FERVOR OF PENANCE AND MORTIFICATION
There is a mark or sign in the Carmelite life which is a peculiar
characteristic of it and has a strong attraction for souls in the
difficult ascent in the way of perfection. They feel the necessity of
divesting their whole being, body and soul, of any attachment to
passing things, to bind themselves more and more to God; and this mark
is ... mortification.
Without denying to this Carmelite mortification its expiatory
character, it must be understood that only in very exceptional cases
is it a personal expiation. In fact, St. Theresa writes: "After
all, if anything remains for you to expiate after death, what
matter?"[1]
On all the Fridays of the year they discipline themselves for the
extension of the Catholic Faith and the prosperity of the Holy Roman
Church, for peace and harmony between Christian rulers; as also for
benefactors, the souls in Purgatory, for the afflicted and slaves and
for all who are in mortal sin; reciting the Psalm Miserere and the
other prayers for the above mentioned people and the intentions of
Holy Mother Church.[2]
Carmelite mortification is, above all, interior; and as such, it
has little value as an end in itself. What is most important is to
crucify one's pride by means of humiliation. Side by side with
humiliating mortifications, there are those that have affinity to the
sufferings of Jesus Christ. The Carmelite not only constantly carries
in her mind and heart the remembrance of the Passion of Christ but, in
a certain way, tries to reenact it either in spirit or in
substance.
The interior austerities, if we can call them so, are, however, the
real active mortifications of the Carmelite. They are above all
physical suffering.
"Never to follow one's own will in anything". This is the
essence of this constant mortification. Sister Theresa Margaret took
this to heart in such a way as to be able to say with truth: "I
have completely forgotten myself and have schooled myself never to
give way to my inclinations".
From this complete negation of self she was able to elevate herself
sublimely to the higher spheres of the Infinite Love. Humility
sustained her in her flight. Between that all for God and nothing for
self, which she acquired in the school of her favorite authors,
St. Theresa of Jesus and St. John of the Cross, Sister Theresa
Margaret appears as an ethereal figure almost on a different plane to
ordinary mortals. She saw God in everything, she lived by Him, she was
in truth, a little bark absolutely abandoning herself on the seas of
the Divine Ocean.
From severe and continuous mortification, both interior and
exterior, issues an abundance of suffering, an unquenchable desire to
lose oneself in that higher grade of love which is pain: that is, to
suffer much, but always cheerfully, with a smile in the eyes and on
the lips and a light heart under a dark habit. Sister Theresa Margaret
also was to be another St. Theresa of Jesus, she was to emulate
St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi and anticipate the interior martyrdom of
the Saint of Lisieux.
Her physical suffering lay in her mortifications and in the
severity of those imposed by the Constitutions on one still so young
in years and never very robust in health, but she was always avid for
more. She wished to be ground to powder like the wheat of God for the
Bread of Life and she sighed in her heart, repeating the words of the
Imitation: "In the Cross there is spiritual joy, in the Cross
there is the compendium of virtue, in the Cross there is the
perfection of sanctity". (Book IV. Chap. XII).
Her chief study was to follow, in suffering, the footsteps of Jesus
as nearly as she possibly could. She would always find new ways of
mortifying herself. She never satisfied her appetite at any meal and
no matter how tired or thirsty she felt in the great heat of an
Italian summer, she would never let even one drop of water pass her
lips except at meal time, unless she was commanded to do so.
Sister Theresa Margaret also found a way to make her sandals
uncomfortable by inserting cherry stones or small pebbles which dug
into the flesh as she walked. She especially did this during
recreation time or when she went for a walk in the orchard.
She suffered much from the heat in the summer, and in the winter
she had terrible chilblains which invariably swelled and
broke. Instead of alleviating them with some remedy, she would wash
them in cold water and would pour hot wax on them from her lighted
candle so as to hide the open sores from the other Sisters. In the
evening, she would pray with her poor wounded hands under her
knees. Her hands bled, of course, and the signs of blood can still be
seen on some of the pages of her Breviary. She used all her ingenuity
to keep her cell as hot as possible in summer and as cold as she could
in winter. But all this is nothing to the vigor with which she used
the discipline to torment her young body. "Almost every
day," says Father Ildefonse, "she used the discipline as
hard as she could, with little knotted cords having iron spikes at the
end of each, bent and twisted so as to cause extra pain. She would use
this for a quarter of an hour at a time and some days would repeat the
process two or three times. She also wore a belt with iron spikes
inside next to her skin, that used to pierce her flesh wherever they
touched". The bare ground was her bed until her confessor
forbade her to continue this practice, but she obtained from him
permission to sleep on a bare table instead, with a stone for a
pillow.
If at times the Mother Prioress hesitated to let her indulge in so
many penances, she, with a charming smile, would say in the words of
St. Bernard and St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi: "Under a head
crowned with thorns, one delicately adorned with roses would be out of
place".
Monsignor Albergotti writes that, in spite of all these voluntary
sufferings, she never thought she did enough for Jesus, and would
humbly offer Him all her good will and renew her firm purpose never to
refuse any pain or suffering, since she accepted it invariably as
coming from Him.
In Jesus Crucified she saw the result of grave sin and the hardness
of heart of so many. She was full of compassion for their weaknesses
and well nigh inconsolable with pity. She was full of desire for the
conversion of sinners and she prayed for them especially at Carnival
time. She could at times hear the loud cries of the revellers in the
streets near by, and flying to the choir would implore God not to let
them commit any offence against Him. She would augment the number and
severity of her disciplines, and her fasts to further entreat God's
mercy on these her brethren. She would implore the Mother Prioress and
the Mother Mistress for permission to punish herself even more
severely for their sake.
