„Chrystologia doświadczenia” św. Tereski z Lisieux

Abstract

The article presents the Christology of St Theresa of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, perceived through her experience of faith, through a reality of life in a personal and individual relation with Jesus. Jesus, whom she had known from the Gospel and from the faith witness of the Church, is this One, whom she personally met and felt on her own way of life, wherein He became her inseparable Companion, the Master of life and the Bridegroom in love. For Theresa, Jesus of Nazareth is not an abstract subject of her girlish admiration. He is God, who became a man, gave himself away in a death and resurrected. Such Jesus – living, appealing and acting – was experienced by a youthful, mature woman behind the walls of a monastic Carmel. She was experiencing Him through the faith, that was shepherded in love the way of suffering through a dark valley of His absence. Through hope and love, she joined the Crucified to the core there, recognizing a sense of suffering. That is why the faith experience of Theresa is throughout the Christocentric one – rationally, emotionally and existentially, formulating in an integral and toward Paschal way the mystery of the Incarnation, wherein a meeting of God and man in the mystery of love is the focal point. This meeting becomes a foundation and a source of a spiritual maturity of Theresa, who is prepared to follow Paschal footsteps of Christ on her own way of life, joining her Master in love and destitution.