Icon of St. Cecilia, patron of music, by Brother Mickey McGrath, OSFS. Available from Trinity Stores; for information, click on the icon.

For Celine's 25th birthday, April 28, 1894, Therese wrote her third poem, and her first long one.  Although it is now titled "Saint Cecilia," (ACL),* the copy she sent to her sister bore the title "The Melody of Saint Cecilia."

 Who was St. Cecilia for Therese?

 Cecilia was an early Roman martyr.  Although many of the stories about her life are legend, her existence and martyrdom are historical facts.  Therese tells us in Story of a Soul that her devotion to Cecilia dates from her pilgrimage to Rome in November 1887.  When  she visited Cecilia's tomb and the site of her house, transformed into a church at her request and learned that Cecilia was named patron of music

"in memory of the virginal song she sang to her heavenly Spouse hidden in the depths of her heart, I felt more than devotion for her; it was the real tenderness of a friend. She became my saint of predilection, my intimate confidante. Everything in her thrilled me, especially her abandonment, her limitless confidence . . . 

Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St.  Therese of Lisieux, tr. John Clarke, O.C.D.  Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, 3rd ed., 1996. 

Read Therese's full account of her visit to the tomb and church of St. Cecilia on the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux. 

Cecilia, a consecrated virgin, was to be married against her will to the pagan Valerian, and, while the instruments sounded to celebrate her nuptials, she went on singing to the Lord in her heart, as the Office for her feast says.  This abandonment captured the imagination of the 14-year-old Therese instantly. 

Why did Therese write about Saint Cecilia for Celine?

Celine was the Martin sister who stayed longest in "the world."  She had managed a household, cared (with the aid of Leonie till 1893) for her sick father, and refused two proposals of marriage.  While participating in the active social life of the Guerin family, she had made a private vow of chastity.  She would stay with Louis until his death.  As the Lisieux Carmel was not likely to accept a fourth nun from the same family, what she would do then was unclear.  Faced with the dilemma of Celine's future, Therese explored Cecilia's spiritualitym more deeply.  She had proposed the abandonment of Cecilia as a model to her sister in her extraordinarily rich letter of October 1893 for Celine's feast:  "the dear little St. Cecilia, what a model for the little lyre of Jesus . .  ."   (ACL)

Letters of Saint Therese of Lisieux, Vol. II, tr. John Clarke, O.C.D.  Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, 1988, pp. 826-829.  Read Therese's full letter on the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.

Now, having written only two poems, she produces a "symphony" for her sister in "Saint Cecilia"  (ACL).  The poem's themes, dear to  Therese, show the connection between virginity, marriage, and martyrdom.  Above all, the poem celebrates Cecilia's abandonment in lines that foreshadow  the way of confidence and love Therese will discover soon after Celine enters in September:

You sang this sublime canticle to the Lord:
"Keep my heart pure, Jesus, my tender Spouse!.."
"Ineffable abandonment! Divine melody!
You disclose your love through your celestial song.
Love that fears not, that falls asleep and forgets itself
On the Heart of God, like a little child... 

Your chaste union will give birth to souls

Who will seek no other spouse but Jesus.

What happened to the poem later?

During the next three years, Therese shortened and rewrote this poem, sending copies to her spiritual brothers, Adolphe Roulland and Maurice Belliere.  Her extensive editorial work shows how important she thought this early poem was.  In 1897, she produced a "second edition" with the intention of its being distributed after her death, and this edition is the one ultimately published.  Thanks to the generosity of the Washington Province of Discalced Carmelite Friars, you can read the poem online on the incomparable Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.   (In this article, the citation ACL indicates that the source is the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux). 

For a fuller understanding of Therese's poetry, I recommend the book The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux, tr. Donald Kinney, O,C.D.  (Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Discalced Carmelite Friars, 1996).  To grasp the context and the full richness of Therese's poetry, the introductions and notes to each poem in this book, which are not available online, are invaluable.

[Purchasing through the links in this article supports this Web site].

