XIII. "My beloved to me, and I to Him."

Canticle of Canticles, ii, 16

The newly elected prioress, Mother M. Theresa Victoria (Malaspina) received Sister Theresa Margaret's vows on March 12, 1766. The Monastery records tell us that "at the moment of her profession, Sister Theresa Margaret of the Heart of Jesus seemed transformed into a seraph. So great and of such a nature was the impression made by her demeanor on the Sisters gathered around her that they could not keep back their tears of sympathy and admiration." To have more time and opportunity to pour out her gratitude to the Lord, she sought and obtained permission to spend the entire day in solitude, thereby setting a custom carried out in that Monastery to this day.[1] With that usual jealous guarding of her hidden life that was to become the chief characteristic of her sanctity, she never revealed to anyone that memorable day's secrets, but we can at least conjecture that she arose from her place before the altar where she had sworn to follow Jesus even to Calvary with that sublime thought of Saint John of the Cross running through her mind and appealing to her heart, "No other care, no other thought now have I than wholly to be consumed in the fire of God's love."

The love of Jesus! That is the whole life of a Carmelite! That is the secret of her apostolate, so hidden, yet so fruitful! That is the source of the joy that lights up the face of Theresa's daughter even in the midst of grievous suffering! Sister Theresa Margaret, a zealous student of the works of her two great spiritual ancestors, Theresa of Jesus and John of the Cross, had already glimpsed the infinitely bright horizon of that life of love into which her spotless soul was now entering.

The veiling took place on April 6. The ceremony was for her like God's protecting wing under which she took shelter, now assured of being always His. The union is now complete. The spirit which now is to inspire her in everything is none other than that which inspired Jesus to choose her for His spouse. He chose her through love, excess of love; therefore, love shall be her spirit, shall be the cornerstone of her new life. Her heart shall never be satisfied until it shall have been entirely consumed with love. As a professed religious, bent on losing her identity in the love of God, she shall show such recollection, such concentration of mind in prayer, which is the voice of love, that she shall startle and edify all beholders.

After profession, young religious remain two years longer in the novitiate, to be better trained under the direction of the Mistress of Novices in monastic discipline and in Carmel's special spirit. Sister Theresa Margaret, in sheer avidity for subjection and humiliation, stayed a third year in the novitiate (thus spending only one year in community with the professed nuns, for she died March 7, 1770) never ceasing to be the most docile and submissive of novices, always busying herself with the Monastery's humblest duties. She was diligent and exact, the Monastery annals say, doing her work with the best grace in the world, yet knowing how, without affectation, to cover her every act with a mantle of humility that concealed her natural cleverness.[2] Submissive to all, from all she would take advice and suggestions, even from the lay Sisters who, either through ignorance or through misjudgment caused by her ever-apparent humility, treated her with a certain, perhaps unjustifiable, familiarity.

Frequently Sister Theresa Margaret would find herself alone with the Mistress of Novices, when she would say in a low voice and humbly, "Remember that I am your novice, and that you are my Mother-Mistress; therefore, do not be nice to me, but correct me and mortify me."[3] All general reproofs made by the Superior she took to herself, claiming that she alone was culpable, she alone imperfect. This sincere conviction of her own inferiority inspired in her soul a lively desire to serve all and a saintly readiness to come lovingly to the aid of her Sisters. To please her, she had been appointed sacristan of Saint Paulinus'. That meant that she had to take care of the vestments and linens belonging to that church. After a few months she was made sacristan of the Monastery church also. One can easily picture her diligence and delight in these new occupations. Frequently, she would go to take a look at the sanctuary lamp, never omitting, on these occasions, a little visit with Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Her love for Jesus prompted her to spend near the Tabernacle even that time which, in summer, the nuns take for a brief repose. Very often she was found in a little room near the choir seated on a small wooden block, resting her head against a stone pillar. At other times she spent that brief period of rest seated on one of the steps of a narrow wooden staircase in a room where were kept objects used in the service of the altar. All this to be near Jesus! Furthermore, not content with what she, herself, was doing to correspond with the grace of God's love, she used every means in her power to increase the love of everyone for Him. It seemed to her impossible that there could be in the world anyone willing to offend this good Father; therefore, when sinful people were recommended to the community for prayers, she would be heard to sigh deeply, and to say to the other religious, "Is it possible that there are in the world so many offenses against God! How can people do such evil things!", and then her eyes would fill with tears.

