses to this realization: I could find a different approach that speaks more intelligibly to me, or I could learn more about the Carmelite approach. As usual with Catholics, I think the answer is likely both/and.