THIRD DAY
St. Therese's Threefold Martyrdom
(1) Martyrdom of the Body.—St. Therese had prayed to endure the pains of martyrdom, and she was heard. Her physical suffering alone was more than a martyrdom. Even in her earlier years she suffered much, but it was especially toward the end of her earthly pilgrimage that her pains were multiplied many times over. Her strength wasted, she would literally drag herself to the various exercises of the community, sharing every duty, even the exhausting midnight office, though she had to fight against numbness, weariness and giddiness to keep on her feet. When all was finished, she would pull herself up the stairs by the banister, resting on each step for breath, so that it took her fully half an hour to traverse the icy corridor that led to her unheated cell. When she reached it, she was so worn out that sometimes it took her a full hour to undress. Then she tried to rest on her hard pallet, but having only two thin blankets, the entire night at times was spent shivering from the cold. Her sickness having impoverished her blood, she was all the more sensitive to the cold, so that she confessed on her deathbed: "My greatest physical suffering was from the cold; I have suffered so much from the cold that I thought I should die of it." But she fought on, for one of her principles was: "We must go to the end of our strength before we complain."
At length, however, she was no longer able to remain on her feet. Being forced to take to her bed, her pains increased; she coughed the greater part of the night; in the daytime she was consumed by a burning fever and exhausted by copious sweats; she was seized by violent hemorrhages and attacks of suffocation; her extreme emaciation caused very painful sores; when the infirmarian tried to relieve her by raising her to a sitting position, she said it felt as if she were sitting on spikes. "If you only knew," she said, "what I am suffering. One has to experience it to know what it means. I can easily understand why people without faith are tempted to take their life when they suffer like this…. I tell you, when
