March 5, 1889 JMJT
Jesus
My dear Celine,
I cannot tell you how much your dear little word did me good!... It is now that you are truly the Immortal Lily of Jesus, oh! how happy he is with his lily, how lovingly he gazes at his beloved flower who only wants him, who has no other desire than to console him...
Each new suffering, each anguish of the heart is like a light zephyr which will bring to Jesus the perfume of his lily, so he smiles with love and immediately he prepares a new bitterness, he fills the chalice to the brim, thinking that the more his lys grows in love, the more also it must grow in suffering!...
What a privilege Jesus does us by sending us such great pain, ah! eternity will not be too long to thank him. He fills us with his favors as he filled the greatest saints, why such a great predilection?... It is a secret that Jesus will reveal to us in our homeland the day when "He will wipe away every tear from our eyes". It must be to my soul that I speak thus, for otherwise I would not be understood, but it is to her that I address myself, and all my thoughts have been preceded by her; however, what she may not know is the love that Jesus has for her, a love that demands everything, there is nothing that can be impossible for him, he does not want to limit the holiness of his lily , his limit is that there is none!... Why would there be? we are bigger than the entire universe, one day we ourselves will have a Divine existence...
Oh ! How I thank Jesus for having thus placed a lily near our dear father, a lily that nothing frightens, a lily that would rather die than abandon the glorious field where the love of Jesus has placed it!
Now we have nothing more to hope for on earth, more than suffering and more suffering, when we are finished, suffering will still be there reaching out to us, oh! what an enviable fate... The cherubim in Heaven envy our happiness.
That's not why I was writing to my darling Céline, it was to tell her to write to Mlle. Pauline about the misfortune that befell us in Papa's illness. Laugh in your turn at your poor Thérèse who broaches her subject at the end of her letter. Poor Léonie, I like her too, she is more unhappy than us, Jesus gave her less. But of those to whom he has given much much will be asked.
Your little sister
Therese of the Child Jesus post.carm.ind.
