Chapter XVI: Letter to Her Sister Céline

A sister told Sœur Thérèse of the strange phenomena produced by magnetism on persons who really wish to yield up their will to the mesmerizer. These details appeared to interest her keenly and on the morrow she said to the Sister:

“Your conversation yesterday did me so much good. Oh! how I wish to be magnetized by our Lord. It was my first thought on awakening. With what delight have I delivered my will up to Him. Yes, I want Him to make Himself master of my faculties in such sort that my actions shall no longer be human or personal, but wholly divine, inspired and directed by the Spirit of Love.”

COUNSELS AND REMINISCENCES

You are quite wrong to think of sorrows that the future may bring; it is, as it were, intermeddling with Divine Providence. We who run in the way of Love must never torment ourselves about anything. If I did not suffer minute by minute, it would be impossible for me to be patient; but I see only the present moment, I forget the past and I take good care not to anticipate the future. If we grow disheartened, if sometimes we despair, it is because we have been dwelling on the past or the future.

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XII

I no longer thirst for either suffering or death, yet both I dearly prize. Long did I call upon them as the harbingers of joy.... Suffering has in very truth been mine, and I have thought I wellnigh touched the eternal shore! I have believed from my earliest youth that _the little flower_ would be gathered in its spring-time; now, it is the spirit of self-abandonment alone that guides me, no other compass have I. I know not now, how to ask anything eagerly, save the perfect accomplishment of God’s designs upon my soul.

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. VIII

“Pray for me,” she would often say, “when I implore Heaven to come to my aid, then it is that I feel most forsaken.”

“And in this desolation how do you avoid discouragement?” they asked her.

“I turn to the good God, to all the Saints, and I thank them just the same. I think they wish to see to what point I shall carry my trust.... But not in vain have these words of Job sunk into my heart: ‘_Though He should kill me yet will I trust in Him_.’[70] I acknowledge it was long before I reached this degree of abandonment; our Lord has taken me and placed me there!”

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XII

It seems to me that nothing now hinders me from taking flight, for I no longer have any great desires, save to love, even unto dying of love. I am free, I have no fear, not even of what I most dreaded; I mean the fear of being a long time ill and consequently a burthen to the Community. If it gives pleasure to the good God I willingly consent to see my life of suffering, both of soul and body, prolonged for years. Oh! no, I do not fear a long life. I do not shun the combat. “_The Lord is the rock upon which I am founded. Who teacheth my hands to fight and my fingers to war; He is my protector in whom I have hoped._”[71] Never have I asked God to let me die young; it is true I have ever believed that it would be so, but without seeking to obtain it.

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. IX

Whatever the good God has given me has always pleased me, even the gifts which have appeared to me less good and less beautiful than those received by others.

COUNSELS AND REMINISCENCES

I have no greater desire to die than to live; if our Lord gave me the choice I would choose nothing; I only will what He wills; it is what He does that I love.

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XII

“Some think you are afraid of death,” they said to her.--“That may indeed yet happen; I never depend on my own thoughts, knowing how weak I am; but at present I will rejoice in the sentiments that the good God now gives me, there will be time enough to suffer from the contrary.”

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XII

A sister said to her:

“If anyone goes straight to Heaven, you surely will not spend one moment in Purgatory!”

“Oh! I feel little anxiety about that; I shall always be content with the sentence of the good God. If I go to Purgatory, well--I shall walk in the midst of the flames, like the three Hebrews in the furnace, singing the Canticle of Love.”

COUNSELS AND REMINISCENCES

FOOTNOTES:

[66] Office of St. Cæcilia.

[67] Luke, ii, 14.

[68] Wisdom, iv, 1.

[69] St. John of the Cross.

[70] Job, xiii, 15.

[71] _Cf._ Ps., cxliii, 1, 2, 3.

GRATITUDE

Oh, how happy God makes me! How easy and how sweet it is to serve Him upon earth.

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. X

Seeing several of my companions form special attachments to some one or other of our mistresses, I wished to follow their example but could not succeed therein. O happy inability! from how great evils has it saved me.... How I thank God for having made me find only bitterness in the friendships of earth. With a heart such as mine I should have been captured and had my wings clipped; then how should I have been able to _fly away and be at rest_.[72]

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. IV

I understand well that our Lord knew I was too weak to be exposed to temptation; without doubt I should have been wholly destroyed had I been dazzled by the deceitful glamour of the love of creatures; but never has it shone before my eyes. There, where strong souls find joy, and through fidelity detach themselves from it, I have found only affliction. Where then is my merit in not being given up to these fragile attachments, since it is only by a gracious effect of God’s mercy that I was preserved from it? Without Him, I recognize that I might have fallen as low as St. Magdalene; and that word of deep meaning spoken by the Divine Master to Simon the Pharisee, re-echoes with great sweetness in my soul. Yes, I know it: “_To whom less is forgiven, he loveth less._”[73] But I also know that Jesus has forgiven more to me than to St. Magdalene. Ah, how I wish I could express what I feel. Here at least is an example which will in some measure convey my thought.

