GRATITUDE
Oh, how happy God makes me! How easy and how sweet it is to serve Him upon earth.
HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. X
Seeing several of my companions form special attachments to some one or other of our mistresses, I wished to follow their example but could not succeed therein. O happy inability! from how great evils has it saved me.... How I thank God for having made me find only bitterness in the friendships of earth. With a heart such as mine I should have been captured and had my wings clipped; then how should I have been able to fly away and be at rest.[72]
HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. IV
I understand well that our Lord knew I was too weak to be exposed to temptation; without doubt I should have been wholly destroyed had I been dazzled by the deceitful glamour of the love of creatures; but never has it shone before my eyes. There, where strong souls find joy, and through fidelity detach themselves from it, I have found only affliction. Where then is my merit in not being given up to these fragile attachments, since it is only by a gracious effect of God’s mercy that I was preserved from it? Without Him, I recognize that I might have fallen as low as St. Magdalene; and that word of deep meaning spoken by the Divine Master to Simon the Pharisee, re-echoes with great sweetness in my soul. Yes, I know it: “To whom less is forgiven, he loveth less.”[73] But I also know that Jesus has forgiven more to me than to St. Magdalene. Ah, how I wish I could express what I feel. Here at least is an example which will in some measure convey my thought.
Suppose the son of a skilful doctor is tripped by a stone in his path, which causes him to fall and fracture a limb. His father comes in haste, lifts him up lovingly and attends to his injuries, employing therein all the resources of his art; and the boy, very soon completely cured, testifies his gratitude. This child has certainly good reason to love so kind a father; but here is another supposition.
The father having learnt that there lies in his son’s way a dangerous stone, sets out beforehand and removes it unseen by anyone. His son, the object of this tender forethought, unaware of the misfortune from which he has been preserved by the father’s hand, will of course show no gratitude, and will love him less than if he had cured him of a grievous wound. But should he come to know all, will he not love him still more? Well—I am this child, the object of the preventing love of a Father Who sent His Son not to redeem the just but sinners.[74] He wills that I should love Him because He has forgiven me, not much, but everything. Without waiting for me to love Him much, like St. Mary Magdalene, He has made me to know how He had loved me with a preventing and ineffable love, in order that I may now love Him even unto folly!
HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. IV
Walking one day in the garden, leaning on one of her sisters, Thérèse paused to enjoy the fascinating sight of a little white hen sheltering its chickens beneath its wings. Very soon her eyes filled with tears, and turning to her dear companion she said: “I can stay no longer, let us go in again quickly....” And in her cell, her tears continued falling and she could not utter a word. At last, looking at her sister with an expression that was quite heavenly, she said:
“I was thinking of our Lord, and of the touching comparison He chose in order to make us believe in His tenderness. That is just what He has done for me all my life: He has wholly hidden me beneath His wings! I cannot express what passed within my heart. Ah! the good God does well to veil Himself from my sight, to show me the effects of His Mercy rarely, and as it were, ‘through the lattices;’[75] such consolations would, I feel, be more than I could bear.”
HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XII
“Oh! how good is the good God!” ... she would sometimes exclaim. “Yes, He must indeed be good to give me the strength to endure all that I suffer.”
HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XII
One day she said to the Mother Prioress:
“I would like to speak to you, Mother, of the state of my soul; but I cannot, I am too deeply moved just now.”
And in the evening she sent these lines pencilled with a trembling hand:
“O my God, how good Thou art to the little victim of Thy Merciful Love! Now even though Thou dost join physical suffering to the trials of my soul, I cannot say: ‘The sorrows of death have encompassed me.’[76] But I cry out in my gratitude: ‘I have gone down into the valley of the shadow of death, yet I fear no evil, because Thou, O Lord, art with me.’”[77]
HIST. D’UNE AME, CH. XII