Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, in the ‘Yellow Notebook’ of her ‘Last Conversations’ writes, “It’s said in the Gospel that God will come like a thief. He will come to steal me away in the nicest way possible. Oh, how I’d love to aid the Thief!”

Then on July 7, after she has once again coughed up blood, her sister Pauline (Mother Agnes of Jesus) asks her: “Are you afraid of the Thief? This time he is at the door!” To which Thérèse replies at once: “No, he’s not at the door, he’s already come in. But how can you ask me, my dear Mother, whether I’m afraid of the Thief? How could I be afraid of someone I love so much?!”

Three days later, on July 10, after another hemoptysis around midnight, Thérèse exclaims: “No one can make me last one minute longer than the Thief wants.”

 Finally, on July 31, she returns three times to the image of the thief. To Pauline she says: “Yes, I’ll steal. …Many things will disappear from Heaven because I’ll bring them to you. I’ll be a little thief; I’ll take whatever I please.” And later the same day she even makes up, in colloquial French, a humorous little jingle about her awaited intruder: The Thief will come, and take me off, Alleluia!

Still later that day she uses the image for the last time: “I was thinking I should be a dear and wait for the Thief very quietly.” What is most impressive in all of this is the way in which, during her last agony and with her usual playfulness, so indicative of interior freedom,

St. Thérèse accomplishes a living exegesis of the Gospel text, rewriting it quite literally with her lifeblood, which was flowing out of her lungs in the frequent bouts of hemoptysis common in those suffering from tuberculosis. We know how excruciating her sufferings became toward the end. Among the last words that her sister Celine (Sister Genevieve) recorded on September 30, minutes before Thérèse died, we read the very last words are: “My God …I …love you!” In her painful death, Thérèse joyously welcomes the active intervention of the One who promises solemnly: “And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (Jn 14:3). “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 21:5).

What about you and me? Do we hold on to our world? Do we think our life is eternal? Or are we waiting to be taken by God, ready to leave this world to an eternal life with Him.

The Lord wanted me while in this state to see sometimes the following vision: I saw close to me toward my left side an angel in bodily form. I don’t usually see angels in bodily form except on rare occasions; although many times angels appear to me, but without my seeing them, as in the intellectual vision I spoke about before [cf. Life, 27:2, 28:4]

This time, though, the Lord desired that I see the vision in the following way: the angel was not large but small; he was very beautiful, and his face was so aflame that he seemed to be one of those very sublime angels that appear to be all afire. They must belong to those they call the cherubim, for they didn’t tell me their names.

But I see clearly that in heaven there is so much difference between some angels and others and between these latter and still others that I wouldn’t know how to explain it.

I saw in his hands a large golden dart and at the end of the iron tip there appeared to be a little fire. It seemed to me this angel plunged the dart several times into my heart and that it reached deep within me. When he drew it out, I thought he was carrying off with him the deepest part of me; and he left me all on fire with great love of God.

The pain was so great that it made me moan, and the sweetness this greatest pain caused me was so superabundant that there is no desire capable of taking it away; nor is the soul content with less than God.

The pain is not bodily but spiritual, although the body doesn’t fail to share in some of it, and even a great deal. The loving exchange that takes place between the soul and God is so sweet that I beg Him in goodness to give a taste of this love to anyone who thinks I am lying.

On the days this lasted, I went about as though stupefied. I desired neither to see nor to speak, but to clasp my suffering close to me, for to me it was greater glory than all creation.

Saint Teresa of Avila

The Book of Her Life, 29:13–14

---

Another type of prayer quite frequent is a kind of wound in which it seems as though an arrow is thrust into the heart, or into the soul itself. Thus the wound causes a severe pain which makes the soul moan; yet, the pain is so delightful the soul would never want it to go away. This pain is not in the senses, nor is the sore a physical one, but the pain lies in the interior depths of the soul without resemblance to bodily pain.

