Story of a Soul

Who shall tell how many ripened ears have sprung forth since, how many the sheaves that are yet to come? "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless the grain of wheat, falling into the ground, die, itself remaineth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."¹⁶⁶¹⁶⁶John 12:24, 25. Once more the word of the Divine Reaper has been magnificently fulfilled.

THE PRIORESS OF THE CARMEL.

¹⁵⁰Dom Guéranger. ¹⁵¹Mother Mary of Gonzaga died Dec. 17, 1904, at the age of 71. Mother Agnes of Jesus (Pauline) was at that time Prioress. The former—herself of the line of St. Antony of Padua—recognized in Soeur Thérèse "an heroic soul, filled with holiness, and capable of becoming one day an excellent Prioress." With this end in view, she trained her with a strictness for which the young Saint was most grateful. In the arms of Mother Mary of Gonzaga the "Little Flower of Jesus" was welcomed to the Carmel, and in those arms she died—"happy," she declared, "not to have in that hour as Superioress her 'little Mother,' in order the better to exercise her spirit of faith in authority." [Ed.] ¹⁵²As will be remembered, this was Marie, her eldest sister. [Ed.] ¹⁵³The Blessed Théophane Vénard was born at St. Loup, in the diocese of Poitiers, on the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lady, Nov. 21, 1829. He was martyred at Kecho, Tong-King, on the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord, Feb. 2, 1861, at the age of 32. A long and delightful correspondence with his family, begun in his college days and completed from his "cage" at Kecho, reveals a kinship of poesy as well as of sanctity and of the love of home, between the two "spring flowers." The beauty of his soul was so visible in his boyish face that he was spared all torture during his two months in the "cage." In 1909, the year in which Thérèse became "Servant of God" by the commencement of the Episcopal Process, her patron received the honours of Beatification. Another child of France—Joan, its "Martyr-Maid"—whose praises have been sung in affectionate verse by the Saints of St. Loup and Lisieux, was beatified that same year. [Ed.] ¹⁵⁴An allusion to the obituary notice sent to each of the French Carmels when a Carmelite nun dies in that country. In the case of those who die in the odour of sanctity these notices sometimes run to considerable length. Four notices issued from the Carmel of Lisieux are of great interest to the clients of Soeur Thérèse, and are in course of publication at the Orphans' Press, Rochdale; those of the Carmel's saintly Foundress, Mother Genevieve of St. Teresa, whose death is referred to in Chapter VIII; Mother Mary of Gonzaga, the Prioress of Thérèse; Sister Mary of the Eucharist (Marie Guérin), the cousin of Thérèse (Chapter III); and most interesting of all, the long sketch, partly autobiographical, of Mother Mary of St. Angelus (Marie Ange), the "trophy of Thérèse," brought by her intercession to the Carmel in 1902—where the writer made her acquaintance in the following spring; she became Prioress in 1908, dying eighteen months later in the odour of sanctity, aged only 28. [Ed.] ¹⁵⁵Cf. Job 13:15. ¹⁵⁶John 3:34. ¹⁵⁷When asked before her death how they should pray to her in Heaven, Soeur Thérèse, with her wonted simplicity, made answer: "You will call me 'Little Thérèse'—petite Thérèse." And at Gallipoli, on the occasion of her celebrated apparition in the Carmel there, when the Prioress, taking her to be St. Teresa of Avila, addressed her as "our holy Mother," the visitor, adopting her then official title, replied:—"Nay, I am not our holy Mother, I am the Servant of God, Soeur Thérèse of Lisieux." This, her own name of Soeur Thérèse, has been retained in the present edition, unless where it was advisable to set down her name in full—Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face. The name of the "Little Flower," borrowed by her from the Blessed Théophane Vénard, and used so extensively in the pages of her manuscript, is the one by which she is best known in English-speaking lands. [Ed.] ¹⁵⁸Cf. Prov. 19:11. ¹⁵⁹Matt. 25:49. ¹⁶⁰Wisdom 6:7. ¹⁶¹Cf. Ps. 75:10. ¹⁶²Cf. Ps. 17:5. ¹⁶³Cf. Ps. 22:4. ¹⁶⁴From the last poem written by Soeur Thérèse. ¹⁶⁵Ps. 115:15. ¹⁶⁶John 12:24, 25.