 Celine, left, with Marie Guerin at La Musse in the summer of 1894. Photo courtesy of the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux

 In 1894, Celine was living with her father in a small house on rue Labbey, across a little alley from the home of her uncle, Isidore Guerin.  Leonie was making her second attempt at the Visitation at Caen, and Celine's other three sisters, Marie, Pauline, and Therese, were nuns at the Lisieux Carmel.  Celine usually visited them once a week.  But the Carmelites were not allowed to write letters to a person they had seen that week in the speakroom. So, as her birthday approached, Celine gave up the visit in order to receive a birthday letter from each sister.  Every year Therese wrote a special letter.

 Therese was 21 in 1894.  She wrote to Celine on Thursday, April 26, for Celine's birthday on Saturday, April 28: her letter accompanies a poem she had written for the occasion [more on that tomorrow]. She speaks of Celine's role as the caregiver for their sick father, who would die on July 29:  "You are now the visible angel of him who will soon go to be united to the angels of the heaveniy city!"  Then she gives a short, rich, and powerful commentary on the gospel story in which Jesus, after he rose from the dead, found that the disciples had "worked hard all night long and caught nothing," and filled the basket with so much fish it almost broke the nets.   Since in 1894 Easter Sunday fell on March 25, Therese could have meditated on this story for a month already.  Please read Therese's birthday letter to Celine on the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.  

Therese Martin entered Carmel on Monday, April 9, 1888.  That year April 9 was the feast of the Annunciation, which had been transferred from March 25 because of Lent.  This photo essay is to celebrate the anniversary of her entrance.

Therese a few days before she entered on April 9, 1888

Let's listen to some accounts of her entrance.  First, Saint Therese's own:

"On the morning of the great day, casting a last look upon Les Buissonnets, that beautiful cradle of my childhood which I was never to see again, I left on my dear King's arm to climb Mount Carmel. Chapel entrance of Lisieux Carmel photographed shortly after Therese's death

 As on the evening before, the whole family was reunited to hear Holy Mass and receive Communion.  As soon as Jesus descended into the hearts of my relatives, I heard nothing but sobs around me. 

The sanctuary of the chapel of the Lisieux Carmel in the time of St. Therese

 I was the only one who didn't shed any tears, but my heart was beating so violently it seemed impossible to walk when they signaled for me to come to the enclosure door.  I advanced, however, asking myself whether I was going to die because of the beating of my heart!  Ah! what a moment that was.  One would have to experience it to know what it is.

Louis Martin, probably at age 58, about 1881

 My emotion was not noticed exteriorly.  After embracing all the members of the family, I knelt down before my matchless Father for his blessing, and to give it to me he placed himself upon his knees and blessed me, tears flowing down his cheeks.  It was a spectacle to make the angels smile, this spectacle of an old man presenting his child, still in the springtime of life, to the Lord!

Space where Louis knelt to bless Therese when she entered, April 9, 1888A few moments later, the doors of the holy ark closed upon me, and there I was received by the dear Sisters who embraced me.  Ah! they had acted as mothers to me in my childhood, and I was going to take them as models for my actions from now on.  My desires were at last accomplished, and my soul experienced a peace so sweet, so deep, it would be impossible to express it." 

(Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of LIsieux, tr. John Clarke, O.C.D.  Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 3rd ed., 1996.  Used with permission).

Canon Delatroette

St. Therese writes "A few moments later."  She tactfully omits what other witnesses report happened in those few moments.  Canon Jean-Baptiste Delatroette, the parish priest of St. Jacques, was the ecclesiastical superior of the Lisieux Carmel (the priest charged with supervising, from the outside, this community of women religious).  He had bitterly opposed Therese's entrance, believing her too young, but was overruled by his bishop, who left the decision up to the prioress.  Before Therese crossed the threshold, and in the presence of her father and her sisters, Canon Delatroette announced "Well, my Reverend Mothers, you can sing a Te Deum.  As the delegate of Monseigneur the bishop, I present to you this child of fifteen whose entrance you so much desired.  I trust that she will not disappoint your hopes, but I remind you that, if she does, the responsibility is yours, and yours alone."  He could not have foreseen that twenty-two years later Pope St. Pius X would call this girl "the greatest saint of modern times."

Much less well known than Saint Therese's account of her entrance is Celine's description of her experience of the same moment. Celine and Leonie were present with their father at the short ceremony. 