Yet, since the experience cannot be explained save through comparisons, these rough comparisons are used (I mean rough when compared to what the experience is); but I don’t know how to describe it any other way. For this reason, these are not things to be written about or spoken of, because it’s impossible to understand them unless one has experienced them. I mention the interior depths this pain reaches because spiritual sufferings are extremely different from physical ones. From this fact, I deduce how much greater the sufferings of souls in hell and purgatory are than what can be understood of them from bodily sufferings here on earth.

Saint Teresa of Avila

Spiritual Testimonies, 59:17

St. John of the Cross was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XI on August 24, 1926 by the Apostolic Letter “Die Vicessima”. He is formally recognized as the “Mystical Doctor” (Doctor mysticus) due to his profound teachings on mystical theology.

On 24th August 1562, in Avila, the first monastery of the Teresian Carmelite Reform, The Carmel of Saint Joseph was founded in Avila. 

Saint Teresa of Ávila inaugurated the reform of the Carmelite Order. It was the most authentic of all possible reforms because it began with the most valid of origins: a personal reform of her own life. She was not a crusader for reform, nor did she envision herself as a reformer: it was a role that was thrust upon her. But in the process of recasting her own life in the way she felt the Lord was leading her, she returned the Order to its original ideal. “We are of the race of those holy fathers of Mount Carmel,” she stated emphatically [Cf. The Interior Castle, V.1.2.].

 

A small group of nuns and visitors present for worship on the feast of the Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel on July 16, 1560, were discussing the obstacles to a life of prayer presented by the large number of nuns living in the monastery [of the Incarnation] and the visitors.

María de Ocampo, a young relative of the saint and a celebrated beauty, suggested that someone should establish a monastery in which the life of the ancient hermits could be revived. In all seriousness, she offered her dowry for this. The next day Teresa told her trusted friend Doña Guiomar de Ulloa (a young widow who like her led a life of prayer under the strict direction of Fr. Baltasar Alvarez) of this conversation. Doña Guiomar enthusiastically took up the idea. But what was decisive was that the Lord himself was calling for the project.

“He assured me that he would be very well-served in a monastery I might found, that this house would become a star shedding the brightest light. God added that, even thought they had lost some of their earlier enthusiasm, the orders were nevertheless of great service to him. What would the world be if there were no more monasteries?” [Cf. The Book of Her Life, ch. 32, no. 11]

According to the will of the Lord, the new house was to be consecrated to St. Joseph.

SAINT EDITH STEIN

Love for Love: The life and works of St. Teresa of Jesus
12. St. Joseph’s of Avila, the First Monastery of the Reform

Once while I was recollected in this company I always bear with me in my soul, God seemed so present to me that I thought of St. Peter’s words: You are Christ, Son of the living God (Mt 16:16). For God was thus living in my soul. This presence is not like other visions, because it is accompanied by such living faith that one cannot doubt that the Trinity is in our souls by presence, power, and essence. It is an extremely beneficial thing to understand this truth.

Saint Teresa of Avila
Spiritual Testimonies, 49

If you want to go to heaven, call on Mary, because she is the gateway there. The easiest way to achieve salvation is to approach her pure heart, and ask her to intercede with God for us and beg his mercy. I don’t need to worry about the person who flees to her and trusts in her, for she speaks to God for us as a mother and obtains for us the grace of forgiveness.

The Queen of heaven and earth serves God and if we serve her well, we shall rule over the world and our enemies for to serve Mary is to reign.

Saint Raphael Kalinowski

Booklet for the Marian Congress at Leopoli (Lviv), 1905

St. Elizabeth of the Trinity writes
to her mother about her vocation in Carmel

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Blessed Georg Häfner was born on 19 October 1900 in Würzburg, where he studied theology and was ordained to the priesthood on 13 April 1924. Through his connection with the Discalced Carmelite nuns in Würzburg, he joined the Third Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (now the Discalced Carmelite Secular Order, OCDS) on 11 January 1920, taking the name “Aloysius of the Blessed Sacrament.”

