The Catholic News

I think it was inaccurate on the part of the producer to call this play Story of a Soul. There was hardly anything that came from Story of a Soul. There were some allusions to St. Thérèse’s childhood events, to the Grace of Christmas, to her trip to Vatican, to her entrance into Carmel, to her difficult sisters in Carmel, and to her sickness, but there were none of the profound things she wrote. (I said “allusions” because St. Thérèse’s own words were never used. They were all paraphrased or changed to the point of losing their true impact.) Her desire to enter Carmel was presented in the play as a whim of a 13-year-old child, with no mention of Jesus giving her his thirst for souls and the moving example of Pranzini. Her beautiful prayer that she carried on her heart when she pronounced her vows, a prayer that reveals her profound mission in Carmel, was not mentioned. Also absent were her self-offering to the Merciful Love (instead of to the Divine Justice), her Little Way, her parable of the little bird, her discovery of her vocation of Love in the heart of the Church, the Grace of Easter or her trial of faith which made her call the atheists “her brothers”, her new discovery of the New Commandment of Jesus, all the stuff that she actually wrote from experience, which eventually made her both a saint and Doctor of the Church. Instead, the monologue made a parody of her audience with the Pope and of her Prioress and spent about 25 minutes of the 60-minute play (40%) to concentrate on her sickness, taking materials not from the Story of a Soul, but from the so-called her Last Conversations, which might not be authentic and are not even included in the official Complete Works of St. Thérèse. The play should have been called something else other than Story of a Soul.