Letter #142, 2023, Tue, Oct 17: St Thérčse

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Letter #142, 2023, Tue, Oct 17: St Thérčse

[2023-10-17]

[Engleză]

St. Thérčse of Lisieux (1873-1897), the little flower… The Pope — who keeps the saint’s autobiography by his bedside — has just written a beautiful letter about her, perhaps the most poetic and beautiful thing he has ever written…

“It is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to Love.”—from the autobiography of the great French saint, St. Thérčse of Lisieux (1873-1897). The phrase is used by Pope Francis as the title — “It is confidence” (C’est la Confiance in the original French) — of his new Apostolic Exhortation on the life and thought of the French saint. The Pope’s letter was published in Rome two days ago, on Sunday, October 15, in honor of the 150th anniversary of Thérčse’s birth in 1873. Thérčse of Lisieux, also known as Saint Thérčse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, was a French Catholic Discalced Carmelite nun. She is widely venerated for her simplicity, purity, humility, and great love of Jesus. She was just 24 when she died of tuberculosis. She is popularly known in English as “The Little Flower of Jesus,” or simply “The Little Flower,” and in French as “La petite Thérčse”

“It is to you, dear Mother, that I am about to confide the story of my soul. When you asked me to write it, I feared the task might unsettle me, but since then Our Lord has deigned to make me understand that by simple obedience I shall please Him best. I begin therefore to sing what must be my eternal song: ‘the Mercies of the Lord.’”–St. Thérčse of Lisieux, the first lines of her autobiography. She is addressing the mother superior of her Carmelite convent, who had asked her to write about her life; for this reason, we have her autobiography (link)

“I often asked myself why God had preferences, why all souls did not receive an equal measure of grace. I was filled with wonder when I saw extraordinary favours showered on great sinners like St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Mary Magdalen, and many others, whom He forced, so to speak, to receive His grace… Our Lord has deigned to explain this mystery to me. He showed me the book of nature, and I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would lose its springtide beauty, and the fields would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our Lord’s living garden. He has been pleased to create great Saints who may be compared to the lily and the rose, but He has also created lesser ones, who must be content to be daisies or simple violets flowering at His Feet, and whose mission it is to gladden His Divine Eyes when He deigns to look down on them. And the more gladly they do His Will the greater is their perfection.” –St Thérčse of Lisieux, on the measures of grace given by God to all souls… (link)

“In an age of indifference and self-absorption, Thérčse inspires us to be missionary disciples, captivated by the attractiveness of Jesus and the Gospel.” –Pope Francis, in his October 15 letter (two days ago, full text below) on St. Thérčse of Lisieux, his favorite saint

***
Letter #142, 2023, Tuesday, October 17: St. Thérčse of Lisieux

Pope Francis has written a beautiful letter on St. Thérčse of Lisieux.

It must rank among one of the most beautiful things he has ever written.

The letter is really a love letter to a soul… a love letter to a young French girl who was a burning candle of purity and love, and, like many candles, flickered out. She was just 24.

But she left something for all of us — the memory of her glorious soul, which loved God, and also loved her fellow man, with a burning intensity, an astonishing purity… a memory which moves us when we read her writings, and when we read what Pope Francis — who keeps her autobiography, Story of a Soul (link) on his bed-table — has just written about her.

Here, in this letter, Pope Francis has shown us perhaps more than ever before what his own soul is capable of, and this is something quite special, and important, at this present time.

Read the letter, and see if you do not agree.—RM

***

Below is a very good report on the letter, written yesterday by Elise Ann Allen, wife of John Allen, of Crux, followed by the complete text of the letter.
Saint Therese points to Church’s ‘hierarchy of truths’, pope says (link)

By Elise Ann Allen

Oct 16, 2023

ROME – Pope Francis has pointed to Saint Therese of Lisieux as an authority on the so-called “hierarchy of truths” in a new document.

To this end, he praised the French saint’s emphasis on love and childlike trust in God’s mercy in light of one’s own sins and flaws, saying this attitude takes prominence over overly rigid interpretations of the faith.

“At a time of great complexity, she can help us rediscover the importance of simplicity, the absolute primacy of love, trust and abandonment, and thus move beyond a legalistic or moralistic mindset that would fill the Christian life with rules and regulations, and cause the joy of the Gospel to grow cold,” he said.

