19 June 2018

St Therese: Chapter X

Way of spiritual childhood
Peace: Simplicity


  • A new light on charity
  • The little brush: how it works within souls
  • A prayer granted
  • Crumbs that fall from the children's table
  • The good Samaritan
  • Ten minutes more precious than a thousand years of earthly joys

If you return and be quiet, you shall be saved: in silence and in hope shall your strength be...Behold, I have given thee to be the light of the Gentiles, that thou mayst be my salvation even to the farthest part of the earth. 

The Little Brush

Dear Mother, I am the little brush that Jesus has chosen to paint His likeness in  the  souls  you  have  confided  to  my  care.  Now  an  artist  has  several brushes—two  at  the  least:  the  first,  which  is  more  useful,  gives  the  ground tints and rapidly covers the whole canvas; the other, and smaller one, puts in the lesser touches. Mother, you represent the big brush which our Lord holds lovingly in His Hand when He wishes to do some great work in the souls of your children; and  I am the  little one  He deigns to use  afterwards, to fill in the minor details.

Prayer

Apart from the  Divine Office, which in spite of  my unworthiness is a  daily joy,  I  have  not  the  courage  to  look  through  books  for  beautiful  prayers.  I only get a headache because of their number, and besides, one is more lovely than  another.  Unable  therefore  to  say  them  all,  and  lost  in  choice,  I  do  as children who have not learnt to read—I simply tell Our Lord all that I want, and He always understands.
With me prayer is an uplifting of the heart; a glance towards heaven; a cry of gratitude  and  love,  uttered  equally  in  sorrow  and  in  joy.  In  a  word,  it  is something noble, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites it to God. Sometimes  when  I  am  in  such  a  state  of  spiritual dryness  that  not  a  single good thought occurs to me, I  say very slowly the  "Our Father" or the "Hail Mary," and these prayers suffice to take me out of myself, and wonderfully refresh me.

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