Celine and Leonie the year after Therese enteredAfter writing of how inseparable she and Therese had been, Celine continued:

It took much yet to get to Monday, April 9, 1888, where the little Queen left her own, after we heard Mass together in the Carmel, to join her two older sisters in the cloister.  When I gave her a farewell kiss at the door of the monastery, I was faltering and had to support myself against the wall, and yet I did not cry, I wanted to give her to Jesus with all my heart, and He in turn clothed me in his strength.  Ah! how much I needed this divine strength!  At the moment when Thérèse entered the holy ark, the cloister door which shut between us was the faithful picture of what really happened, as a wall had arisen between our two lives."  (from the obituary circular of Celine Martin, Sister Genevieve of the Holy Face, copyright Lisieux Carmel; translation copyright Maureen O'Riordan 2013).

The enclosure door which shut between Celine and Therese on April 9, 1888Saint Therese continues, writing of her impressions that first day:  "Everything thrilled me; I felt as though I was transported into a desert; our little cell, above all, filled me with joy."  St. Therese occupied three cells in Carmel, and until now few people have seen even a photograph of that first cell, for the photo commonly published was of Therese's last cell.  Thanks to the generosity of the Archives of the Lisieux Carmel, we can at last see early photos of the room Therese saw that day.  It was on the corridor near the garden:

The corridor with the door to Therese's first cell standing openThis cell looked out on the roof of the "dressmaking building" where habits were made:

 Carmelite postulants wore a secular dress with a little capelet, and a small net bonnet on the head.  The photograph below of Marie Guerin as a postulant (she entered August 15, 1895) shows how St. Therese and all postulants dressed until they received the habit.

 Learn more about the Carmelite life Therese began to live on April 9, 1888.

The feast of the Annunciation is usually celebrated on March 25, just nine months before the feast of Christmas.  Celine wrote that Therese loved the feast on March 25 "because that's when Jesus was smallest."  Therese began her Carmelite life on the feast of Mary's "Yes" to her Lord.  May each of us enter every day of our own lives with Therese's fervor and joy, for every day is a doorway for each of us to intimacy with God, to wholeness, and to sainthood.

Note: the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux are being digitized and posted online in English at the Web site of the Archives of Carmel of Lisieux.  All the above photos are displayed courtesy of that site.  Please visit it here to see thousands of pages of photographs, documents, and information about St. Therese, her writings, her family, her environment, the nuns with whom she lived, and her influence in the world.  It is a true doorway to Saint Therese!

Let’s look at the life of Therese and her family 125 years ago, in April 1892.

Isidore Guerin's house in Lisieux (rear entrance)

 Life in the Lisieux Carmel in early 1892

From the first few months of 1892, few documents have been published.  The ranks of the Carmelite monastery had been depleted.  On December 5, 1891, Mother Genevieve of St. Teresa,1 the revered foundress, had died.  On December 26 the epidemic of influenza that swept over France reached the Carmel.  In eight days the three eldest nuns died: the Lisieux Carmel’s first postulant, Sister St. Joseph of Jesus (ACL); the subprioress,  Sister Febronie of the Holy Childhood (ACL), who found Therese’s belief that souls who trusted in God’s mercy would not go to purgatory excessively bold;  and Sister Madeleine of the Blessed Sacrament (ACL), the senior lay-sister, who had “a heart of gold.”  In this crisis, in which all but three of the nuns were bedridden, Therese, who turned 19 on January 2, 1892, showed such presence of mind in arranging the funerals, serving as sacristan for the Masses, and discharging other responsibilities that Canon Delatroette (ACL), the priest appointed ecclesiastical superior of the Carmel, who had thought her too young to enter at age fifteen, changed his mind and said prophetically “She shows great promise for this community.” 

Early in the year Father Pierre Faucon (ACL) completed his term as extraordinary confessor (the priest who, under canon law, visited the Carmel occasionally to give the nuns some variety and freedom in choosing a confessor other than their chaplain).  He was replaced by Father Eugene-Auguste Baillon (ACL).

The community's triennial elections should have been held in February, but, in view of the circumstances, the Carmelites obtained permission to extend the term of Mother Marie de Gonzague as prioress until February 1893. 

The correspondence of the Martin-Guerin family shows that Isidore Guerin had decided that Louis Martin could now return to his family (ACL) from the Bon Sauveur asylum in Caen, where he had been interned since February 12, 1889.  He would be brought back to Lisieux on May 10, 1892.