Suppose the son of a skilful doctor is tripped by a stone in his path, which causes him to fall and fracture a limb. His father comes in haste, lifts him up lovingly and attends to his injuries, employing therein all the resources of his art; and the boy, very soon completely cured, testifies his gratitude. This child has certainly good reason to love so kind a father; but here is another supposition.

The father having learnt that there lies in his son’s way a dangerous stone, sets out beforehand and removes it unseen by anyone. His son, the object of this tender forethought, unaware of the misfortune from which he has been preserved by the father’s hand, will of course show no gratitude, and will love him less than if he had cured him of a grievous wound. But should he come to know all, will he not love him still more? Well--I am this child, the object of the preventing love of a Father _Who sent His Son not to redeem the just but sinners_.[74] He wills that I should love Him because He has forgiven me, not _much_, but _everything_. Without waiting for me to love Him much, like St. Mary Magdalene, He has made me to know how He had loved me with a preventing and ineffable love, in order that I may now love Him even unto folly!

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. IV

Walking one day in the garden, leaning on one of her sisters, Thérèse paused to enjoy the fascinating sight of a little white hen sheltering its chickens beneath its wings. Very soon her eyes filled with tears, and turning to her dear companion she said: “I can stay no longer, let us go in again quickly....” And in her cell, her tears continued falling and she could not utter a word. At last, looking at her sister with an expression that was quite heavenly, she said:

“I was thinking of our Lord, and of the touching comparison He chose in order to make us believe in His tenderness. That is just what He has done for me all my life: _He has wholly hidden me beneath His wings!_ I cannot express what passed within my heart. Ah! the good God does well to veil Himself from my sight, to show me the effects of His Mercy rarely, and as it were, ‘_through the lattices_;’[75] such consolations would, I feel, be more than I could bear.”

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XII

“Oh! how _good_ is the good God!” ... she would sometimes exclaim. “Yes, He must indeed be good to give me the strength to endure all that I suffer.”

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XII

One day she said to the Mother Prioress:

“I would like to speak to you, Mother, of the state of my soul; but I cannot, I am too deeply moved just now.”

And in the evening she sent these lines pencilled with a trembling hand:

“O my God, how good Thou art to the little victim of Thy Merciful Love! Now even though Thou dost join physical suffering to the trials of my soul, I cannot say: ‘_The sorrows of death have encompassed me._’[76] But I cry out in my gratitude: ‘_I have gone down into the valley of the shadow of death, yet I fear no evil, because Thou, O Lord, art with me._’”[77]

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XII

FOOTNOTES:

[72] Ps., liv, 7.

[73] Luke, vii, 47.

[74] Luke, v, 32.

[75] Cant., ii, 9.

[76] Ps., xvii, 5.

[77] _Cf._ Ps., xxii, 4.

ZEAL

The cry of Jesus agonizing, “I thirst!” re-echoed continually in my heart, firing it with an ardent zeal till then unknown to me. I longed to give to my Beloved to drink: I too felt myself consumed with the thirst for souls, and at all cost I would wrest sinners from the eternal flames.

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. V

The Precious Blood of Jesus I poured on souls, to Him I offered these same souls renewed by the Dew of Calvary; thus I thought to quench His Thirst; but the more I gave Him to drink, the more ardently my poor little soul thirsted--and this I received as a most precious recompense.

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. V

Like the Prophets and the Doctors I would fain enlighten souls. Fain would I travel the earth, O my Well-Beloved, to preach Thy Name and to set up Thy glorious Cross in Pagan lands. But one mission only would not suffice for me; would that I could at one and the same time proclaim the Gospel all the world over, even to the remotest of its islands. I would desire to be a Missionary not only for a few years, but to have been one from the creation of the world, and so to continue to the end of time.

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XI

I long to accomplish the most heroic deeds. I feel within me the courage of a Crusader. I would die on the battlefield in defence of the Church.

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XI

Open, my Jesus, thy Book of Life wherein are recorded the actions of all the Saints; those actions--would that I too, had accomplished such for Thee!

HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XI

Souls--dear Lord, we must have souls! Above all, souls of apostles and of martyrs, that through them we may inflame the multitude of poor sinners with love of Thee.

HIST. D’UNE AME, APPENDIX

After recreation one day when the Mother Prioress had spoken of the persecution already raging against Religious Communities, Sœur Thérèse said to a novice: “Ah! Sister, we live in an era of martyrs! Blood will be shed.--What happiness if it should be ours!”

COUNSELS AND REMINISCENCES

A novice on her way to the laundry one day, went at a slow pace through the garden, looking at the flowers as she passed. Sœur Thérèse who followed walking quickly, soon overtook her and said: “Is that how one hastens who has children (_souls_) to support, for whose sustenance she is obliged to work?...”

COUNSELS AND REMINISCENCES

During her illness she wrote:

“The will of the good God is my sole desire; and I declare that if in Heaven I could no longer work for His glory, I would choose exile rather than the Fatherland.”