Her ardor in finding souls that loved God or souls whom she might cause to be greater lovers of God could not be restrained. One day, when she was reading together with Sister Theresa of Jesus Crucified the life of a Capuchin nun, Venerable Maria Angelica Azzi, nothing would satisfy her but that her companion make a compact with her to become rivals in the holy love of God. She would never let her partner in the agreement forget her promise. Following the example of Venerable Maria Angelica, she arranged that, in weekly turns, each should apply all the good acts of the other as penance for all the outrages of at least five sinners and in suffrage for five souls in Purgatory. "She was always at my side," writes Sister Theresa of Jesus Crucified, "showing that she intended that I become as great a seraph of love and as virtuous as she. It happened that on one occasion of visitation I was reproved with severity by the superiors in the presence of the whole community, and that I could not help showing that human nature was suffering very much in me. Sister Theresa Margaret happened to come into the room where I was standing alone, bruised in spirit and in great confusion. She said, 'Now is the time to heap up merit for a happy eternity by making Jesus an offering of the discomfiture you now feel, by making a little nosegay of your sufferings and offering it to Him, then forgetting them forever, excusing and pardoning all, taking this mortification as a penance for all the transgressions committed in Religion.' "

In order not to violate the rule of silence, Sister Theresa Margaret often wrote on little pieces of paper all that she desired to say to her companion, and, when she met her in the Monastery corridors, she would give her these little letters that were so full of humility and burning zeal for the love of God. Some of these leaflets are still preserved in the Monastery, a lasting proof of the beauty of that soul that was so rich in every virtue.

On one occasion when her father and brother, Francis Xavier, came to see her, it was evident that she welcomed both but that she was particularly glad to see her brother; she now felt that she loved him above all others since he had united himself more intimately to God by responding to the call to the priesthood, the vocation that she had begged God to give him. Before taking leave of her, Francis asked if she ever felt displeasure at the thought of no more seeing her father who had always been so dear to her. With the greatest simplicity and sincerity, she answered, "After I have made a sacrifice of my love of my father to God, would you have me withdraw the gift from Him?" Then, that there might be no chance of a prolonged farewell, she went at once to the neighboring grill where her father was talking with the Prioress, knelt down, and asked his blessing, saying, "Good-bye, dear father. Safe journey to you!"

Asked why she had greater love for her father than for her mother, she answered that she loved him more "because she saw more of God in him, saw him more conformable to God's law, saw that he treated her with greater confidence"; but once, when her father, just before taking his leave, called her thoughtlessly by the pet name she bore in the world, "Annina," she corrected him gently, saying, "Ah, father, I am no longer Annina, but Sister Theresa Margaret of the Heart of Jesus."[4] This incident her father often related, smilingly stating that one had to weigh his words when talking with his angelic daughter.

Father Ildephonse, the Saint's confessor, has left us in a dissertation on her conduct in the novitiate this splendid testimony of her, "In everything she aimed at the perfect and sublime, sad and mournful only when the wings of her spirit, in the performance of some act, whether internal or external, had not carried her to that far goal of perfection upon which she had set her heart. This always seemed to me to be her continuous inner task, this her secret and hidden martyrdom, this the matter of her continual examens both in her private life and in her various religious offices, especially in those of sacristan and infirmarian."

Knowing that it is the Rule that makes a religious saintly she always observed to the letter not only the Rule and the Constitutions but also every monastic custom that was laudable and worthy. In spite of the many hours she was forced to give to her continual and laborious works of obedience and charity, she never failed to be present and to take part in every community exercise, particularly that of the choir, unless the express command of the superior was to the contrary. In the beginning, when sleep so easily overtook her, especially during her term as infirmarian when she could not go to bed until an hour or so after the rest had retired, she impressed it upon the Sister Regulator so strongly that she must be awakened in time that, notwithstanding her brief period of rest, she was always the first in the choir in the morning, as if she had done nothing the day before. Her promptness and diligence in fulfilling her own duties aided her greatly in attaining another of her ends, that is, the keeping of herself as far as possible from the dispensations and exemptions which superiors are accustomed to give in accordance with necessity and the particular needs of each. Therefore, whenever she felt herself not in the best of health, or at all weak or tired, she would most ably dissimulate her state, purposely to prevent the religious from discovering her true condition and forcing her to absent herself from some community exercise.

To her confessor, that she might receive his approbation, Sister Theresa Margaret revealed her firm resolution, made on the day of her clothing in the holyhabit, to use every possible means to follow all community observances at which nature and obedience allowed her to be present. She had made this resolution in imitation of so many other Servants of God, who, in Carmel, use all means and make all sorts of sacrifices to be present always at every community function.

For the ordinary observance of the Rule her sentiments were as lofty and heroic as were those of the founders of the primitive religious orders. Sister Theresa Margaret felt that she was bound to observe the Rule in its minutest points, also, and said that, to do this, she was ready to give her heart's blood in the belief that religious profession obliged to that extent, adding that she could not believe that anyone could truly profess the intention to follow a set way of life without including in that intention the small things with the great. To conclude her argument she would state that many worldlings, for temporal motives, could give religious good example in obedience to minute points of rule and precept, especially those courtiers who serve the princes of this world and, for the sheer honor of it, sustain any sort of discomfort to give prompt and punctilious observe to every detail, no matter how insignificant, of their way of life.