Before that, a big social event happened in the circle of the family of Therese’s uncle and aunt, Isidore and Celine Guerin (ACL): the wedding of Celine’s nephew, Henry Maudelonde (ACL), a former suitor of Therese’s sister Celine.    

The life of Leonie and Celine Martin with the Guerin family, beginning in 1889

Therese’s uncle, Isidore Guerin, had married Celine Fournet (ACL),  a daughter of the town’s leading family.  Her sister Rosalie (ACL) had married Cesar Maudelonde (ACL), with whom she had five children.  The Guerin and Maudelonde families were intimate, so that Therese and her sisters grew up as friends of the Maudelonde girls, too.  No photo of Henry has been found yet, but the Web site of the archives of the Carmel of Lisieux shows a photograph of the three Maudelonde daughters (ACL) with their mother and members of the Guerin family in 1893.

With the death of Celine Guerin’s cousin, M. David, in 1888, Isidore (through the property laws then in effect, which awarded a married woman’s inheritance to her husband) received a substantial fortune from his wife’s family.  This changed his way of life.  He sold the pharmacy (ACL), moved from the living quarters over the pharmacy to a bigger house in Lisieux (ACL), and every summer, in a kind of time-share, split with the Maudelondes the use of the Chateau La Musse (ACL), near Evreux.  (He had inherited the chateau jointly with them).  He gave even more energy to charitable and religious work and to writing to defend the Church.

Isidore’s new position gave him more leisure and placed more social demands on his family.  Leonie and Celine Martin became members of his family in May 1889, when they returned from Caen, where they had boarded for a few months at the beginning of Louis’s hospitalization at the Bon Sauveur asylum there.  Their uncle’s social position and his intimacy with the Maudelonde family obliged both young women to participate in the rather formal and structured social life then the custom for families like the Guerins.  This was in marked contrast to the sheltered life they had led at the little villa of Les Buissonnets, located some way from the center of town, where they had seen few people socially except the Guerins

Henry Maudelonde's courtship of Celine Martin (1890-1891)

In Celine’s memoirs (ACL) at p. 96, she notes that the Maudelonde young people were of an age to be married.  

“I arrived in the midst of this group of joyful and charming young people. It was a veritable change from life at Les Buissonnets . . .  One of the nieces of my aunt was engaged and there was an exchange of dinners between the two families.  . . . We found ourselves, therefore, often in the company of the nephews of my aunt. One of them . . . . developed an affectionate regard for me. Whether at his house, or at our house, he always managed to be close to me. Since he strongly protested when he was not so placed, one finished up finally relenting and placing him next to me at the dinner table so as to avoid making a scene.” 

Henry Maudelonde (1864-1937), five years Celine’s senior, was a lawyer at Caen.  His pursuit of Celine seems to have dated chiefly from 1890 and the first half of 1891.  At the wedding of Celine’s cousin, Jeanne Guerin (ACL), on October 1, 1890, Celine was a maid of honor.  Henry spent all day next to her and finally asked her aunt for permission to kiss her.  Then, on July 23, 1891, Therese wrote to Celine in terms that suggest that Henry had just made a definite proposal of marriage:  “The solicitor [pun on his profession] really made me laugh.  One must admit that he is not shy to come seeking the King of heaven’s fiancee.”  Letters of Saint Therese of Lisieux, Volume II, tr. John Clarke, OCD (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1988), LT 130, p. 792.  Therese never doubted that Celine was called to Carmel, and she firmly resisted the idea of marriage for Celine.  Celine, who had already refused a proposal on the night of Therese’s entrance, was attracted by the idea of marriage as well as by the cloister, and this posed a severe internal conflict for her.

But in 1889 she had made a private vow of chastity, and Henry finally must have accepted her refusal, for he became engaged to Marie Asseline. 

Henry Maudelonde's wedding in Caen, April 20, 1892

Leonie received a letter from her cousin Jeanne Guerin La Neele (ACL) (who now lived in Caen with her husband), written April 11, describing the elaborate preparations for this wedding on April 20.

