XIX. "A musical song which is sung with a sweet and agreeable voice."

Ezechiel, xxxiii, 32

Maucourant tells us in his thirtieth "meditation" on "Religion and Chastity" that souls that love God "descend into the Divine Ocean as peacefully and tranquilly as the ship which, when it comes to the mouth of the river, glides out of the stream, bids farewell to the shore, and almost at once and quite unexpectedly finds itself on the high seas." Such was Sister Theresa Margaret's going from this earth to Heaven.

At the end of her few short years of life she had accomplished a multitude of things. Heaven had always been the goal of her flood of ardent longing; from Heaven was now to shine upon us, in full brilliance, the light of her virtues. Already in this life she had attained to such a degree of love for God and men that she could have boasted with Saint Paul, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. As to the rest, there is laid up for me a cross of justice, which the Lord the just judge will render to me in that day; and not only to me, but to them also that love his coming." (II Tim., iv., 7, 8.)

The day was now at hand when her companion religious were going to see the serene and placid setting of this lovely star, the hour was now come when our dear young Sister, smiling at death, was going to fly to the embraces of the Lord, and, from Paradise, to send down on us the reflected rays of that light with which, in eternity, all the blessed shine. Father Ildephonse was one of those who, when it was quite evident that pain of spirit was on the increase within the Servant of God, had the presentiment that she was soon to be taken to the arms of God. He tells us that "the violent impulses she experienced, urging her speedy union with God, had now become most frequent, and astoundingly vigorous; than this union she had no other thought, no other desire." In the account that this same priest gave to the Sovereign Pontiff, Clement XIV, after the Servant of God's death, he added that "she seemed to believe that she was soon to die; therefore, in this last year especially, she gave herself over with particular fervor to working in every way possible for God and His glory."

On Sunday, March 4, 1770, Sister Theresa Margaret went to her confessor and asked him to allow her to make a more minute and longer confession than usual, and to receive Communion the following day, as if it were to be the last of her life. Since he knew that it was the Saint's custom to receive every Communion as if it were Viaticum, Friar Ildephonse was astonished at the urgency of her request, but, after a moment or so, gave the matter little thought. It would seem that Sister Theresa Margaret had a presentiment that, in her last moments, she would not be able actually to receive her Jesus, therefore desired that, on that day, her recollection in the Divine Heart be very great so that her passage into eternity might be easier and more serene. Furthermore, the nuns attest that they saw her "come forth from the confessional that day more joyful and contented than usual, her face being extraordinarily lighted up with happiness, but, at the time, they did not make much of it."

The following day, the Saint approached the Holy Table with the rest of the nuns. One can imagine what her thoughts and aspirations must have been at that, the last time she was to receive her Jesus on earth! Her praying, broken only by tears and sighs of longing, and the look of extraordinary exaltation on her face, were enough to convince observers that her heart was flooded with consolation that was more than human. Jesus had come to her to alleviate the pains that had so bruised her heart by pouring into it the treasure of His love, so to comfort her in her last few moments before her passage from this world into the next. After that Communion, she seemed to live no longer on earth, but to be already in Heaven. To all appearances, she was enjoying a heavenly vision, that of Jesus inviting her to the eternal nuptials of Heaven. A nuptial feast in this world is nothing in comparison with that so long desired by those souls, that, loving God with all their might, make this whole life a mere preparation for the marriage-feast of Heaven. What words of love, what words of gratitude must Sister Theresa Margaret have spoken to the Lord Who was finally calling her to the eternal bliss of Paradise! She had already forgotten the anguish she had suffered. She had been wounded, it is true, wounded so sorely that she had fallen to her knees, but there she did not remain, bruised and broken, for instead of casting her down to the hard and cruel earth, God had raised and sustained her!

She who had lived on the divine virtue, love, must now perforce die of love! From the moment of that last Communion, she appeared rapt wholly in God; in this state of recollection she remained Monday and Tuesday, with no sign of illness about her. About six o'clock Tuesday evening, after she had attended, according to her routine as infirmarian, to the Mother Prioress who was suffering from rheumatism, she went to the cell of another sick nun, Sister Theresa Maria of the Most Holy Conception (Ricasoli) and calmly stated that she wished to teach her how to make a perfect and beautiful act of conformity with the Divine Will in time of sickness. She had with her a little book written by Father Binetti, of the Society of Jesus, entitled, "Practice of the Holy Love of God," and from this book she read the act of conformity. Then she went down to the refectoryto partake of the Lenten collation. She was alone, since her office as infirmarian prevented her from eating this meal with the rest of the nuns. Just as she was about to sit down at the table, she was taken with such violent intestinal spasms that she had to leave the refectory and attempt to hasten to her own cell. She could not gain her cell. With great difficulty she managed to reach a cell on the ground floor where, on her knees at the bedside, she waited for the pains to pass. Finally, she was able to drag herself to her own cell; there the pains were redoubled in intensity ... she fell to the floor and called for help. Sister Maria Victoria of the Most Holy Trinity (Martini) happened to be passing by. At the call for help, she quickly entered the Saint's cell, lifted her from the floor and helped her get into the bed that was to be the cross from which she was to soar into eternity.

