Articles

“Christ Who Lives in Me”: Life in Time as the Content of a Saint’s Heavenly Mission

Sylvester Tan, SJ

Abstract

Sylvester Tan, SJ, explores the eternal significance of a saint’s earthly life in Christ, with a focus on St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Through the “little way,” saints participate in Christ’s incarnate life, revealing how temporal human existence can bear divine grace and intercessory fruit. Drawing on Balthasar, Radner, and Ratzinger, Tan argues that the particularities of human life, when lived in Christ, are shared as heavenly treasures, transforming time into a Christological conduit for salvation and divine self-giving.

Citations

Thérèse to Céline, March 12, 1889, in Collected Letters of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, trans. André Combes (Sheed & Ward, 1949), 82.

Thérèse of Lisieux, Saint Thérèse of Lisiuex, the Little Flower of Jesus, trans. Thomas Nimco Taylor (P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1926), 215.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History (Ignatius, 1994), 29

Ephraim Radner, A Time to Keep: Theology, Mortality, and the Shape of a Human Life (Baylor University Press, 2016), viii.

Thérèse of Lisieux, Last Conversations, 164.

Thérèse of Lisieux, Letters, 99.

Thérèse of Lisieux, Letters, 217.

Thérèse of Lisieux, Letters, 275.

Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology, Death, and Eternal Life, trans. Michael Waldstein (The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 236.

Thérèse of Lisieux, Letters, 311.

Augustine, “Sermon 159: On Romans 8:30–31 on Justification,” in The Works of Saint Augustine, pt. 3, vol. 5, Sermons (148–183) on the New Testament, trans. Edmund Hill, ed. John Rotelle (New City, 1992), 121.

Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, New American Bible: Revised Edition (HarperOne, 2012).

St. Thérèse of Lisieux: Her Last Conversations, trans. and ed. John Clarke (ICS, 1977), 102.