Celine is suddenly, mysteriously unable to dance

Henry Maudelonde’s wedding was the occasion at which Celine was unable to dance.  Tberese recounts in Story of a Soul (ACL) how agitated she was at the thought of Celine’s consenting to dance at this party.  Celine’s memoir (ACL) shows (at pages 96-97) that Therese was vehement in urging her not to dance.  Perhaps Therese considered that a young unmarried woman’s consenting to dance was tantamount to announcing that she was on the marriage market, or perhaps she could not stand the thought of a young man's touching her sister.  Therese, who seldom cried, was so upset that she wept for a long time at the mere prospect of Celine’s dancing, and begged God to prevent it. Her reaction to a formal dance in public at a wedding that united two respectable families seems rather hysterical.  But, sure enough, when the evening came, Celine could not refuse the invitation, but found herself unable to dance and merely walked through the dance.  Her partner was embarrassed; he disappeared and did not return.  Therese said the incident “made me grow in confidence and love for the One who set his seal on my forehead and had imprinted it at the same time upon that of my dear Celine.”  (Story of a Soul, 82r).   

What happened to Celine's second suitor?

Marie and Henry Maudelonde had two children together, but Henry was left a widower in 1895.  He married again in 1899 and had three more children: an interesting contrast with Celine’s first suitor, Albert Quesnel, who, after Celine refused him, became a priest. Celine was the only one of the Martin girls to whom anyone is known to have proposed marriage.

[Note: I am especially grateful to the Lisieux Carmel for digitizing its archives.  I encourage you to visit the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux, which tells us so much about the background of Therese's life].

This is an interactive article.  To see photographs and background for the persons and events I mention, please click on the links in this article.

1 This link leads to the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.  In this article, all links to that site are indicated by the notation "ACL" next to the text link.  

Learn more:

To learn more about this period in Therese's life, please see the links above and these books:

Therese's own recollections, at folios 78r-82r

Are you interested in learning more about Therese than she tells in Story of a Soul?  I highly recommend Guy Gaucher's indispensable complement to Story of a Soul:

and Therese's letters and those of her family, with rich introductions and notes:

Finally, a biography of Celine by Stephane-Joseph Piat:

 Purchases through these links support the Web site.  Thank you.

The Abysses of Love and Mercy of the Heart of Jesus:
St. Therese of Lisieux and the Sacred Heart

"Sacred Heart" icon by Michael O'Neill McGrath. OSFS. Available from Trinity Icon Stores.

The devotion to the Sacred Heart in 19th-century France

 Basilica of the Sacred Heart at MontmartreThérèse Martin grew up in the Church of late 19^th century France, in which the cult of the Sacred Heart was omnipresent, a cult of reparation shaped most recently by the humiliation of France during the Franco-Prussian war.  Her family’s spiritual director, Father Almire Pichon, was called an apostle of the Sacred Heart.  Her sister Marie took “of the Sacred Heart” as her religious name, and the Carmelite monastery Thérèse entered was dedicated to the Sacred Heart.  In 1887 Thérèse participated in a pilgrimage to Rome intended to show the French church’s loyalty to the embattled Pope Leo XIII on his priestly jubilee.  With the other pilgrims, before leaving Paris, Thérèse was consecrated to the Sacred Heart in the crypt of the unfinished Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Montmartre.  (This text link leads to my detailed article about the events of that day).  Later she sent her gold bracelet to form part of the large monstrance at the basilica.  And, like all the pilgrims, she wore the badge of the Sacred Heart. 

The Sacred Heart for Therese:  "The Heart of my Spouse is mine alone"

But Thérèse had no interest whatever in any cult of the Sacred Heart which was focused on making reparation for the outrages of sin.  Nor did she relate to the Sacred Heart as a national symbol.  The pilgrim Thérèse was seeking only Jesus.   She appropriated the Heart of Jesus in an intensely personal and relational way.  For Thérèse the Heart of Jesus is always for her, and it always seeks a response from her heart.  At fifteen she called Jesus “Him whose heart beats in unison with my own.”[1]  At seventeen she wrote to her sister Céline, who was at Paray-le-Monial with their sister Leonie for the second centenary of the death of then-Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, who received visions of the Sacred Heart:

Pray to the Sacred Heart; you know that I myself do not see the Sacred Heart as everybody else.[2]  I think that the heart of my Spouse is mine alone, just as mine is His alone,[3] and I speak to Him then in the solitude of this delightful heart to heart, while waiting to contemplate Him one day face to face. . .  [4]

