The Metaphor of the Face in Therese of Lisieux from the Philosophical Perspective of Emmanuel Levinas: Creating a Model for Contemporary Mission Spirituality

My dissertation evaluates Therese's vision of church mission, inspired by the audacious gesture of St. Veronica, the lady who wiped the face of Jesus on the way to Calvary. She detected in this gesture, resembling in what is historically and artistically captured in Veronica's Veil, that mission which is the transmission of faith to another must reveal the true face of God. Such faith acknowledges the presence of the face of neighbor who is also living in the world. Such awareness of the demands of the face took place at her deathbed. She signaled an end of an era when the church felt with certitude that she fully knew the needs of others in mission.;Therese expresses herself through metaphors such as the Holy Face. So, I relied on Ricoeur's theory of metaphor in order to expand an understanding of her imaginative missionary spirituality that is essentially Christological. By referring to the phenomenology of the face by Levinas, I unpacked her metaphor and I argue that through the lens of Levinas her spirituality shows the importance of dialogue with others in a strange but prophetic way. She demonstrates a way of seeing others by keeping her face hidden in the Face of Jesus. She echoes mutatis mutandis what Levinas says that the face of the Other, in its radical vulnerability, asymmetrically occupies the position of a teacher. This leads to his ethics. Desiring the Others is at the heart of ethics, and Therese's spirituality consisted of receiving others in their vulnerability in a way that reproduced the sense of responsibility she learned from contemplation. In desiring others for Christ, I argue that her mission is to build "heaven here below" as ethical order of responsibility.;The effects of her pregnant metaphor of the Holy Face are undeniable in her spiritual development. As a Doctor of the church she teaches what happens when the gospel message influences our relations with others living in the contemporary world. It is to wipe and anoint others for Christ contemplated in them, because in her feminine approach God has a human face and is not simply a concept.