In a new apostolic exhortation published Oct. 15 to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Saint Therese of Lisieux, also called by her religious name Therese of the Child Jesus, Pope Francis said the message of a “missionary Church” must focus on “the essentials, on what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and at the same time most necessary.”

“Not everything is equally central, because there is an order or hierarchy among the truths of the Church, and this holds true as much for the dogmas of faith as for the whole corpus of the Church’s teaching, including her moral teaching,” he said.

Francis insisted that charity is at the heart of Christian morality, and that through her writings on love, Therese offers a contribution which “is not analytical,” along the lines of other saints such as Thomas Aquinas.

“Her contribution is more synthetic, for her genius consists in leading us to what is central, essential and indispensable,” the pope said, saying Therese through her words and personal experiences “shows that, while it is true that all the Church’s teachings and rules have their importance, their value, their clarity, some are more urgent and more foundational for the Christian life.”

Titled, “It is confidence,” the exhortation focuses on a line taken from St. Therese’s writings in which she states that, “it is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to Love.”

Known for her “little way” to sainthood prioritizing small daily offerings of love and childlike trust in God’s own mercy, Therese is one of 37 Doctors of the Church, a title given to a person seen as having made an outstanding contribution to the understanding and interpretation of the faith and the development of Christian doctrine.

One of just four women to hold the prestigious ecclesial title, Saint Therese is patroness of foreign missions and is one of Pope Francis’s favorite saints. On several occasions, he said he often turns to her in prayer, entrusting his international trips or difficult situations or decisions he has to make.

A Carmelite nun who died of tuberculosis at the age of 24, Therese has also been recognized by UNESCO, who from 2022-2023 is being honored for the 150th anniversary of her birth.

Pope Francis canonized her parents, Louis and Zelie Martin, during the Synod of Bishops on the Family in 2015.

In his new exhortation, the pope praised Therese’s simplicity of faith, saying her insistence that “nothing but confidence” is the path to God’s love sums up “the genius of her spirituality and would suffice to justify the fact that she has been named a Doctor of the Church.”

Despite living in a cloister and never leaving the convent, Therese had a “missionary soul,” which Francis said is expressed most clearly in her insistence that she entered the convent “to save souls” and that she wanted to spend her time in heaven spreading God’s love on earth.

Therese’s reflections throughout her autobiography “Story of a Soul,” he said, illustrate “the fact that evangelization takes place by attraction, not by pressure or proselytism,” and that grace sets one free of “self-absorption” because it impels one toward love of others.

One of Therese’s most important insights is her “path of trust and love, also known as the way of spiritual childhood,” he said, saying this path is one that everyone can follow, “whatever their age or state in life.”

Using Therese’s image comparing her “little way” to an elevator lifting her to God, allowing her to “remain little” while still reaching the heights of God’s grace, Pope Francis said this is the path that “Jesus sets before the little and the poor, before everyone.”

“In place of a Pelagian notion of holiness, individualistic and elitist, more ascetic than mystical, that primarily emphasizes human effort, Therese always stresses the primacy of God’s work, his gift of grace,” he said.

Pope Francis insisted that Therese’s spirituality “is in no way opposed to the traditional Catholic teaching on the increase of grace, namely, that once gratuitously justified by sanctifying grace, we are changed and enabled to cooperate by our good works in a process of growth in holiness.”

At the heart of Therese’s teaching, he said, “is the realization that, since we are incapable of being certain about ourselves, we cannot be sure of our merits.”

“Hence, it is not possible to trust in our own efforts or achievements,” he said, saying, “It is most fitting, then, that we should place heartfelt trust not in ourselves but in the infinite mercy of a God who loves us unconditionally.”

Therese’s confidence in God goes beyond individual holiness and salvation, but rather, it has “an integral meaning that embraces the totality of concrete existence and finds application in our daily lives, where we are often assailed by fears, the desire for human security, the need to have everything under control,” he said.

Therese’s insistence on total abandonment to God, he said, sets one free from “obsessive calculations, constant worry about the future and fears that take away our peace.”

Francis also praised Therese’s understanding of God’s mercy and the ability of God’s love to overcome sin, as well as the emphasis she placed on charity, saying her repeated acts of love offered to God are “the key to her understanding of the Gospel.”

