When the pilgrim relics of St. Therese of the Child Jesus arrived in Bacolod City yesterday, she was no longer the ‘Little Flower’ that Catholics had learned about in their Catechesis classes in the past. She was now Doctor of the Church, no less.

Cathedral bells pealed when the theresemobile carrying her relics arrived, and a shower of petals fell when she entered the San Sebastian Cathedral as the clergy hailed her visit on this jubilee year.  

The streets, especially the ones leading to Cameroli Ave. where the quasi-parish named after her is located, narrowed with well-wishers waving the diocesan colors of yellow and white.

In some houses, the faithful lit candles; others took out their components and played music to welcome her. At Carmel, her spiritual sisters came out of their cloisters to welcome her, showering her reliquary with a cascade of petals when it passed. A children’s rondalla played.

At the city jail, there were tears as hundreds of inmates had their time with the saint whose first recorded conversion was that of the convict Prazini.

Even the weather cooperated. Defying the CNN forecast of rains, the sun shone most of the time her relics went around the city; only a slight drizzle fell. The downpour started only when the reliquary, and everyone else, had already settled inside the church of the Carmelite Monastery.

Until 1997, when Pope John Paul II declared her the 33rd Doctor of the Church, St. Therese of the Child Jesus was known as the Little Flower – a cute and charming title that gave mothers a colorful description of a model of obedience for their girls. Devotions and organizations were built around the flower symbol, which can be traced to one of her famous quotes: “I shall let fall from heaven a shower of roses…”

When she first came in 2001, her doctorate was just about four years old and had not sank as deeply yet as it has by now, 11 years since the time the title was bestowed on her. In that period, the clergy as well as her devotees have taken pains to reposition her as doctor and no longer the Little Flower.

While the Little Flower title had served its purpose in its time, it did not exactly capture the depth of the spirituality which she invites people to tap; her Doctrine of the Little Way of Spiritual Childhood is anything but little. Popes have validated her words and it has been reported that the study of her writings – the major one being her autobiography, The Story of a Soul – for her doctorate yielded ten volumes.

A saint is declared a doctor when his or her life or writings add to the knowledge of the Church in her work for souls.  The most famous of these doctors is St. Augustine, after whom many Catholic schools such as Colegio San Agustin and religious orders like the Augustinian sisters of La Consolacion College was named. There are also Sts. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila.

Even to priests and other religious, the works of these doctors are thick and heavy.

In comparison, the writings of St. Therese are slim, and done in the everyday language everyone can understand.

It is one of the many happy ironies in the life of St. Therese that among all the doctors, she would be the most understandable, and therefore, most effective, in our time and age.

Since yesterday until Friday, the faithful of Bacolod and the rest of Negros Occidental will have their turn to prove that.*

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