June 1895: Merciful Love

In June 1895, the “year of the Sacred Heart” for Thérèse, she had a new experience of the heart of God:

I was thinking about the souls who offer themselves as victims of God’s Justice in order to turn away the punishments reserved to sin­ners, drawing them upon themselves.  This offering seemed great and very generous to me, but I was far from feeling attracted to making it.  From the depths of my heart, I cried out:

"O my God!  Will Your Justice alone find souls willing to immolate themselves as victims? Does not Your Merciful Love need them too? . . . .  On every side this love is unknown, rejected. . . . . .  O my God!  Is Your disdained Love going to remain closed up within Your Heart? It seems to me that if You were to find souls offering themselves as victims of holocaust to Your Love, You would consume them rapidly; it seems to me, too, that You would be happy not to hold back the waves of infinite tenderness within You.[5]

 Thérèse experienced God not as outraged justice exacting atonement from her but as rejected love arousing her compassion and inviting her to be a channel of God’s infinite love to humanity. 

1895: Poem "To The Sacred Heart of Jesus"

In her poem “To the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” written either in June or in October 1895 for her sister, Marie of the Sacred Heart, Thérèse returns to many of the themes of her “Offering of myself as a victim of Holocaust to Merciful Love.”[6]   The editors of her poetry write:

 “Thérèse does not linger over the symbol of Christ’s Heart wounded by the lance, which was so popular in her day.  She goes straight to the reality: the loving Person of Jesus, his deep feelings, and the love that fills his Heart.”[7]

She speaks of the heart her own heart desires: 

I need a heart burning with tenderness

Who will be my support forever,

Who loves everything in me, even my weakness…

And who never leaves me day or night.”[8]

She finds this heart in the humanity of Jesus and in the Eucharist:

You heard me, only Friend whom I love.

To ravish my heart, you became man.

You shed your blood, what a supreme mystery!...

And you still live for me on the Altar.

Deprived of palpable consolation, she can rest on the Sacred Heart:

If I cannot see the brilliance of your Face

Or hear your sweet voice,

O my God, I can live by your grace,

I can rest on your Sacred Heart!

The Heart is not a distant symbol to her: it is all her joy.

O Heart of Jesus, treasure of tenderness,

You Yourself are my happiness, my only hope.

You who knew how to charm my tender youth,

Stay near me till the last night.

She does not propitiate the Heart, but always locates herself inside it:

It’s in your ever-infinite goodness

That I want to lose myself, O Heart of Jesus!

The Heart of Jesus does not demand atonement; it simply burns with love.  Faced with her human weakness and the justice of the law, Thérèse takes refuge in that heart, which not only protects her but also is itself her virtue (reminiscent of her offering of herself:  “I beg You, O my God, to be Yourself my Sanctity!”[9]):

Ah! I know well all our righteousness

Is worthless in your sight.

To give value to my sacrifices,

I want to cast them into your Divine Heart.

I do not fear, my virtue is You!...

You did not find your angels without blemish.

In the midst of lightning you gave your law!...

I hide myself in your Sacred Heart, Jesus.

Thérèse’s confidence reaches its height in her daring prayer choosing the Heart of God as her purgatory and asking to go straight to the Heaven of that Heart:

To be able to gaze on your glory,

I know we have to pass through fire.

So I, for my purgatory,

Choose your burning love, O heart of my God!

On leaving this life, my exiled soul

Would like to make an act of pure love,

And then, flying away to Heaven, its Homeland,

Enter straightaway into your Heart.

 In another poem she wrote in October 1895, she audaciously prays to love Jesus with His own heart:

Remember that on earth I want

To console you for the forgetfulness of sinners.

My only Love, grant my prayer.

Ah! give me a thousand hearts to love you.

But that is still too little, Jesus, Beauty Supreme.

Give me your divine Heart Itself to love you.[10]

Several months later she again appropriates the Heart of her Spouse “to love more tenderly.”  She writes to her Visitandine sister Léonie:

Dear Sister, I love you a thousand times more tenderly than ordinary sisters love each other, for I can love you with the Heart of our celestial Spouse.[11]

Far from demanding reparation, the Heart of Jesus (“more than maternal”) repairs us.  In 1896 Thérèse writes that this heart “restores innocence:” 

O you who knew how to create the mother’s heart,

I find in you the tenderest of Fathers!

