solved to do: "Love attracts love; mine darts toward Thee and would fain make the abyss brim over. Alas! it is not even as a dewdrop in the ocean. To love Thee as Thou lovest me, I must make Thy love my own. Thus alone can I find rest." But to live and die of love meant much suffering.
"Neath sufferings' bitter winepress
I will prove my love to Thee;
To immolate myself each day
My chosen joy shall be!"
St. Therese was not content with an ardent and generous love, she would also have her love be most delicate and refined. Thus in the heat of summer she would not wipe the perspiration from her brow, in the winter she would not show by her exterior that she felt the cold by walking stooped or bent or by rubbing her hands together, "except by stealth," as she said; she would not even say: "It is hot, or it is cold or nasty weather," "lest," as she playfully expressed it, "the good God should see or hear it and feel pained at seeing that I suffered in giving Him joy." She did the same when she found the life of penance hard: "I forced myself to smile at it, so that God, deceived, as it were, by the expression of my countenance, might not know that I suffered." Similarly, in her painful illness: "When God disappoints me, I pay Him all manner of compliments."
In her love she would go farther still—she would make it utterly selfless: "I do not desire that thrill of love which I can feel; if Jesus feels the thrill, it is enough for me"; and carrying this selflessness and delicacy to the highest summit of heroic magnanimity, she said: "If the impossible were possible, and God did not see them (my good works and sufferings), I would not grieve at that. I love Him so much that I would like to give Him pleasure without His knowing it was I…. Knowing and seeing it, He is, in a way, bound to repay…. I should like to save Him the trouble…!" Would I…? Finally, her desire to love, which became a "veritable martyrdom," is summed up in that outburst it forced from her glowing heart: "Jesus…. Oh! I would love Him so! Love Him as He has never yet been loved…! And I…?
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