Faith in the power of Christ’s love

Faith in the Power of Christ’s Love

Lord, I know you don’t command the impossible. You know better than I do my weakness and imperfection; you know very well that never would I be able to love my sisters as you love them, unless you, O my Jesus, loved them in me. It is because you wanted to give me this grace that you made your newcommandment. Oh! how I love this new commandment since it gives me the assurance that your will is to love in meall those you command me to love!

Yes, I feel it, when I am charitable, it is Jesus alone who is acting in me, and the more united I am to him, the more also do I love my sisters. When I wish to increase this love in me, and when especially the devil tries to place before the eyes of my soul the faults of such and such a sister who is less attractive to me, I hasten to search out her virtues, her good intentions; I tell myself that even if I did see her fall once, she could easily have won a great number of victories which she is hiding through humility, and that even what appears to me as a fault can very easily be an act of virtue because of her intention….

There is in the community a sister who has the faculty of displeasing me in everything, in her ways, her words, her character, everything seems very disagreeable to me. And still, she is a holy religious who must be very pleasing to God. Not wishing to give in to the natural antipathy I was experiencing, I told myself that charity must not consist in feelings but in works; then I set myself to doing for this sister what I would do for the person I loved the most. Each time I met her I prayed to God for her, offering him all her virtues and merits. I felt this was pleasing to Jesus, for there is no artist who doesn’t love to receive praise for his works, and Jesus, the artist of souls, is happy when we don’t stop at the exterior, but, penetrating into the inner sanctuary where he chooses to dwell, we admire its beauty. I wasn’t content simply with praying very much for this sister who gave me so many struggles, but I took care to render her all the services possible…. One day at recreation she asked in almost these words: “Would you tell me, Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus, what attracts you so much toward me; every time you look at me, I see you smile?” Ah! what attracted me was Jesus ­hidden in the depths of her soul; Jesus who makes sweet what is most bitter. I answered that I was smiling because I was happy to see her (it is understood that I did not add that this was from a spiritual standpoint).

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux († 1897) was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1997. [From Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Third Edition, John Clarke, o.c.d., Tr. © 1996, ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, Washington, DC.