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Light of the Night: The Last Eighteen Months in the Life of Therese of Lisieux
Thérèse of Lisieux died on 30 September 1897. Nine months later, the now classic Story of a Soul appeared and proved an immediate success. However, when historians had access fifty years later to manuscripts written by Thérèse they were surprised to discover enormous differences between these texts and the published version of Story of a Soul. Jean-François Six has written this new book with two purposes. First, he recalls the history of how Mother Agnés, Prioress of the Carmelite convent and sister of Thérèse altered and completed Thérèse's text so that it became a travesty of the original. Secondly he re-establishes the truth of the last months of Thérèse's life, her authentic spiritual message, and her contribution to the history of mysticism. Here is a key study and a crucial work of rehabilitation.
256 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1997
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August 16, 2026
It's difficult to give a a simple verdict, because this feels like two books in one.
On one hand, we have a historiographical argument: the author has legitimate evidence that Thérèse’s posthumous presentation was shaped by Mother Agnes’s editing, but then he repeatedly pushes beyond what the evidence can bear into borderline conspiracy (which he really does not prove).
It's annoying because Pauline really did edit Thérèse. The early public image of Thérèse really was smoother and more conventionally sentimental than the woman revealed by the original manuscripts. Whether it is the translation or the author's original intent, this exploration becomes confused by language more suited to a pop exposé.
The other book I liked considerably more. The theological interpretation of Thérèse's final eighteen months. It explores how Thérèse's trial of faith isn't just an unfortunate period in which she temporarily possessed less faith. Instead, it represented the maturation of her faith from something experienced as almost self-evident into something that must be chosen without consolation. Earlier Thérèse could see. God, heaven and eternal life appeared obvious to her. Then that experiential certainty disappeared. What remained for her was the act of faith itself.
It becomes, as the author says, a collapse the distinction between those people who doubt and us people who have faith. Thérèse voluntarily places herself at the table of unbelievers and eats their "bread of trial." She doesn't pretend to possess some psychological certainty unavailable to them.
Give it a read, but be prepared to slog through the first 100 pages.
“How can one make people understand that doubt existed in Thérèse's very faith? Is it necessary to invoke Gustave Thibone, who at the age of ninety said with much truth in his memoirs: “For me God was first person and law, then light and love, and finally absence and night. In a conversation, he made this brief statement: 'I would say, like Gabriel Marce, that a God who did not allow doubt would not be a true God. I constantly doubt, but I try to dominate it. It is perhaps by the quantity of doubts overcome that one measures the intensity of faith. The more I think that I am approaching God, the more I doubt him.' He ends his conversation by saying: "I want to die in the night, dazzled, blinded by this darkness of which we do not know whether it will be succeeded by the dawn."
On one hand, we have a historiographical argument: the author has legitimate evidence that Thérèse’s posthumous presentation was shaped by Mother Agnes’s editing, but then he repeatedly pushes beyond what the evidence can bear into borderline conspiracy (which he really does not prove).
It's annoying because Pauline really did edit Thérèse. The early public image of Thérèse really was smoother and more conventionally sentimental than the woman revealed by the original manuscripts. Whether it is the translation or the author's original intent, this exploration becomes confused by language more suited to a pop exposé.
The other book I liked considerably more. The theological interpretation of Thérèse's final eighteen months. It explores how Thérèse's trial of faith isn't just an unfortunate period in which she temporarily possessed less faith. Instead, it represented the maturation of her faith from something experienced as almost self-evident into something that must be chosen without consolation. Earlier Thérèse could see. God, heaven and eternal life appeared obvious to her. Then that experiential certainty disappeared. What remained for her was the act of faith itself.
It becomes, as the author says, a collapse the distinction between those people who doubt and us people who have faith. Thérèse voluntarily places herself at the table of unbelievers and eats their "bread of trial." She doesn't pretend to possess some psychological certainty unavailable to them.
Give it a read, but be prepared to slog through the first 100 pages.
“How can one make people understand that doubt existed in Thérèse's very faith? Is it necessary to invoke Gustave Thibone, who at the age of ninety said with much truth in his memoirs: “For me God was first person and law, then light and love, and finally absence and night. In a conversation, he made this brief statement: 'I would say, like Gabriel Marce, that a God who did not allow doubt would not be a true God. I constantly doubt, but I try to dominate it. It is perhaps by the quantity of doubts overcome that one measures the intensity of faith. The more I think that I am approaching God, the more I doubt him.' He ends his conversation by saying: "I want to die in the night, dazzled, blinded by this darkness of which we do not know whether it will be succeeded by the dawn."
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