Luke 12:32 with St. Thérèse of Lisieux
“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
St. Thérèse of Lisieux uses this gospel passage to help her interpret one of the most dramatic events in her young life. In her The Story of a Soul she tells of how she went to Rome at the age of fifteen and was granted an audience with pope Leo XIII. While there, she begged the pope that he would allow her to enter religious life with the Carmelites despite her young age. Because Luke 12:32 had been the gospel reading at Mass that day, she felt sure that the pope would grant her request. Instead, the pope told her to obey her superiors, saying “go… go … you will enter if God wills it.”
This experience led her to interpret Luke 12:32 in light of Luke 22:28-29 (“You are those who have stayed with me in my trials, and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom”). Thérèse comes to understand that the kingdom that God wishes to give is the kingdom won on the cross. Or as she puts it: “in other words, I reserve crosses and trials for you and it is thus you will be worthy of possessing the kingdom after which you long; since it was necessary that Christ suffer and that he enter through it into his glory.” God, through the words of the pope, wanted to give her the kingdom by presenting her with the chalice of the Lord’s passion, the suffering of obedience.
But Thérèse does not thereby interpret the words of Jesus as having only a kind of abstract or future fulfillment. She really does receive the earthly kingdom she was seeking, which she understood as the “kingdom of Carmel.” She later came to see the pope’s parting words as prophetic and as revealing the true meaning of that gospel passage: “in spite of all obstacles, what God willed was really accomplished. He did not allow creatures to do what they willed but what he willed.” The Father’s good pleasure was for little Thérèse to receive both the kingdom of Carmel and the kingdom of heaven, but by way of the cross.[1]