One day, at the time appointed for the Sisters to sweep the Monastery there came to the speakroom a young girl who had just been accepted as a choir religious. One of the nuns invited Sister Theresa Margaret to come to the grill to congratulate the new postulant; but the Servant of God was altogether unwilling to leave her work and answered, with all possible courtesy, "Another time, without any loss, I can leave the Spouse, but, if I cease this work, which is of obligation at this time, I have no way to make up for it and the lost time."

Her will was so at one with that of the superiors that at the least sign from one of them she was "on the mark," so to speak. Everything they said would be for her an express command to be carried out at once cheerfully and simply. In fact, so docile was she, and such a great lover of obedience that she always kept in mind not only the precepts but even the advice to which she had listened when she was a little girl. Once, her confessor told her that, now that she was a religious and bound to observe only the Rule of her Order, she need no longer pay heed to the particular counsels given her in her childhood. Her reply was to the effect that, since obedience to these counsels was now almost ingrained in her, it was easier to follow than not to follow them; however, if he insisted, she would do her best, out of obedience, to forget the unnecessary part of her early training.

Sister Theresa Margaret used to say, with holy sincerity, that, to remove the sting from anything, it was enough to impose it upon her through obedience. When something disagreeable had to be done, therefore, she always begged God to have the superiors command her to do it under obedience, and attributed the cheerful ease with which she accomplished disagreeable tasks to the manner of their imposition. Before the Lord she had declared her will to live in absolute obedience, so, in everything she did, she sought always to be able to say, "This I do through obedience." She had even asked God to grant her the grace of dying with the merit of obedience.[5]

Father Ildephonse states that he always found her meticulously exact in putting into most scrupulous practice not only all commands and counsels that he gave her but even any of his chance suggestions or words that could in any way help her in the sublimer following of the path of the virtues. Never had he to repeat or insist upon the observing of a single counsel; in fact, generally, Sister Theresa Margaret was, in practice, far ahead of either particular counsel or general rule; her confessor quite frequently felt forced to check her lest, superinduced by zeal and forgetful of self, she impair her health.

Mother Anna Maria of St. Anthony of Padua (Piccolomini) had noticed that Sister Theresa Margaret had a habit of putting her hand to her head. Jokingly the Mother had said, "If you keep that up, who knows how many veils you'll be using up!" The Servant of God took the remark as an admonition. The nuns noticed that, thereafter, when she inadvertently started to lift her hand to her head she at once arrested it in midair, then quickly withdrew and hid it under her scapular.

During the retreat made so fervently by the Servant of God before taking her vows the Monastery was visited by Countess Piccolomini, Sister Anna Maria's mother, who expressed a desire to see the novices. The Mistress, then Mother Theresa Maria (Guadagni) took advantage of the occasion to exercise Sister Theresa Margaret in obedience. She gave orders that, while the rest of the novices were to converse at some length with the Countess, the Servant of God was merely to bow profoundly to her and then leave the speakroom without a word. Sister Theresa Margaret obeyed the command to the letter, to the surprise of the lady and the edification of the novices.

She had attained to such a state of what is called "blind" obedience that, in the persuasion that her superior was the mouth-piece of God, a mere indication of will or of judgment on the part of her superior was enough to cause her to yield in any matter. On a certain day in September, 1769, news had come to the religious that a new comet would appear in the heavens shortly after midnight. All showed eagerness to see it, and even the Servant of God asked the Prioress' permission to remain up. The Mother did not wish this young Sister, who needed a great deal of rest, to lose any hours of sleep, so, while not refusing permission absolutely, seemed to prefer that Sister Theresa Margaret go to bed; this she did, without comment and quite contentedly. At midnight, some of the religious who happened not to know the superior's mind on the matter, went to Sister Theresa Margaret's cell to awaken her. The Saint showed by signs, not to break the strict silence, that she felt that she was forbidden to stay up to see the comet, and remained in bed, content to offer to the Divine Heart this small act of mortification through love of the obedience she had professed.

Renunciation is a necessary condition of the religious life. The nun or monk who would please God must first abandon all things, then follow Jesus. That is the one way to attain to the possession and enjoyment of God. Sister Theresa Margaret had practised this beautiful virtue from the first moment of her admission into the Monastery. With the superiors' permission she had gladly given away various objects brought from her father's house, dividing them among poor girls who hoped to enter Religion. The pearls and jewels she had received as gifts from her parents she offered as ornaments for the Madonna's statue. When, one day after she had taken her vows, her father expressed his intention of making her a gift and asked her what she desired, she answered, smiling, "I want nothing, dear Father, and have need of nothing. So great is the gift you gave me when you allowed me to clothe myself in this holy habit that, if from morning to night I should prostrate myself on the ground to thank you, I should always be doing less than I ought."