My only Love, Jesus, Eternal Word,

For me your heart is more than maternal.

***

Your heart that preserves and restores innocence

Won’t betray my trust!^[12]

Thérèse writes often of “resting” or “sleeping” on the heart of Jesus

And if sometimes Jesus sleeps,

You will rest beside Him.

His Divine Heart that always keeps vigil

Will serve as your sweet support.[13]

The little child . . . sleeps always on the Heart of the Great General. Close to this Heart, we learn courage, and especially confidence.[14]

June 1897: the Heart of Jesus and the heart of Mary Magdalene

Three months before her death, writing to Maurice Bellière, the seminarian who was her spiritual brother, Thérèse gives her most powerful witness to her experience of the Heart of Jesus:

When I see Magdalene walking up before the many guests, washing with her tears the feet of her adored Master, whom she is touching for the first time, I feel that her heart has understood the abysses of love and mercy of the Heart of Jesus, and, sinner though she is, this Heart of love was not only disposed to pardon her but to lavish on her the blessings of His divine intimacy, to lift her to the highest summits of contemplation.

Ah! dear little Brother, ever since I have been given the grace to understand also the love of the Heart of Jesus, I admit that it has expelled all fear from my heart.  The remembrance of my faults humbles me, draws me never to depend on my strength which is only weakness, but this remembrance speaks to me of mercy and love still more.[15]

On July 17, 1897 she ends her last letter to Léonie, promising to be her sister’s messenger to the Sacred Heart:

You want me to pray in heaven to the Sacred Heart for you.  Be sure that I shall not forget to deliver your messages to Him and to ask all that will be necessary for you to become a great saint.[16]

The next day Thérèse writes once more to Maurice Bellière about the heart of Jesus.  For more than a century her message has echoed in the heart of humanity, as it echoes today:

Ah! how I would like to make you understand the tenderness of the Heart of Jesus, what He expects from you![17]

 ______________________________

[1] Excerpt from LT 67, letter from Thérèse to her aunt, Mme. Guerin, November 18, 1888.  Letters of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Volume I, 1877-1890.  Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1982, p 478.  The next three notes are drawn from that work.

 [2] “Crowned with thorns, with a big cross set up in the center,” as Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart wrote to Celine on October 13, quoting P. Pichon.

 [3] See Canticle of Canticles 2:16.

 [4] Excerpt from LT 122, letter from Thérèse to Cèline, October 14, 1890.  The second centenary of Blessed Margaret Mary’s death, October 17, 1890, attracted crowds to Paray-le-Monial.  Letters of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Volume II, 1890-1897. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1988, pp. 709-710.

 [5] Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, tr. John Clarke, O.C.D., 3^rd edition.  Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1996, pp.180-181.

 [6] This prayer is often called the “Act of Oblation to Merciful Love,” but Thérèse never called it that. 

 [7] PN 23, Introductory notes to “To the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” June or October 1895, in The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux, tr. Donald Kinney, O.C.D.  Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1996, p. 117.

[8] PN 23, “To the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” June or October 1895, in The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux, ibid., pp. 117-120.

 [9] Story of a Soul, op. cit., p. 276.

 [10] PN 24, “Jesus, My Beloved, Remember!” October 21, 1895. The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux, op. cit., p. 130.

[11] LT 186, from Thérèse to Léonie, April 11, 1896.  Letters, Volume II, op. cit., p. 951.

[12] PN 36, “Jesus Alone,” August 15, 1896. The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux, op. cit., p. 165.

 [13] PN 13, “The Queen of Heaven to her Beloved Child Marie of the Holy Face,” December 25, 1894.  The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux, ibid., p. 78.

 [14] LT 200, from Thérèse to Sister Marie of St. Joseph, end of October 1896? Letters, Volume II, op. cit., p. 1013.

[15] LT 247, from Thérèse to abbé Bellière, June 21, 1897.  Letters, Volume II, ibid,, p. 1133.

[16] LT 257, from Thérèse to Léonie, July 17, 1897.  Letters, Volume II, ibid., p. 1149.

[17] LT 258, from Thérèse to abbé Bellière, July 18, 1897.  Letters,  Volume II, ibid., p. 1152.