less "possible" suffering, and you said that your actual anguish exceeded all that you thought it possible to endure. The very thought of such an ocean of pain overwhelms me. How I thank God for the heroic love with which He filled you and the strength of soul with which you bore all! This is the incredibly great price you paid for that veritable deluge of roses you have sent down upon the world from heaven. Pray for me, that I, too, may be filled with courage in all the sufferings of body, heart, and soul that it may please God to send me for His greater glory, the salvation of souls, and my own eternal bliss. Obtain for me the grace to endure them all with the cheerful sentiments with which you welcomed this simultaneous triple martyrdom, and thus prove my love for God. I also recommend to you my special intentions in this Novena…. To one who has suffered so much for Him, God will refuse nothing.
Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory be.
Other Novena Prayers on page 46.
FOURTH DAY
The Paradox, Joy in Suffering
(1) Not Insensible.—Pain for St. Therese was not a mere phantom, but a sharp reality. In fact, few have probably ever been endowed with such an extreme sensitiveness to pain in body, heart, and soul as she was. She confessed that, "It costs dearly to give Jesus what He asks," and that, "if on these occasions," i.e., when her anguish is at its height, "I repeat the more earnestly to the good God and the saints that I love them, believe me, it is in spite of what I feel at the first moment." She suffered intensely from the cold; her delicate stomach ever rebelled at the coarse food of the Carmel. So great was her constant desire to have just a word with her dear Pauline that she had to hurry past her cell and hold fast to the banister to keep from turning back; the effort she made to refrain from giving a stern look to a Sister who was ever fidgeting with her rosary caused her to be bathed in perspiration every day; when she was given a shower of dirty wash-water in the laundry, her