The perfume of La Verna in her soul had not diminished in strength and, in poverty like that of the Poor Man of Assisi, she desired to ascend with poverty even to the cross. She liked to do manual labor, this young woman of noble family, "to be able," as she said, "to earn her daily bread." She accounted for even the smallest things, not permitting that, through her fault, there be lost a silken thread, a drop of oil, a tiny piece of bread. She was especially careful that no bread be lost or trampled under foot. Each day she gathered up the crumbs and fragments, and saved them for the chickens that furnished the nuns with fresh eggs. She never showed any desire to possess new things, in fact saw to it that she often lacked necessary things so that, as she would say, "she might have some little experience of the burden of religious poverty." Furthermore, she always managed that whatever was hers for personal use be something poor, cheap, and rejected by the rest.

Once, on the occasion of the clothing of a novice, Sister Theresa Margaret went to Mother Anna Maria of St. Anthony of Padua, the Mistress of Novices, and begged her to deprive her of everything that had been given her for use in the Monastery and to give all to the new novice, saying that old things were good enough for her since she wished to be treated as one of Christ's poor. The Mistress admired her good spirit, but answered that the new novice had been satisfactorily taken care of and that what Sister Theresa Margaret held, she held under vow of obedience. However, since the Servant of God insisted in all humility that something be taken from her, she was deprived of her cell lamp, an old, used one being given her to replace it. It is worth noting that from this date the nuns of this Monastery established a custom, doing exactly what Sister Theresa Margaret wished to do, that is, supplying from their own scanty stores new novices with useful articles and accepting old and worn things in place of what they had given.

The Servant of God was so unattached to even the smallest things, such as, for example, objects of devotion, booklets, images that she often took all she had to the Superior and asked her to take some of them from her and give them to those who would accept them gladly and could use them profitably. This she would do in memory of the reproof administered by the Holy Mother, Saint Theresa, to those nuns who persisted in overloading themselves and their cells with images, crosses, and medals, in imitation of young women of the world who store up in their rooms or burden their necks and arms with necklaces and bracelets. Such use of holy objects is contrary to poverty, and shows attachment to this world and its goods.

Her conservation of common property was as outstanding as her contempt for what was reserved for her own particular use. She always gathered up everything and put it carefully where it belonged. Even bits of paper that had already been used she would store away, if there was on them still enough clear space upon which to jot down her thoughts, her resolutions, her aspirations.

One day some of the nuns, in fun, told the Servant of God that her picking up and saving for the chickens of fragments of bread left after meals was really too exact an observance of holy poverty, in fact that it was almost miserly. She replied in the same spirit, but in such a way as to show that such was her real belief, "Religious who are Jesus Christ's poor must render an account of even those very small things of which so many poor people are deprived, and, if these fragments are not otherwise useful, they certainly can serve as nourishment for many of God's innocent animal creation." When one of the nuns saw her scattering crumbs on the ground and asked her why, she answered, "Since these little crumbs of bread are of no further use to human beings, I scatter them on the ground for the sparrows who are waiting for them, and thus I do not fail in holy poverty."

Sister Theresa Margaret was most diligent in the observing of the silence so strongly recommended by the Carmelite Rule. Rather than break silence she would always ask for even necessary things in writing, if signs could not convey her desires. That she might, as she would say, "carve this virtue into her very soul," she affixed to the inner side of her cell door a small piece of paper upon which she hadwritten her conception of this virtue and an appropriate resolution. "The obligation of a discalced religious," she would say, "is not to speak even a syllable without necessity, and not to be seeking necessity, and, if she so act throughout her whole life, let her acknowledge that she shall not have acted in excess of virtue but solely in accordance with her obligation, for it is altogether certain that for one little syllable uttered without necessity she must atone either here or in Purgatory."

These are the sentiments of a soul that did not merely run but soared in the way of perfection! This young nun had already become the model for the rest, the mirror into which they could look, to learn that only perfect observance of the rules can serve as a ladder to sanctity. The observing the rules of silence had taught Sister Theresa Margaret the art of living always in uninterrupted communion with God. The perfect observance of the Rule and the constant living in the presence of God were shaping her in perfection. What wonder, then, if, living in God, she was, at the same time, all fervor and tenderness for creatures? Scanning the pages of her life reveals that she loved her Sisters dearly ... her words and works were a constant outpouring of sweet charity.

[1] Can. Proc.

[2] Can. Proc. Deposition of Mother Anna Mary of Saint Anthony of Padua.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Can. Proc.

[5] Can. Proc. Deposition of Father Ildephonse of St. Aloysius Gonzaga.

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