27-29 July 1890
JMJT
Jesus
In Carmel July 90
My dear little Mary,
Thank the good God for all the graces he gives you and don't be ungrateful enough not to recognize them. You strike me as a little village girl whom a powerful king would come to ask in marriage and who would not dare to accept on the pretext that she is not rich enough and trained enough for the customs of the court, without thinking that her royal fiancé knows her poverty and her weakness much better than she herself knows it... Mary, if you are nothing, you must not forget that Jesus is everything, so you must lose your little nothing in its infinity all and no longer think of anything but this uniquely lovable all... Nor should you desire to see the fruit gathered from your efforts; Jesus delights in keeping for himself alone these little nothings that console him... You are mistaken, my dear, if you believe that your little Thérèse always walks with ardor in the path of virtue, she is weak and very weak, all every day she has a new experience of it, but Mary, Jesus takes pleasure in teaching her like St Paul the science of glorying in his infirmities, that is a great grace and I pray Jesus to teach it to you , because only there is peace and rest of the heart, when one sees oneself so miserable one no longer wants to consider oneself and one only looks at the one Beloved!...
My dear little Marie, for me I don't know any other way to arrive at perfection than "Love"... To love, how well our hearts are made for that!... Sometimes I look for another word for express love, but in the land of exile words are powerless to express all the vibrations of the soul, so we must stick to this single word: "Love!..."
But to whom will our poor heart, hungry for Love, lavish it?... Ah! who will be big enough for that... will a human being be able to understand it... and above all will he be able to give it back?... Mary, there is only one being who can understand the depth of this word: Love!... Only our Jesus knows how to give back to us infinitely more than we give him...
Mary of the Blessed Sacrament!... your name tells you your mission... To console Jesus, to make him loved by souls... Jesus is sick and it should be noted that the disease of love can only be cured by love !... Mary, give all your heart to Jesus, he thirsts for it, he is hungry for it, your heart, this is what he aspires to the point that to have it for Him, he agrees to lodge in a dirty and dark!... Ah! how not to love a friend who reduces himself to such extreme poverty, how dare to allege his poverty again when Jesus makes himself similar to his Bride... He was rich and he made himself poor to unite his poverty to the poverty of Mary of the Blessed Sacrament... What a mystery of love!...
All my regards to the dear Colony.
My heart is always with Mary of the Blessed Sacrament, the tabernacle is the house of love where our two souls are locked up... Your little Sister who asks you not to forget her in your prayers
Sr Thérèse of the Child Jesus of the Holy Face nov.carm.(ind.)
