Published May 9 2023

Like an apotheosis, on her bed of abandonment and suffering hollowed out in her by illness and the night of Faith like an ultimate hymn to the Glory of God, Saint Thérèse wrote her last poem dedicated to the Virgin Mary in which she testified all the filial affection that is his for her who “is more mother than queen” (Last Interviews, 21.8.3.).

Saint Thérèse loves the Virgin Mary. She owes her recovery to her virginal and maternal smile when in 1883, aged 10, everything seemed to be over for little Thérèse who, on learning of the departure of her sister Pauline from Carmel, lost her mother for the second time.

In her very beautiful poem “Why I love you, O Mary” (PN 54), Saint Thérèse meditates with the eyes and the heart of the very sweet Mother of Jesus, the very life of her Son. In this contemplation, Thérèse understood for a long time that he is He, the Word of God made flesh (John 1, 14) as she wrote in 1894 to her sister Céline, sharing with her the spiritual experience which is her own: “It seems to me that the word of Jesus is Himself… He Jesus the Word, the Word of God” (LT 165).

In this openness of heart that the Holy Spirit allows in the soul of the one in whom He finds the presence of the Virgin Mary, according to the affirmation of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, Thérèse allows herself to be touched by the humility of her humble servant (Luke 1:48) who plunged her into the very heart of the Trinitarian life which welled up in her like a fountain gushing with life from the grace of her Baptism: “Oh! I love you, Mary, calling you the servant / Of the God whom you ravish by your humility / This hidden virtue makes you all-powerful / She draws the Holy Trinity into your heart. »

And since “the mother's treasure belongs to the child”, “I do not tremble when I see my weakness. " Saint Thérèse draws from the maternal presence of the Virgin Mary, the audacity to let herself be crossed by the Paschal Mystery in order with her to stand near the Cross of Jesus her Son: "Mary, you appear to me at the top of the Calvary / Standing near the Cross, like a priest at the altar. »

In May 1897, the last verses of "La petite Thérèse", poet, rise towards the Virgin Mary like an ode of confidence and love, in the hope of the Day which comes: "With you I suffered and I want now / To sing on your knees, Mary, why I love you / And to say again forever that I am your child!……”

With Saint Therese,
Saints Louis and Zelie,
Happy month of Mary.

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

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