The Last Years of Saint Therese: Doubt and Darkness, 1895–1897. By Thomas R. Nevin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. xviii + 298 pp. $35.00.

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Last Years of Saint Therese: Doubt and Darkness, 1895-1897 . By Thomas R. Nevin . New York : Oxford University Press , 2013. xviii + 298 pp. $35.00.Book Reviews and NotesIn this closely argued follow-up to his highly regarded Therese of Lisieux: God's Gentle Warrior , Thomas Nevins gives us a detailed account of last two years of saint's life (1895-1897). More precisely, his central theme is achingly beautiful lines of Manuscript C, written by dying nun, as she entered fully into a life of darkness as tuberculosis that would kill her marched on inexorably and she wondered if there was a merciful God, if there was indeed salvation and if Jesus Christ, her chosen spouse, loved her in fact. She was so overwhelmed by her illness and quandaries illness brought upon her that in her writing she felt compelled to stop lest, as she wrote, she would start to blaspheme.Therese was a Carmelite and Carmelite spirituality understands darkness. John of Cross, while never using term the night of soul, did write compellingly and thoroughly, of both dark night of senses (that long loss of any sensible consolation in life of prayer) and the night of faith that never bleeds over into despair as meaninglessness intrudes into human consciousness. It is that profound darkness which Nevins sees as hermeneutical key to grasping what young nun expressed in last months of her life in now famous metaphor of fog surrounding me . . . becoming thicker, penetrating my soul.To analyze this darkness, Nevin makes, in my estimation, some very smart, sophisticated moves. First, he looks at Carmelite sources available to Therese: Teresa of Jesus to be sure but not in any systematic fashion; and John of Cross, especially The Living Flame of Love , which seems to have been her favorite Carmelite text. Next, he carefully traces out her use of scripture to focus on her canon within a canon. For Therese this meant more of gospels than of Saint Paul; more attention to words of Jesus than his deeds; suffering servant songs of Isaiah (and, of course psalms) as a lens through which she gained understanding of passion of Christ.Nevin's careful examination of sources served two purposes, first, to guard against any psychological reductionism so common in studies of this sort and, more importantly, to grasp both her vocabulary and her linguistic imagination to make sense of her writings. Using such resources as well as setting out context of her social relationships provided a matrix for interpretation: living in a convent with her (blood) sisters; her relationship whether epistolary or real with those outside cloister; spiritual direction she received (one thinks of John of Cross railing against bad spiritual guides! …