“This is the mystical life that, apart from any extraordinary phenomena, offers itself to all the faithful as a daily experience of love,” the pope said, saying Therese saw that “if the apocrypha are full of striking and amazing feats, the Gospels show us a lowly and poor life lived in the simplicity of faith.”

Pope Francis referred to Therese’s description in her autobiography of a Church whose heart was “burning with love,” meaning that love was the root of all vocations.

“This heart was not that of a triumphalistic Church, but of a loving, humble and merciful Church,” he said, saying, “this discovery of the heart of the Church is also a great source of light for us today.”

“It preserves us from being scandalized by the limitations and weaknesses of the ecclesiastical institution with its shadows and sins, and enables us to enter into the Church’s ‘heart burning with love,’” the pope said.

By persevering in her path of love and placing the good of others over her own personal happiness, Therese “arrived at her ultimate personal synthesis of the Gospel, one that began with complete trust and ended in total abandonment for the sake of other,” the pope said.

“It is trust that brings us to love and thus sets us free from fear. It is trust that helps us to stop looking to ourselves and enables us to put into God’s hands what he alone can accomplish,” he said, urging believers to ask for the gift of this trust.

Francis reiterated his invitation to return “to the freshness of the source,” meaning the Gospel, in order “to emphasize what is essential and indispensable.”

Therese’s “little way” is still timely, he said, saying that in an age dominated by focus on oneself and one’s personal interests, “Therese shows us the beauty of making our lives a gift.”

“At a time when the most superficial needs and desires are glorified, she testifies to the radicalism of the Gospel. In an age of individualism, she makes us discover the value of a love that becomes intercession for others. At a time when human beings are obsessed with grandeur and new forms of power, she points out to us the little way,” he said.

In an age where vast portions of humanity are cast aside, he said, Therese “teaches us the beauty of concern and responsibility for one another. In an age of indifference and self-absorption, Therese inspires us to be missionary disciples, captivated by the attractiveness of Jesus and the Gospel.”

Pope Francis closed his exhortation with a prayer to St. Therese, saying the Church “needs to radiate the brightness, the fragrance and the joy of the Gospel,” and asking her to help the Church, like her, to be increasingly confident “in God’s immense love for us, so that we may imitate each day your ‘little way’ of holiness.”

Follow Elise Ann Allen on X: @eliseannallen

APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION

C’EST LA CONFIANCE

OF THE HOLY FATHER

FRANCIS

ON CONFIDENCE IN THE MERCIFUL LOVE OF GOD

FOR THE 150th ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF

SAINT THERESE OF THE CHILD JESUS AND THE HOLY FACE

1. “C’est la confiance et rien que la confiance qui doit nous conduire ŕ l’Amour”. “It is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to Love”.[1]

2. These striking words of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face say it all. They sum up the genius of her spirituality and would suffice to justify the fact that she has been named a Doctor of the Church. Confidence, “nothing but confidence”, is the sole path that leads us to the Love that grants everything. With confidence, the wellspring of grace overflows into our lives, the Gospel takes flesh within us and makes us channels of mercy for our brothers and sisters.

3. It is confidence that sustains us daily and will enable us to stand before the Lord on the day when he calls us to himself: “In the evening of this life, I shall appear before you with empty hands, for I do not ask you, Lord, to count my works. All our justice is stained in your eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed in your own Justice and to receive from your Love the eternal possession of yourself”.[2]

4. Saint Therese is one of the best known and most beloved saints in our world. Like Saint Francis of Assisi, she is loved by non-Christians and nonbelievers as well. In addition, she has been recognized by UNESCO as one of the most significant figures for contemporary humanity.[3] We would do well to delve more deeply into her message as we commemorate the 150th anniversary of her birth in Alençon (2 January 1873) and the centenary of her beatification.[4] Yet I have not chosen to issue this Exhortation on either of those dates, or on her liturgical Memorial, so that this message may transcend those celebrations and be taken up as part of the spiritual treasury of the Church. Its publication on the liturgical Memorial of Saint Teresa of Avila is a way of presenting Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face as the mature fruit of the reform of the Carmel and of the spirituality of the great Spanish saint.

5. The earthly life of Saint Therese was brief, a mere twenty-four years, and completely ordinary, first in her family and then in the Carmel of Lisieux. The extraordinary burst of light and love that she radiated came to be known soon after her death, with the publication of her writings and thanks to the countless graces bestowed on the faithful who invoked her intercession.

