CHAPTER XXIV.

HER LOVE OF GOD.

"Love is God — God is love." — l. JOHN IV, 8.

If it pleases the Omnipotent to raise our Venerable Sister to the altar some day, the distinctive characteristic of her sanctity will be the love of God. Certainly, one cannot imagine sanctity without this virtue, which is its essence; but in this flame, which consumes the hearts of the saints, there is a difference of intensity. Do not some of the Blessed merit the title of seraphic, for instance our holy Mother Saint Teresa, St. Francis of Assisi, Saint Bonaventure? Sister Teresa Margaret, although so little known, belongs to this class. We must recall the beautiful reply she gave her director, regarding her correspondence with grace from childhood: "Jesus knows well, that since I was a little child I have wished only to please Him, and become a saint." Divine Love reigning in this innocent heart, superseded all natural love, even the very great tenderness of which her father was the object. Once a religious, meeting Sister Teresa Margaret, who had just left the parlor, and according to her custom was going to kneel before the Blessed Sacrament after a visit from her father the Chevalier Redi, asked her if she felt grieved because of his departure. With a sweet smile the Venerable Sister showed her a little card, which she no doubt kept in her breviary, on which was this sentence of St. Augustine: "One would not love Thee perfectly, my Lord, did they love with Thee anyone whom they did not love for Thee." Our heart is there, where is our treasure. How wonderfully true this is!

Therefore Sister Teresa Margaret lived entirely and always in God alone, since He alone was the object of her love. "Her recollection in God," says Mother Anna Maria, ^“was continual. It was manifest in all places, at all times, even in the most ordinary and distracting occupations — for instance, at recreation — notwithstanding her efforts to hide it. She said to me sometimes and also to other religious: `Let us do all for the love of God!' This maxim, as simple as it was perfect, she repeated above all to' our lay Sisters when she saw them performing heavy labor for the good of the community; she wished by this to remind them that they must act for this sole object: the love of God. A little golden book, "The Discipline of the Cloister," composed by Father John of Jesus and Mary, was, with one or two others, her guide until her last days. She knew all the sentences by heart, and made use of them to learn how to perform every one of her actions for the glory of God.

The omnipotence, goodness and beauty of the Most High were marvelously revealed to her by everything in nature. Everything spoke to her of love. As soon as she entered the garden and breathed the pure air, her eyes would become fixed on the flowers and the plants, or raised to heaven; until carried away by a holy transport she would talk to herself, or address these innocent works of her God, her soul rising unconsciously to the most sublime thoughts. If at recreation she sang some devotional hymn, she would begin in a tone of most gentle sweetness, her voice low and following the notes of the tune. But soon she would become impassioned, and her voice would rise higher and higher. It would become so earnest that it was necessary to check the angelic Sister, fearing that she might be heard outside the house. In conversation on spiritual matters, notwithstanding her extreme reserve regarding her soul, she soon became so animated that without realizing it she used truly heavenly language: it was as if one listened to a seraph. Her father, a spiritual man as we know, speaking of this, said it transported him with spiritual delight. Again, one of the Sisters, giving testimony on oath, said: "When speaking of God she sometimes became so intense that her face would become flushed, then crimson, and then a reaction of feeling brought the pallor of a corpse. "One day, adds the same religious," I had been for some time conversing with her on spiritual subjects. Her countenance had changed color three times, and finally she fell on my shoulder as in a faint." As has been already said, she would lose consciousness sometimes on merely hearing of some grave sin against God. We can understand, from all this, her distress and horror at the dishonor done God by mortal sin.

Deeply penetrated as she was by the thought of the goodness of our Lord and His divine sweetness, it seemed impossible to her that a reasonable being would offend Him. She believed instinctively that everyone loved Him as much as she did, and even more. Happy illusion of that childlike simplicity to which we owe many innocent manifestations of the burning flame which devoured her soul. To this also we owe the discovery of her secret of uniting so perfectly interior recollection with the occupations of the active life. "It seems to me," she said to Father Ildefonso, "that the soul and the heart cannot tend towards anything but their center, which is God. He, the principle of all our movements, thus from our interior souls aids us to act externally quickly and well." In the beginning of her religious life, our Venerable Sister was observed to have habitual spells of preoccupation of mind. At first the Sisters thought this absent-mindedness the sign of a slow, dull mind. What a mistake! Soon they recognized it to be a sweet and continual union with God, joined to the perfect accomplishment of her exterior duties. This intimate union with the Sovereign Good was so usual with her, that it would have been impossible for her to distract herself from it for a single instant. In one word, her soul lived truly a life of love, a life hidden in God with Jesus Christ. Let us listen to her confessor: "I read to her once some aspirations of love. Immediately and in an ecstasy of mind, she uttered words truly divine and concluded thus: `The three Divine Persons are but one life, one charity, one only God. And what is in God by essence is in the creature by participation and grace; thus, everything is in common between God and those who love.'" That is to say one who loves God lives the same life with Him, for Him, in Him. This divine conception, and many others similar, she learned by special infusion of holy wisdom in the school of the Holy Spirit. In this she was marvelously instructed. The Sunday after Pentecost, in 1767, having heard in the Little Chapter of Tierce these words of the well-beloved Apostle: "God is Love; and he who lives in Love lives in God and God in him;" the Venerable Sister was enraptured, and remained for several days as if out of herself. She continually repeated these sacred words in a whisper, and with an accent which revealed how her soul delighted in divine charity. From that day forward, the religious noticed in her an increase in all the virtues.

This generous soul made use of all the means at her disposal to preserve and increase this blessed flame. She loved to write on little pieces of paper those passages from the Holy Scriptures and the holy fathers which had deeply impressed her. She did the same regarding the inspirations she received from Divine Love. Several of these papers are still preserved as precious relics witnessing the state of her soul. We will only cite one: it is written in her own blood: "Jesus, my sweet Love, I promise to be entirely Thine, cost what it may." But not sweetness, nor consolation, nor sublime ecstasies, nor revelations make the saints great. It is trials and crosses of every kind which prove love true and which perfect it. When for God's sake these are endured, and, better still, delighted in, love is genuine. We have admired in Sister Teresa Margaret virtue practiced to an heroic degree. But the Divine Master wished to complete in a few years the crown of His little Spouse. And for this reason He changed her love itself into a real torment. By crucifying purifications, He made of her a martyr of divine love.

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