Sister Theresa Margaret's cell was now the center of a touching scene ... all the nuns hastened there, and, while waiting for the physician, knelt and prayed in silence. The sick bed became a sort of teacher's rostrum from which the occupant, in direst physical pain, gave the example of the most heroic virtue to her Sisters. From time to time she was heard to utter heartfelt aspirations, fervent invocations of the Name of her Divine Spouse, ardent protestations of conformity of her will with His. His love inspired her to ask her Sisters at her bedside to recite the "Gloria Patri" five times in honor of the Divine Heart, saying that she "attributed to His special favoring grace the fact that she did not die at once when she was taken with those fearful pains." This soul, so eager to die, was grateful for the singular grace of having her sufferings prolonged a few hours that, by means of a longer and more excruciating agony, she might become more like unto Jesus! Her agony was, in truth, excruciating. All that day it did not lessen in intensity, and all the next day until three in the afternoon, when welcome, undreaded death came to take her, it tortured her. Death's sharpness is dulled when the cord of an angelic life is to be severed.

While waiting for her deliverer, death, Sister Theresa Margaret kept her lips pressed close to the feet of Christ on a bronze cross which she always wore on her breast, murmuring, without ceasing, the sweet names of Jesus and Mary, murmuring them so lovingly that the Sisters could not keep back their tears. Only for a few minutes did she raise her eyes from Christ on the Cross, and that was when the nuns brought into her cell the relics of Saint Theresa.

The Rule concedes the use of linen for the sick; the Saint's love for suffering caused her to refuse this relief at first, but, at the Superior's command, she accepted the concession in resignation and in gratitude.

The first medicine given her after her seizure was a dose of laudanum to deaden the pain ... this she took, under the protest that she was not worthy of so much attention. The religious vied with one another in obtaining the privilege of staying up with her during that last night, but her humility forbade the sacrifice on the part of anyone in her behalf, so, after repeated appeals, and insistent statements that she needed no one to watch with her, the religious withdrew to their cells. For her own relief she asked nothing; with her eyes fixed on Jesus Crucified and her lips pressed against His wounded side, and hands, and feet, she passed the night invoking His Holy Name. "Her heart," writes Monsignor Albergotti, "had only one desire, that of making itself like That of the Divine Model, and, in the joy of being able to suffer pain for His pain, she set about the sole task of offering Him all her own sufferings."

Meanwhile, her physical condition became, swiftly yet gradually, more dangerous and more painful. Her whole body became wet with cold perspiration and, in frightful pain, shook as if from convulsions. Thus she passed the night, never uttering a word of complaint, glad to offer to the Crucified Lord the pains of body and soul which concurred in making her a true image of the Man of Sorrows. At dawn, in answer to the religious who asked her how she felt, she said that "her pains were not excessive, and that she felt better than she had the night before." (This apparent relief, it developed, was a sure sign that her illness was incurable, and that a gangrenous condition of the intestines had set in.) Then, as if forgetting her own painful state, and as if she had no other thought than the good of her sick, she reminded the Sisters of the necessity of procuring medicine for the relief of the Mother Prioress, and then asked someone "to go and see how Sister Theresa of the Most Holy Conception was faring, and to find out whether she needed anything." The nuns were astounded at this evidence of the spirit of charity in one whose own condition was now beyond help, but should they have expected anything different from one who, all her life, had given nothing but heroic proofs of the love of God and man that possessed her whole heart? "Man," muses Monsignor Albergotti, her biographer, "shows what he is at the point of death. It is then that his heart opens itself and reveals its motives, for the most part acting, when about to die, as if to confirm with his last breath his course of conduct in life."

During the morning the physicians came to see her once more and determined, as a last remedy, to bleed her. The only benefit derived from this operation was the evidence that Sister Theresa Margaret's charity was inexhaustible ... she could not bear seeing reproved an infirmarian who had forgotten to prepare the small necessities for the bleeding operation and, in her feeble, dying voice, begged the zealous religious not to scold the offender, saying that "for her everything was quite all right, and that it did not matter, so far as she was concerned, whether things were better arranged or not."[1]