6. The Church quickly recognized her great significance and the distinctiveness of her evangelical spirituality. Therese met Pope Leo XIII during a pilgrimage to Rome in 1887 and asked his permission to enter the Carmel at the age of fifteen. Not long after her death, Saint Pius X, sensing her spiritual grandeur, stated that she would become the greatest saint of modern times. Therese was declared Venerable in 1921 by Pope Benedict XV, who, in praising her virtues, saw them embodied in her “little way” of spiritual childhood.[5] She was beatified a century ago and then canonized on 17 May 1925 by Pope Pius XI, who thanked the Lord for granting that she be the first Blessed whom he raised to the honour of the altars and the first Saint whom he canonized.[6] In 1927, the same Pope declared her the Patroness of the Missions.[7] Therese was proclaimed one of the patron saints of France in 1944 by Venerable Pius XII,[8] who on several occasions developed the theme of spiritual childhood.[9] Saint Paul VI liked to recall that he was baptized on 30 September 1897, the day of her death, and on the centenary of her birth he wrote a Letter on her teaching to the Bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux.[10] On 2 June 1980, during his first Apostolic Journey to France, Saint John Paul II visited the Basilica dedicated to her, and in 1997 declared her a Doctor of the Church.[11] He also referred to Therese as “an expert in the scientia amoris”.[12] Pope Benedict XVI returned to the subject of her “science of love” and proposed it as “a guide for all, especially those in the people of God who carry out their ministry as theologians”. [13] Finally, in 2015, I had the joy of canonizing her parents, Louis and Zelie, during the Synod on the Family. More recently, I devoted one of my weekly General Audience talks to Saint Therese, as part of a cycle of catecheses on apostolic zeal.[14]

1. Jesus for others

7. In the name that Therese chose as a religious, Jesus stands out as the “Child” who manifests the mystery of the Incarnation, and the “Holy Face” of the one who surrendered himself completely on the Cross. She is “Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face”.

8. The name of Jesus was constantly on her lips, as an act of love, even to her last breath. She had also written these words in her cell: “Jesus is my one love”. It was her interpretation of the supreme statement of the New Testament: “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8.16).

A missionary soul

9. As with every authentic encounter with Christ, this experience of faith summoned her to mission. Therese could define her mission in these words: “I shall desire in heaven the same thing as I do now on earth: to love Jesus and to make him loved”.[15] She wrote that she entered Carmel “to save souls”.[16] In a word, she did not view her consecration to God apart from the pursuit of the good of her brothers and sisters. She shared the merciful love of the Father for his sinful son and the love of the Good Shepherd for the sheep who were lost, astray and wounded. For this reason, Therese is the Patroness of the missions and a model of evangelization.

10. The final pages of her Story of a Soul[17] are a missionary testament. They express her appreciation of the fact that evangelization takes place by attraction[18], not by pressure or proselytism. It is worthwhile reading her own words in this regard: “Draw me, we shall run after you in the odour of your ointments. O Jesus! It is not even necessary to say: When drawing me, draw the souls whom I love! This simple statement, ‘Draw me’ suffices. I understand, Lord, that when a soul allows herself to be captivated by the odour of your ointments, she cannot run alone; all the souls whom she loves follow in her train; this is done without constraint, without effort, it is a natural consequence of her attraction for you. Just as a torrent, throwing itself with impetuosity into the ocean, drags after it everything it encounters in its passage, in the same way, O Jesus, the soul who plunges into the shoreless ocean of your Love, draws with her all the treasures she possesses. Lord, you know it, I have no other treasures than the souls it has pleased you to unite to mine”.[19]

11. In this passage, Therese quotes the words of the bride to the bridegroom in the Song of Songs (1:3-4), following the profound interpretation found in the writings of the doctors of Carmel, Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross. The bridegroom is Jesus, the Son of God who united himself to our humanity in the Incarnation and redeemed it on the Cross. There, from his open side, he gave birth to the Church, his beloved bride, for which he gave his life (cf. Eph 5:25). What is striking is that Therese, conscious of her own impending death, did not approach this mystery merely as a source of personal consolation, but in a fervent apostolic spirit.

The grace that sets us free from self-absorption

2. The little way of trust and love

14. One of the most important insights of Therese for the benefit of the entire People of God is her “little way”, the path of trust and love, also known as the way of spiritual childhood. Everyone can follow this way, whatever their age or state in life. It is the way that the heavenly Father reveals to the little ones (cf. Mt 11:25).