In November 1934, he became pastor in Oberschwarzach and soon opposed the Nazi regime. Arrested on 31 October 1941, he was transported to Dachau concentration camp on 12 December 1941, where he died of starvation on 20 August 1942 after enduring mistreatment and torture. His beatification took place on 15 May 2011 in Würzburg Cathedral.

His interior strength in the face of inhuman cruelty is especially expressed in his words: “We do not want to curse anyone, we do not want to bear a grudge against anyone; we want to be good to everyone.” Let us ask the Lord to give us again and again the strength to live according to this motto.

PRAYER

Lord Jesus Christ, you forgave your enemies and blessed those who suffer persecution for your sake. You have called us to love even our enemies. Through the intercession of Blessed Georg, we pray:

Grant us the readiness to forgive one another again and again, because you also forgive us. Strengthen priests and religious with your Holy Spirit, that they may courageously bear witness to you. Let all who belong to the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel be faithful to their religious ideal and live in friendship with you. Be the strength of all who, for your name’s sake, are persecuted, imprisoned, mistreated, and killed.

Almighty God, in the testimony of faith of Blessed Georg, you have shown us that you are present among us today and walk the path of our life with us. For this, we praise and glorify you now and forever. Amen.

On 10 August 1591 – Saint John of the Cross transferred from the friars’ convent in Segovia to the solitude of La Peñuela, where at last he was relieved of all offices in the order; once again he was a humble friar, forgotten, despised, and neglected… as he had always desired.

His superior was the Provincial, Father Antonio de Jesús, with whom he had begun the reform under the guidance of Saint Teresa many years earlier in their humble abode in Duruelo.

Although John was able to pray gloriously in the solitude of rocks and forest, difficulties lay ahead; within weeks he would develop erysipelas, a skin infection on his foot that would lead to septicemia. By December, consumed by penances, trials, and his disease, Saint John of the Cross would die and go to “sing Matins in heaven.”

St. John of the Cross writes from La Peñuela about finding peace in solitude after being relieved of all offices. He delights in simple monastic work and the silence of harvesting chickpeas over worldly complications, asking prayers to remain in this blessed desert retreat.

———————————————————————————————-

“Faith,” St. Paul says, “is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” [Heb 11:1].

What does it matter to the soul that is absorbed in recollection of the light which these words create in it, whether it feels or does not feel, whether it is in darkness or light, whether it enjoys or does not enjoy. It feels a kind of embarrassment in making any distinction between these things; and when it still feels affected by them, it holds itself in deep contempt for its lack of love and quickly looks to its Master that He might set it free. In the expression of a great mystic it “exalts” Him “on the highest summit of the mountain of its heart, above the sweetness and consolations that descend from Him for it has resolved to go beyond everything to be united with Him whom it loves” [Ruysbroeck]. It seems to me that to this soul, unshakable in its faith in the God of Love, may be addressed these words of the Prince of Apostles, “Because you believe you will be filled with an unshakable and glorified joy” [1 Pt 1:8].

Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity

Last Retreat, Day Four
Sunday, 19 August 1906

———————————————————————————————-

She must have felt bad before Holy Communion when hearing the Sisters reciting the Miserere in a low tone of voice. She told me afterwards, shedding huge tears:

“I’m perhaps losing my wits. Oh! If they only knew the weakness I’m experiencing.

“Last night, I couldn’t take anymore; I begged the Blessed Virgin to hold my head in her hands so that I could take my sufferings.”

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

Yellow Notebook, 19 August 1897

Note: St. Thérèse received Holy Communion for the last time on 19 August 1897.

Biographer Bishop Guy Gaucher, O.C.D. notes:

In her physical sufferings (fevers, profuse sweating, suffocation, insomnia, constipation, bedsores, gangrene of the intestines), and her moral sufferings, her face remained the same, and certain sisters did not think that she was really ill…. From 19 August onwards she was deprived of Holy Communion because she could not endure the complicated ceremonial.

———————————————————————————————-