Published on 31 August 2022

Carmel of Lisieux, September 30, 1897, seven o'clock in the evening. Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus of the Holy Face dies. Sadness of the separation and hope of the coming Day, live in mixed feelings, the heart of the Carmelite nuns; Therese's blood sisters; the sisters whom the same vow has brought together in the shade of the cloister, for the Love of Jesus.

The body of the young 24-year-old nun is prepared. A burning chapel is erected in the choir of the sisters. Celine takes a last photograph. The Carmelites allow the last words of Sister Thérèse to come to their lips in their prayer: “I am not dying, I am entering life…” “I do not repent of having given myself up to Love…” “ It seems to me that I have never sought anything but the Truth…” And this very last word since inscribed, in gold letters above the high[1]altar of the crypt of the Basilica: “Oh!.. I love him, my God, I love you!

The previous July 13, Sister Thérèse confided: “Don't imagine that I feel a lively joy in dying […] I cannot think much of the happiness that awaits me in Heaven; a single expectation makes my heart beat, it is the love that I will receive and the one that I will be able to give. And then I think of all the good that I would like to do after my death: to have the little children baptized, to help the priests, the missionaries, the whole Church… but first of all to console my little sisters…”

For 125 years, Saint Thérèse's desire has not been denied. She keeps her promise inscribed on the drum of the dome of the Basilica: “I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth… I will cause a shower of roses to fall. We are, one another, indebted to him for many graces received from his intercession with Jesus.

It is Saint Thérèse's confidence in the Mercy of God that gives her the audacity to ask and pray to Jesus for all our intentions. Thérèse understood that He can do anything. All you have to do then is simply ask Him and surrender to His will. Since He “is only love and mercy”, He necessarily wants our good.

The love of Jesus infused by the Holy Spirit in Thérèse's heart allowed her to make this further discovery: “I understood that to become a saint you had to suffer a lot. So she concludes: "I don't want to be a half saint, I'm not afraid to suffer for you, I'm only afraid of one thing and that is to keep my will, take it, because 'I choose all” whatever you want!…”

"On the evening of Love, speaking without parables", Jesus came to take her with Himself to work from Heaven in the field of the Mission

Father Olivier Ruffray, Rector of the Sanctuary, for the September issue of the Review Therese of Lisieux

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