St. Therese of the Child Jesus

Saint Therese of the Child Jesus

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"...The thing that pleases Him is that I love my littleness and poverty and have a blind hope in His mercy..."

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"...in order to love Jesus and be His victim of love, the weaker we are and the more completely without desires or virtues, the more we shall be disposed to receive the benefits of His consuming and transforming love working within us.  It is enough to have the one desire of being a victim, provided we are content to remain always poor and powerless."

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"To consent to remain always poor and powerless, there lies the difficulty! Actually, where can we find one who is truly poor? Is not he alone truly poor who is so humble-minded that he believes himself to be nothing? Oh! let us then remain far away from all that is vain-glorious! Let us love our littleness, our lack of sensitivity. We shall then be poor in spirit and Jesus will come for us, however far we may be from Him, and will set us afire with His love. How I wish that I could make you understand what I feel...It is confidence and confidence alone that should lead us to Love."

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"...if we abandon ourselves, and place our confidence in God, while making every small effort and hoping everything from His mercy, we shall be rewarded as much as the greatest saints."

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"I cannot lean on anything, nor can I count on anything I have done to build up my confidence in God. But the consciousness of my poverty has served as a true light for me. I knew that I had never been able, during my life, to pay any of the debts I owed to God but that I could make of that very knowledge a source of spiritual wealth and power. Than I made this prayer: 'O my God, pay the debt yourself, but do it in a way that only God can do, so that it may be infinitely better than if I myself had fulled my obligations." And I recalled with great consolation these words of the Canticle of St. John of the Cross: 'Pay my debts'...So great a favor could never be rapid by men, but our very incapacity fills our soul with peace, for we know how completely we depend on God alone."

The quotations above were written by St. Therese. Source: Complete Spiritual Doctrine of St. Therese of Lisieux by Rev. Francois Jamart, O.C.D.