Mother Theresa Mary of the Most Holy Conception, a fellow Novice in
her time, gave the following testimony:[3]
"Great was her zeal and eagerness for means to spread the
faith. She wished, as far as possible, that all the ignorant could be
instructed. She helped with her prayers all those who labor to bring
souls to God. 'Let us remember,' she would say, 'that our Holy Mother
really founded these convents with this aim in view. If we neglect our
duty in this, we shall totally degenerate in spirit, and she will no
longer acknowledge us as her daughters'."
During Holy Week, when the Church recalls the Passion and Death of
Our Lord, Sister Theresa Margaret did not cease to weep over the cause
of so much suffering to the Son of God. She pleaded to be allowed to
do more penance than ever, as indeed she asked to do every Friday in
the year. Once, when Mother Theresa Mary advised her to moderate her
penances, her humble reply was: "Every day you see me omitting so
many things, isn't it a just debt that I should pay for
them?"
This love of suffering produced in her almost a holy envy, (if one
can call it so) of those indispositions and illnesses with which the
Sisters were visited by God, and she would say at times: "One can
see that they are real spouses of Christ when He gives them a part of
His Cross to bear, but to me, one who is ever ungrateful, He gives
nothing to suffer and I enjoy perfect health".
Her interior martyrdom came from the tenderness and at the same
time the austerity of her heart; a particular sensitiveness peculiar
to sensitive and deep souls.
God forges His own elect and tempers their wills to infrangibility,
hard as a diamond, and then in that true firmness, He places a heart
more tender even than that of a mother. The love that had given Sister
Theresa Margaret the strength to break every dearly beloved tie at the
tender age of seventeen, had not diminished, nay rather had gained in
intensity and given her the courage to suffer for her dear ones whom
she would love to the end.
Sister Theresa Margaret felt a very special tenderness towards her
father, because she said she saw him more in God, more conformable to
His maxims and because he was more intimately in touch with her than
all the rest. She would not give way, however, to any outward
expression of affection towards him and in writing would address him
as "Amatissimo Signor Padre", literally, "Beloved Sir
Father".
During the retreat in preparation for her Profession, after a
diligent examination, she concluded that she had given all to God, the
balance was even. She was not, however, satisfied; was there not
something else she could despoil herself of, for love of Him?
Suddenly, in an excess of even more tender filial love, she wrote to
her father: "Sir Father, I want to detach myself from you to
belong more than ever to Jesus". She knew, however, that the
volcano of filial love was far from being extinct, so she invited her
father to a singular combat ... to surmount their affection by a
warmer, closer union with God ... the loser to pay the victor, ceding
him the merits of three Holy Communions weekly. The conditions were
accepted, the detachment did result in a wider, more perfect union
with the Heart of Jesus.[4]
One day her father came to the Convent bringing her little brother
Francis Xavier, the one she loved best because he too was united to
God, and for whom she had earnestly implored a vocation to the
priesthood, a grace which was granted later. He asked his sister how
she could bear never to see her father again, and she replied:
"Would you have me give him up to God and then take back my
gift?" To think that her father was so near, only a few feet away
from her, talking to the Mother Prioress. What heroism in this young
girl of twenty, what nerves of steel to be able to hide the waves of
love that were overflowing from her heart ... what an indomitable
will.... She approached the grille, her black veil falling over her
face and shoulders, asked him for his blessing ... and then fled.
Her extreme suffering, besides that of schooling her heart, was in
conquering her own nature.
"I thank God," she wrote to one of the Sisters of her
school, "that He made me conqueror, and freed my heart from so
many petty attachments that might have deviated my course from the one
objective which is to repose solely in Him. Though I am very far from
it, yet may He ever find me living annihilated in that Divine
Heart. Ask this of Him for me I pray." She confided her
resolutions to the Heart of Jesus. "My Jesus," she says in
her writings, "I want to be Thine in spite of whatever. I have
to suffer."
"I wish to mortify my intellect and my memory so that they may
become spiritual in such a way as to dwell with the soul in God and
that I may be able to say: My heart and my body have rejoiced in the
living God."[5]
Divinely inspired, she resolved never to let an opportunity for
suffering escape her; to accept it all gladly and silently as just
between her and her God. Her personal motto at Carmel was,
"Suffer and be silent for Christ's sake".
She understood the mystery of the Cross well, and yearned to ascend
Calvary with her Crucified Spouse. Let others receive great spiritual
consolations, she only wished to participate in all the sorrows of
Jesus, her only consolation being that she never received any.
"Every consolation I desire from God alone, not on earth, but
in Heaven. I care little to live happily, so long as I can live
piously.
"With good will I deliver my heart to suffering and
affliction; I am happy not to be happy, because for that Eternal
Banquet which is awaiting me, the fast must precede the Feast. I do
not deny joy to my heart, I merely defer it, because then without any
fear of losing it, it will be doubled!
"Outside these walls, I left every gratification that was not
spiritual. All my desires are stifled and buried deep so that they
should not torment me. I do not desire anything more deeply than to be
given the grace to persevere in this way. I do not desire anything and
I close the door to the world and all earthly consolations."
1. St. Theresa. The Way of Perfection.
2. Besides Friday, the discipline is used on Mondays and
Wednesdays.
3. Process of Canonization.
4. From a Memoir left by Cavalier Ignatius. We know that
at the time of the Saint's approaching Profession she still wrote most
affectionate letters to her mother.
5. Letter to Mother Mary degli Albizi, January 9, 1769.
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