traditioninaction
Nowadays, at a time when peace and love are exalted ad nauseam, and even among conservatives and traditionalists Pacifism makes its progress, it seems opportune to transmit a much different thought of the saint of love par excellence. Here St. Therese of the Child Jesus speaks about the happiness she would have to go to war. Perhaps her words will make those persons think a bit more about their own concessions to Liberalism. At least this is our sincere wish.
St. Therese of the Child Jesus
Words addressed to Mother Agnes of Jesus on August 4, 1897, two months before the death of the Saint:
"During meditation I fell asleep for a moment. I dreamed that soldiers were needed for a war. You said, 'I must send Sister Therese of the Child Jesus.' I replied, "I would prefer a holy war,' but I went anyway.
"O, my Mother! How happy I would have been to fight at the time of the Crusades, or later on to fight against the heretics! Ah! I should not have feared the fire.
"Is it possible that I shall have to die in bed?"
(Novissima Verba, First edition, p. 115)
“To be Your spouse, O my Jesus … and by my union with You to be the mother of souls, should not all this content me? Yet other vocations make themselves felt, and I would wield the sword, I would be a priest, an apostle, a martyr, a Doctor of the Church, I would fain accomplish the most heroic deeds—the spirit of the crusader burns within me, and I would gladly die on the battlefield in defense of the Church…. Like the prophets and doctors, I would be a light to souls. I would travel the world over to preach Your name, O my Beloved, and raise on heathen soil the glorious standard of the Cross…. But the greatest of all my desires is to win the martyr’s palm. Martyrdom was the dream of my youth! Yet this too is folly, since to slake my thirst for suffering, not one, but every kind of torture would be needful. O Jesus, to folly such as this, what answer will You make?… Is there on earth a soul more feeble than mine? Yet precisely because of my feebleness You have been pleased to grant my least, my most childish desires, and now You will to realize those others, more vast than the universe.
~Story of a Soul
