Sir, - Therese of Lisieux must be one of the most popular saints. Her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, has been translated into more than 50 languages and is a world-wide best seller.
One of the things that made Therese special was her struggle with faith. She referred to this as her "dark tunnel" and she described the dreadful sense of emptiness and desolation she felt. She was all too clearly aware of what the atheist must feel. She wrote: "During those joyful days of the Easter season, Jesus made me feel that there were really souls who have no faith, and who, through the abuse of grace, lost this precious treasure, the source of the only real and pure joys. . .He permitted my soul to be invaded by the thickest darkness."
Hers was a true "dark night of the soul", as described by St John of the Cross. What made her truly special, however, was her steadfast determination to believe in God. By a determined act of will she refused to abandon faith in Him. When she died, she was only 24, but she had the most profound psychological insight and spiritual maturity. Her words and heroic life of suffering (she died a very painful death from tuberculosis) have been closely studied by writers, philosophers and theologians and in 1997 she was proclaimed a Doctor of the Universal Church. These inner struggles make her all too relevant in today's troubled world.
This Easter Sunday, the mortal remains of St Therese will arrive in Ireland and will stay here until June 28th. During that time, the reliquary will visit various parts of the country. It is very important to point out that the purpose of this visit is to draw people closer to God and, hopefully, to reawaken a sense of spiritual values.
At a time when we have all become somewhat cynical and blase, and many of us have lost a sense of spiritual direction in our lives, it is no bad thing to be redirected to a course which might just give us a deeper insight into the true meaning of things and possibly restore a sense of the transcendent. - Yours, etc.,
Anthony Redmond, North Great George's Street, Dublin 1.