Saint Thérèse Couderc

She was born Marie-Victoire Couderc on February 1, 1805, at Mas de Sablières, among the hills of the Vivarais in the department of the Ardèche. ² Her parents, Claude-Michel Couderc and Anne Méry, were farmers of slender means, and Domenico Agasso writes that they could give her schooling only between the ages of seventeen and twenty, with the Sisters of Saint Joseph at Les Vans. ²

Paul VI dwelt on that childhood when he canonized her. In his telling, which is translated here from the Italian, hers was the plainest kind of vocation, one "we might almost call native": from her earliest years she wanted only the religious life, before anyone had shown her what form it would take. ³ He credited the household for it, which he described as modest and honest, pious and hardworking, rather austere and patriarchal. ³

In 1825 a diocesan missionary, Father Jean-Pierre-Étienne Terme, came to Sablières to preach a mission. ² He was already the founder of a teaching congregation, the Sisters of Saint Francis Regis, named for the seventeenth-century Jesuit who had preached in those mountains and was buried at La Louvesc. ² He became her spiritual director. ² Paul VI described him, in translation, as all energy and enthusiasm, "more generous and impulsive perhaps than reflective," and quoted his own account of himself: he asked only to do the work God meant for him, "without even trying to know it." ³

The sources do not agree on the dates of what came next. Antonio Borrelli has her take the habit and the name Sister Thérèse at Aps on March 27, 1826, and Terme send her with two other sisters to La Louvesc in 1827; Avvenire and Agasso put her vows in 1827, and Agasso has her climb to La Louvesc the year after. ² The Catholic Encyclopedia dates the foundation itself to 1826. ⁴

What she was sent to do is not in doubt. Women and girls came on pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint John Francis Regis, and the sisters were to run a hostel for them. ²⁵ In the encyclopedia's account, the founders wanted the pilgrims to "recollect themselves in solitude, prayer, and meditation," and so resolved to open houses where women could follow the exercises of a retreat, the first of them at La Louvesc. ⁴ The Cenacle Sisters say she soon saw that welcome and lodging were not enough, and that retreats and spiritual guidance had to be offered, notably through the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. ⁵

Borrelli has her made superior at the end of 1828 and the house reserved for retreats the following year, while Terme, who had come to know the Exercises through the Jesuits at Vals, turned the community toward them. ² Agasso adds a winter detail from Giovanna Cotta: the snow at La Louvesc could lie so deep that a tunnel had to be dug and a child sent through it to see whether the sanctuary lamp was still burning. ²

Terme died on December 12, 1834, leaving the young community, as the encyclopedia puts it, "to the direction of the Jesuit Fathers." ²⁴ Mother Thérèse put the work in the hands of the French Jesuit provincial, Father François Renault. ² In 1836 the bishop of Viviers approved the rule of the retreat sisters, and the provincial required them to separate from the teaching Sisters of Saint Francis Regis. ² She made her solemn vows on January 6, 1837, and on August 15 of that year consecrated her house to Our Lady of Ay, naming the Virgin its superior. ²

In October 1838, Borrelli writes, Renault presented a postulant of a few days' standing, a countess, and named her superior and foundress. ² Thérèse bowed her head and did not oppose it, and Agasso says she urged her sisters to obey the newcomer. ² Within eleven months the countess had brought the congregation close to ruin and withdrew. ² On September 24, 1839, a Mother Contenet was named in her place, a capable superior who, by Borrelli's account, worked until her death in 1852 to keep the real foundress on the margins. ²

Paul VI did not soften this. A foundress's mission, he said in translation, can become "painfully dramatic," above all when the difficulties come from those who hold authority in the Church and from those who share the common life. ³ He suggested that her humble country origin and limited schooling may have counted against her, and listed what followed: she was in practice removed as superior, her title of foundress was disputed, and she was given posts beneath her abilities. ³ "Here she appears great," he went on: "great above all in humility." ³