Her last hour approached now in rapid strides, but not too quickly for that tender heart which, already detached from things of this world, looked forward to death's coming as a means to reclaim her heritage. One who is crucified with Christ does not fear the hour of his own "dissolving" ... for him death is like an angel of consolation who leans down from Heaven to gather up the spirit purified by suffering and to transport it to the dwelling place of the Saints. The nearer her last hour came to our Saint, the more recollected she became. Her calmness, sweetness, complete self-possession, her ardent contemplation of the Crucified Jesus whose image she repeatedly kissed, her touching abandonment of self into the hands of God, all revealed a soul that was great, one that was already a citizen of Heaven ... everything she did moved and edified the weeping Sisters who surrounded her deathbed. Still, how much greater would have been Sister Theresa Margaret's happiness, had she been able to receive her Jesus in her last moments! Her kind of illness prevented her from receiving Him; besides, the nuns, with no thought that death was so near, neglected to have her receive during one of the few calm periods between spells of vomiting. However, she had the consolation of remembering that she had received Jesus as Viaticum on Monday morning, and now, not being able to receive Him again, passed the few remaining hours of her life in one continuous spiritual communion.

Her words, as she lay there dying, audible now and then, were all an offering of herself as a victim of love and expiation. Her heart was now, through motives of pure love, united to That of Jesus in the agony of Gethsemane and in His oblation on the Cross.

Her eyes still shone with the divine love that was the splendor of her soul. The tears that fell from them now and then were not tears of pain ... they merely evidenced the greatness and force of the fire that was consuming her. She was now actually experiencing what her Seraphic Father, Saint John of the Cross, has written of the death of such saints ... "their perfect love of God makes death pleasant and alluring to them. Their souls are inundated with a torrent of delights as the moment in which they are to go to take full possession of God approaches. When they have come to the threshold of release from this prison of the body, everything within them seems to be transformed into love, and they, themselves, seem already to be contemplating Heaven's glory."[2]

Thus passed Sister Theresa Margaret's last moments on earth. Towards the end she appeared to feel no physical pain; it would seem that the secret joy of her contemplation made her forget the anguish of her physical agony. Absorbed in the thought of God she waited patiently for the fluttering sob of the last breath that could chain her to this earth. Life departed from her, as might a tiny, almost currentless stream, drop by drop. Her weakened body seemed, at the last, to receive new force and strength by reason of a superabundance of love that transfigured her countenance, as if she were overcome already by the hidden joys of Paradise. Jesus was now present before her. He had come down from Heaven to take back with Him her beautiful soul, to enjoy the ineffable sweetness of eternal espousals with the Lamb. She could now exclaim with the Seraphic Father of Reformed Carmel,

"Now all His am I. ...
For Him each virtue, for Him each sigh ...
In Love Immense, the crowd forgot,
My all I burn ... no other thought!"
(Canticle of the Soul and Christ Its Spouse)

In this state of exaltation she remained until about three o'clock in the afternoon, her only words telling God how much she loved Him ... then, most tranquilly, she told the Sisters that she felt herself growing much weaker, and at once was seized with a violent convulsion that left her almost lifeless. The nuns then called in Father Pius Covari, one of the Dominicans of Saint Mark's Convent, who was at that time the Confessor Extraordinary for the Monastery. The moment he saw Sister Theresa Margaret, he realized that she was almost breathing her last, so gave her at once absolution and the last anointing. Then the nuns commenced the prayers for the dying, while Sister Theresa Margaret remained motionless as if absorbed in an ineffable ecstasy of love, never tearing her eyes away from the figure of sweet Jesus Crucified, on the metal cross that she always held tightly clasped in her hands. After a few moments, a sudden, unexpected, and beautiful change came over her face, and, her eyes on fire with a new light, her lips curved in a sweet smile, she took her flight from this earth to rest forever in that Divine Heart Which she had loved so much.

She had begged not to be allowed to live very long on this earth, she had longed to die of love, and her longing and prayer had been granted. She withdrew from this land of exile as do souls consumed by the fire of Divine Charity who, as Saint John of the Cross affirms, "die in the ineffable joys of love, singing, like the swan when death is near, more and ever more melodiously."[3]

Sister Theresa Margaret had lived twenty-two years, seven months, and nineteen days. Of this time she had spent only five years in Carmel, but they were five full years during which, like the lily that unfolds in the glory of the morning, she diffused heavenly perfume and beauty all about her. Like Our Holy Mother, Saint Theresa, Sister Theresa Margaret was well-nigh perfect physically ... tall, well-proportioned, blue-eyed, blond of hair and complexion, lovely in feature ... such a body was a fitting casket for the glorious jewel of a soul housed within it.

There is no more to tell of this angelic young woman's life here on earth. A vision from Heaven, she came and stayed with us awhile. Her stay was dawnlike in its briefness ... after she had lighted up Carmel and the world with the rays of her young sanctity, "like a slender flame that seems to take form out of its very self and to mount higher and higher, from this earth she withdrew gently, leaving to us here below only this lifeless envelope of flesh which today we carry in triumph because it has been touched and transfigured by God's purest love."[4]

[1] Can. Proc.

[2] Living Flame of Love, Strophe i, verse 6.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Monsignor Bougaud's Panegyric on Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque.

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