 |
|
If you have information on the boy in the photo, please contact Sister Maria Faustina, DCJ, local superior of the Carmelites of the Divine Heart of Jesus, at (210) 381-1077. The sisters are also in need of someone who can translate their early records, written in German, which may be of help in this search.
Photo provided |
By Carol Baass Sowa
Today's Catholic
SAN ANTONIO • Someone in the San Antonio area may hold the key to setting in motion the beatification process for a saint with a local connection. The only clue is a very old black and white photograph, taken in San Antonio in the late 1920s and reproduced in a book published in 1933 on the life of Sister Mary Therese of the Holy Trinity, DCJ, a Carmelite of the Divine Heart of Jesus who died in 1926 at the age of 28 in St. Charles, Mo.
The handsome, dark-haired little boy in the picture, his light-colored eyes gazing intently at the camera, was probably in his pre-school years when he was formally photographed (most likely in a studio) standing by a framed picture of Sister Therese. He is smartly dressed in a distinctive short jumper with decorative figures on the collar and waist that may have been embroidery. There is no name identifying the child, the picture’s caption merely stating: “Cured through the intercession of Sister Therese of the Holy Trinity. – San Antonio, Texas.”
The photograph is believed to have been taken in 1926 or 1927 and is found in the book’s final chapter, which mentions many miracles in the United States and Europe attributed to Sister Therese in the years immediately following her death — though does not elaborate on the one that took place in San Antonio. Unfortunately, to provide privacy to those who had been cured through her intercession, none of the recipients’ names for the miracles described in the book were given, though their general location and some initials were printed.
The sisters who personally knew those involved or witnessed the miraculous cures have long since passed away, as has the book’s author, Father Frederick M. Lynk, SVD, who penned the 1933 biography, “A Passion Flower of the Carmel of the Divine Heart of Jesus — The Life Story of Sister M. Therese of the Holy Trinity,” published by The Abbey Press in St. Meinrad, Ind.
Who was the young Carmelite sister whose brief life was recorded by Father Lynk and who touched — after her death — the life of the unknown child in the San Antonio photograph?
Born in the village of Vassen in The Netherlands on Nov. 14, 1897, Therese Ysseldyk was a contemplative child, described by her biographer as having been accompanied by the “angel of suffering” from the cradle on through her life. An early illness that endangered her eyesight as a young child was cured following her mother’s fervent prayers at a nearby church before the image of St. Anthony — a foreshadowing perhaps of another child in a far away city named in honor of that saint being cured one day through the future Carmelite.
Growing up she suffered from many illnesses, but would offer up her suffering without complaint as she would continue to do throughout her life. When little Therese was three years old, her family moved to Ochtrup, Germany, where her father found work and it was here that she entered a school taught by sisters and grew in piety. Her happy world was shattered when her father suffered the loss of a thumb in an accident at work, swiftly followed by blood poisoning and death.
After a year of mourning, Therese’s widowed mother and her three children returned to The Netherlands, where she married a good man who proved to be a loving stepfather to her little family. Residing now in Enschede, Therese was enrolled in a convent school and whenever possible would hurry after school to the nearby church to spend time with the Blessed Sacrament. Her playmates remember her love of “playing sister,” a vocation she was eager to commit herself to from an early age.
She entered the Carmelites of the Divine Heart of Jesus in Tilburg in 1917, while World War I raged in the countries surrounding The Netherlands, and helped there with the young orphans the sisters cared for. The postulants were permitted to choose their own names as sisters and she retained hers as Sister Mary Therese. In 1918, when taking her vows as a novice, she was allowed the Carmelite privilege of choosing an addition to this name, henceforth being known as Sister Mary Therese of the Holy Trinity.
During her novitiate, the novices were asked who among them would be willing to go as a missionary to America following their profession, and Sister Therese responded immediately, having longed from an early age to do such work. After her profession of vows in 1919 she was among those chosen for this assignment, making the long voyage by steamer with seven other sisters to the United States, where Blessed Mary Teresa of St. Joseph, DCJ, foundress of the Carmelites of the Divine Heart of Jesus, had been traveling since 1912, founding 11 houses in which the sisters cared for orphans and the elderly, as well as two in Canada.
Among these was St. Joseph’s Home for Children in San Antonio, founded in 1914 on San Saba Street, near the Urban Loop, in a poor section of the city known as “Little Mexico” about a block from Immaculate Conception Church. Later, in 1918, she established St. Joseph’s Home for boys in the East Side on Nebraska Street, which later became Martin Luther King Drive.
There is a possibility that the little boy in the mystery photo, said to have been cured through Sister Therese of the Holy Trinity in 1926 or 1927, could have resided in one of these orphanages.
After disembarking in New York, Sister Therese was first assigned to the sisters’ congregation in East Chicago, and it was here that the illness which had periodically plagued her, took hold of her permanently. Thinking the industrial air of Chicago was the problem, she was sent to the convent in Kenosha, Wis., close to Lake Michigan. Here she was among those bidding a sad farewell to their foundress, who in July of 1920 returned to the motherhouse in Sittard, Holland, after several fruitful years of establishing the Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus throughout North America.
Sister Therese continued to hide her physical suffering as much as possible, assisting in whatever ways she could in the sisters’ home for the elderly in Kenosha and struggled to learn English, not knowing a word of it when she arrived in America. “Pray that I may soon learn the English language,” she wrote to family members back in The Netherlands. “I am so anxious to visit the homes and do real missionary work and win souls for God.”
Instead, she developed a stiffness thought to be rheumatism that eventually spread to her entire body until she could scarcely move at times, the pain was so intense. She was sent to the motherhouse in Wauwatosa, Wis., where she was able to help with the infants for a while, but a warmer clime was prescribed and she was assigned to St. Charles, Mo.
Here the true cause of her suffering was finally found. One of her kidneys was so diseased it had to be removed completely and the other was seriously affected. She lived the remainder of her days in the convent at St. Charles as an invalid, making her perpetual vows there in 1924. She continued to help with what little tasks she could and offered up her suffering quietly to God, much like another daughter of Carmel, St. Therese of Lisieux, canonized the following year in 1925.
And like her name-sake, following her death on March 10, 1926, she immediately began to do good on earth. One of her fellow sisters reported Sister Therese had appeared to her, saying that now she was in heaven she would be able to show her gratitude for all she had received in her order. The sisters who had cared for her at St. Charles were the first to receive favors through her intercession, followed by those in the order’s other houses in America and then Europe.
Father Link noted in his book, published just seven years after her death, that when relics from her garments were laid on them, many sick people were quickly cured. These included a farmer injured by a horse, a child with a serious eye infection, another who had lost her hearing, a miner an — and a young boy in San Antonio whose picture awaits identification in hopes that his lost story can be brought to light. He would probably today be in his 90s, but has perhaps passed the story down to his family.
The body of Sister Mary Therese of the Holy Trinity rests in the sisters’ cemetery in Milwaukee, and it is their fervent hope that validating the past miracles attributed to her will lead to her eventual beatification and canonization as the saint they know she is.