Borrelli quotes a sentence of hers from those years, translated here from his Italian: "When Our Lord wants to make use of a soul for his glory, he first makes it pass through the trial of contradiction, of humiliation and of suffering; one cannot be a useful instrument without this." ² Her word for what she did was se livrer, to give oneself over, and both Paul VI and Agasso say she repeated it. ²³ The Cenacle Sisters render it as surrender, and quote her: "The great way to enter the path of perfection and holiness is to SURRENDER OURSELVES to our good God." ⁶

Paul VI named the conduct that went with it. Silence, obedience and patience, he said in translation, "were her conduct. They were her defense." ³ The Cenacle Sisters, who name Se Livrer and La Bonté among her writings, keep another line of hers: "God is good; he is more than good, he is Goodness, I don't want to forget it!" ⁵⁶

They also remember her by an image of her own. She compared herself to the chestnuts of her native Ardèche, "full of spines on the outside and tender underneath," and the sisters describe her last photograph as showing "a frank look and a decided air." ⁵

A later superior, Mother de Larochenégly, treated her with growing regard. ² The work was consecrated to Our Lady of the Cenacle on March 25, 1852, and the feast of that title was kept for the first time on May 28, 1854. ² The encyclopedia explains the name: the society takes as its model the Virgin in the upper room after the Ascension, when the disciples "were persevering with one mind in prayer with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus." ⁴

In March 1855 she was sent to Paris after a local superior had broken away with four sisters, and she stayed there until November 1856. ² After that she served as superior of houses at Tournai, La Louvesc, Lyon and Montpellier until 1867, and from then on lived at Fourvière. ² Ill, she did not ask to be cured; Borrelli says she asked only for "the strength to suffer and the love of the Cross." ² She died on September 26, 1885, and the sisters with her sang the Magnificat. ² Her body rests at La Louvesc, beside the tomb of Saint John Francis Regis. ²³

The society she had founded, the encyclopedia says, was approved by Gregory XVI, Pius IX and Leo XIII, and spread to Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and Holland; the first house in England opened at Manchester in 1888, and the first in America at New York in 1892. ⁴ Paul VI called the Cenacle "a simple and happy religious formula," translated here: "a synthesis of contemplative life and active life; of personal, community and social life, of silence and of word." ³ He added that Pius XI had for forty years exercised a hidden priestly ministry at the Cenacle in Milan while he worked at the Ambrosian Library. ³

Pius XI declared her virtues heroic on May 12, 1935. ² Borrelli dates her beatification by Pius XII to June 17, 1951, and Paul VI canonized her in Saint Peter's on May 10, 1970, after two miracles had been recognized. ²³

No source used for this page names a patronage for Saint Thérèse Couderc, and none is claimed here. ¹²³ She is honored as the foundress of the Society of Our Lady of the Cenacle, whose sisters still give retreats and spiritual direction. ³⁵

Saint Thérèse Couderc's feast is September 26, the day of her death. ¹² The Roman Martyrology lists her that day at Lyon, as the virgin who "not without great tribulations, but with a serene spirit" founded the Society of Our Lady of the Retreat in the Cenacle at La Louvesc; the quotation is translated from the Italian bishops' printing. ¹

Her life turns on the years after 1838, when the congregation she had begun went on without her at its head. ² The injustice was real, and Paul VI said so in Saint Peter's. ³ What she did with it was to keep silent and obey, and go on working for the house as one sister among the others. ²³

Se livrer was her word for that, and she wrote about it in a text of that name. ⁵⁶ Her sisters remember it beside another of her sentences, that God is good, more than good, Goodness itself, which she said she did not want to forget. ⁶

She founded a place for other people to pray. ⁴⁵ For forty-five years, Paul VI said, she carried a cross of her own; the house at La Louvesc kept its doors open to women who needed a few days of quiet all the same. ³⁴

Her congregation still keeps her image of the chestnut: spines outside, tender within. ⁵ She was not soft, and she was not bitter. ⁵