15. In the Story of a Soul,[22] Therese tells how she discovered the little way: “I can, then, in spite of my littleness, aspire to holiness. It is impossible for me to grow up, and so I must bear with myself such as I am, with all my imperfections. But I want to seek out a means of going to heaven by a little way, a way that is very straight, very short, and totally new”.[23]

16. To describe that way, she uses the image of an elevator: “the elevator which must raise me to heaven is your arms, O Jesus! And for this, I had no need to grow up, but rather I had to remain little and become this more and more”.[24] Little, incapable of being confident in herself, and yet firmly secure in the loving power of the Lord’s arms.

17. This is the “sweet way of love”[25] that Jesus sets before the little and the poor, before everyone. It is the way of true happiness. In place of a Pelagian notion of holiness,[26] individualistic and elitist, more ascetic than mystical, that primarily emphasizes human effort, Therese always stresses the primacy of God’s work, his gift of grace. As a result, she could say: “I always feel, however, the same bold confidence of becoming a great saint, because I don’t count on my merits, since I have none, but I trust in him who is Virtue and Holiness. God alone, content with my weak efforts, will raise me to himself and make me a saint, clothing me in his infinite merits”.[27]

Apart from all merit

18. This way of speaking is in no way opposed to the traditional Catholic teaching on the increase of grace, namely, that once gratuitously justified by sanctifying grace, we are changed and enabled to cooperate by our good works in a process of growth in holiness. Through this “elevation”, we can possess real merits by virtue of the development of the grace received.

19. Therese, for her part, wished to highlight the primacy of God’s action; she encourages us to have complete confidence as we contemplate the love of Christ poured out to the end. At the heart of her teaching is the realization that, since we are incapable of being certain about ourselves,[28] we cannot be sure of our merits. Hence, it is not possible to trust in our own efforts or achievements. The Catechism chose to quote the words that Saint Therese addressed to the Lord: “I will appear before you with empty hands”, [29] in order to express that “the saints have always had a lively awareness that their merits were pure grace”.[30] This conviction gives rise to a joyful and tender gratitude.

20. It is most fitting, then, that we should place heartfelt trust not in ourselves but in the infinite mercy of a God who loves us unconditionally and has already given us everything in the Cross of Jesus Christ.[31] For this reason, Therese never uses the expression, common enough in her day, “I will become a saint”.

21. Even so, her boundless confidence encourages all who feel frail, limited and sinful to let themselves be elevated and transformed in order to reach greater heights. “If all weak and imperfect souls felt what the least of souls feels, that is, the soul of your little Therese, not one would despair of reaching the summit of the mount of love. Jesus does not demand great actions from us, but simply surrender and gratitude”.[32]

22. This insistence of Therese on God’s initiative leads her, when speaking of the Eucharist, to put first not her desire to receive Jesus in Holy Communion, but rather the desire of Jesus to unite himself to us and to dwell in our hearts.[33] In her Act of Oblation to Merciful Love, saddened by her inability to receive communion each day, she tells Jesus: “Remain in me as in a tabernacle”.[34] Her gaze remained fixed not on herself and her own needs, but on Christ, who loves, seeks, desires and dwells within.

Daily abandonment

23. The confidence that Therese proposes has to do with more than our individual sanctification and salvation. It has an integral meaning that embraces the totality of concrete existence and finds application in our daily lives, where we are often assailed by fears, the desire for human security, the need to have everything under control. Here we see the importance of her invitation to a holy “abandonment”.

24. The complete confidence that becomes an abandonment in Love sets us free from obsessive calculations, constant worry about the future and fears that take away our peace. In her final days, Therese insisted on this: “We who run in the way of love shouldn’t be thinking of suffering that can take place in the future; it’s a lack of confidence”.[35] If we are in the hands of a Father who loves us without limits, this will be the case come what may; we will be able to move beyond whatever may happen to us and, in one way or another, his plan of love and fullness will come to fulfilment in our lives.

