Thoughts of Saint Thérèse of the Child JesusThérèse, de Lisieux, Saint
Religion
Thoughts of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus
Thérèse, de Lisieux, Saint
Meditations
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.'_ [5] 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
[5] Job, xiii, 15.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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