Therese of Lisieux and Father Jacques Sevin s.j. Pierre Descouvemont Published in "Thérèse de Lisieux", n. 776, March 1998 Translated by Caterina Esempio

Father Jacques Sevin, who founded the French Scout Association at the end of the first world war, was deeply involved with Therese of Lisieux’s spirit and tried to transmit it to the scout units he worked as assistant for. "We have to teach - he said - young people how to become men, teaching men to make them young."

Jacques Sevin s.j.

This friendship between F.Sevin and the little Carmelite from Lisieux is quite interesting. On 15^th October 1897, fifteen days after Therese’s death, Jacques Sevin, who had studied with the Jesuits at "Collège de la Providence" in Amiens, took part to a spiritual retreat which left its mark on him. On the eve of his fifteenth birthday, he felt called to follow Christ. At the age of 18, he joined the Society of Jesus.

Once he was ordained priest in 1914, he got very soon interested in the educational method launched by Baden- Powell, whom he met first in 1913 in England.

After the war, he founded a Society of Guides (a section for young people) in Mouscron, in the northern district (French region on the Belgian border), and in 1920 took part to the meeting, where it was decided the creation of the French Scout Federation. The canon Cornette was appointed General Assistant, and F. Sevin General Commissioner, whereas the General Louis de Maud’hui, hero of the Great War, was the President.

It is well known that F. Sevin, who for fifteen years represented the soul of the catholic scouting in France, wrote the most part of the songs the scouts still today love playing, such as The Fire Legend…

During his education years, he read Story of a Soul. Therese interested him so far that, since 1911, when he started the theological studies at the French Jesuit Seminary in Enghien, in Belgium, he published in The Holy Heart Messenger an essay of about thirty pages with the title "The Little Saint of Lisieux, Sister Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face". In this essay he wrote that, even though Therese had "a highly childhood spirit, it doesn’t imply that her saintliness was childish. Her interior mortification, her apostleship, her spirituality had nothing puerile. Thus, if one day, as we hope, she will be raised on the altars, the devotion to sister Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face will not be restricted to teenagers."

What fascinates him most is Therese’s naturalness, her trust, but most of all her enduring joy. She had those interior bents he tried to gain all his life long and, later, to make flourish in scouts’ soul: "A scout has a strong self-control: he smiles and sings even in difficulties," states the eighth item in the Scout Law. In a long poetry he wrote in 1913 in Therese’s honour, he says:

"Your doctrine is wise and your way is safe,
but people have to be heartily sincere to run along it,
and if your Gospel is the one of the joy,
the only one way to understand it well is through suffering…"

In July 1924, F.Sevin, at the age of 41, went on a pilgrimage to Lisieux together with two boys from Lille. He wanted to thank Therese, who had recently been declared Blessed by Pope Pio XI, for having healed, in March of the same year, André Noël, a young scout from Lille. "We took the train from Paris Saint-Lazare to Mantes-la-Jolie, where we got and started off - said one of them - We divided our journey in ten legs. We carried all on our shoulders and the Father was overloaded too. We had a small tent for three… the Father was very good at cooking too. He could light the fire even with wet wood. Every morning we went and celebrate the Mass in a country church. One evening we finally arrived near Lisieux and from a hill we could see the Carmelite Chapel. The following day we went down the hill silently. After the Mass we were welcome to the Carmelite Chapel by Therese’s sister. We stayed two days in Lisieux."

The small Carmel's church in Lisieux

At his return, the Father founded a scout department, giving it the name and the colours of Blessed Therese of the Child Jesus. The scouts belonging to the IX° Lille group still today wear a white and brown scarf, which are the Carmel colours! On Sunday 17^th May 1925 - when Therese was canonized - the "IX° Lille" scout group gathered in the Madeleine Church and devoted themselves to St. Therese of Lisieux, saying to her: "we worship you, we hail you as our Protectress, our Patron, our Little Queen, our Saint."

In the August of the same year, F.Sevin went again on a pilgrimage to Lisieux with André Noël, the young boy from Lille miraculously healed. They went on foot from Evreux to Lisieux, said the Mass in the Carmelite Chapel, and prayed a long time before Therese’s relics.

One year before his death, in 1950, Father Sevin did this pilgrimage, which was so dear to him, again. Perhaps, in that occasion, he repeated in his prayer the words of a poetry he had written in 1913:

"Allow us, when we will be tired for the long way walked,
and won’t feel nothing else than the burden of our fatigue,
‘oh Little Saint’, with such a big love followed,
the nobility of smiling to life,
to have the sweetness of smiling to death."

It is now clear that the spirituality he tried to convey to French scouts - for a long time he was entrusted with their heads’ training - was mostly inspired to Therese’s "Little Way", showing with pleasure that her message was in full accordance with St. Ignatius of Loyola’s one: "Message of faith in Providence, message of faith in merciful Love, message of renounce and detachment, as well as lesson of energy, strength of the Holy Ghost drawn from the Eucharist."

He often reminded his scouts the part of the prayer that the "IX° Department" of Lille had uttered on 17^th May 1925: "Make us, oh Saint Therese, as generous as you, making sure that, from now on, we can't refuse anything to God; let us always be His simple and docile children, rich of abandon in his Providence; make especially that, through us, the purity of our heart remains without any stains, in order to enable us, like you, to smile to death, committing our souls to God in the evening of our life."

F.Sevin encouraged in particular the scouts to be not afraid of picking up the moorings, in order to follow Christ according to the example given by this girl, who had not hesitated to leave the comfort of Buissonets’ house to enter the Carmel. "If we camp and pitch a camp for our kids - he said - it is not only to put them in contact with nature, the most important source of every form of education; it is principally to give them and imprint this camper mentality in their soul all life long, that is the mentality of every man who is really free, independent from the earth, from places and goods. This kind of man doesn't take care for anything, including his own tent, and, as a consequence, is always ready."

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