Fire burning in the night

25. Therese experienced faith most powerfully and surely in the midst of the dark night and especially amid the darkness of Calvary. Her witness culminated in the final months of her life, in the great “trial against the faith”[36] that began at Easter of 1896. In her account,[37] she directly relates this period of testing to the painful reality of the atheism of her time. The last years of the nineteenth century were the “golden age” of modern atheism as a philosophical and ideological system. When she wrote that Jesus allowed her soul “to be invaded by the thickest darkness”,[38] she was evoking the darkness of atheism and the rejection of the Christian faith. In union with Jesus, who took upon himself all the darkness of the sin of the world when he willed to drink from the cup of the Passion, Therese came to appreciate its underlying sense of despair and sheer emptiness.[39]

26. Yet darkness cannot overcome the light: Therese had been conquered by the One who came as light into the world (cf. Jn 12:46).[40] Her account reveals the heroic nature of her faith, her triumph in spiritual combat with the most powerful temptations. She felt herself a sister to atheists, seated with them at table, like Jesus who sat with sinners (cf. Mt 9:10-13). She interceded for them, ever renewing her own act of faith, in constant loving communion with the Lord: “I run toward my Jesus. I tell him I am ready to shed my blood to the last drop to profess faith in the existence of heaven. I tell him, too, that I am happy not to enjoy this beautiful heaven on this earth so that he will open it for all eternity to poor unbelievers”.[41]

27. Together with faith, Therese experienced a deep and boundless trust in God’s infinite mercy: “confidence that must lead us to Love”.[42] Even in her darkness, she experienced the complete trust of a child that finds refuge, unafraid, in the embrace of its father and mother. For Therese, the one God is revealed above all else in his mercy, which is the key to understanding everything else that can be said of him: “To me he has granted his infinite mercy and through it I contemplate and adore the other divine perfections! All of these perfections appear to be resplendent with love, even his Justice (and perhaps this even more so than the others) seems to me clothed in love”.[43] This is one of the loftiest insights of Therese, one of her major contributions to the entire People of God. In an extraordinary way, she probed the depths of divine mercy, and drew from them the light of her limitless hope.

A most firm hope

28. Before entering the Carmel, Therese had felt a remarkable spiritual closeness to one of the most unfortunate of men, the criminal Henri Pranzini, sentenced to death for a triple murder for which he was unrepentant.[44] By having Masses offered for him and praying with complete confidence for his salvation, she was convinced that she was drawing him ever closer to the blood of Jesus, and she told God that she was sure that at the last moment he would pardon him “even if he went to his death without any signs of repentance”. As the reason for her certainty, she stated: “I was absolutely confident in the mercy of Jesus”. [45] How great was her emotion when she learned that Pranzini, after mounting the scaffold, “suddenly, seized by an inspiration, turned, took hold of the crucifix the priest was holding out to him and kissed the sacred wounds three times!”[46] This intense experience of hoping against all hope proved fundamental for her: “After this unique grace, my desire to save souls grows each day”.[47]

29. Therese was conscious of the tragic reality of sin, yet she remained constantly immersed in the mystery of Christ, certain that “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rom 5:20). The sin of the world is great but not infinite, whereas the merciful love of the Redeemer is indeed infinite. Therese testifies to the definitive victory of Jesus, through his passion, death and resurrection, over all the powers of evil. Filled with confidence, she dared to explain: “Jesus, allow me to save very many souls; let no soul be lost today… Jesus, pardon me if I say anything I should not say. I only want to give you joy and to console you”.[48] This now leads us to consider another aspect of the breath of fresh air that is the message of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.

12. We see something similar when Therese speaks of the working of the Holy Spirit, which immediately takes on a missionary hue: “That is my prayer. I ask Jesus to draw me to the flames of his love, to unite me so closely to him that he live and act in in me. I feel that the more the fire of love burns within my heart, the more I shall say ‘Draw me’: the more also the souls who will approach me (poor little piece of iron, useless if I withdraw from the divine furnace), the more these souls will run swiftly in the odour of the ointments of their Beloved, for a soul that is burning with love cannot remain inactive”.[20]

13. In the heart of Therese, the grace of baptism became this impetuous torrent flowing into the ocean of Christ’s love and dragging in its wake a multitude of brothers and sisters. This is what happened, especially after her death. It was her promised “shower of roses”.[21]

3. I will be love

30. As “greater” than faith and hope, charity will never pass away (cf. 1 Cor 13:8-13). It is the supreme gift of the Holy Spirit and “the mother and the root of all the virtues”.[49]

Charity as a personal attitude of love

Sursa: www.InSideTheVatican.com

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