The following is chapter 3 of Father Philippe's new book on Saint Therese of Lisieux.

Let us speak of the Little Flower, but where does one begin? She is so simple and so limpid, and we are often less limpid. She should be the one to tell us how best to enter into the secret of her heart.

It is through Martha Robin that I most deeply discovered Therese. It wasn't so much through books but through Martha. It was a little path that the Lord was giving me, a very direct path which helped me a great deal. Martha had the privilege of receiving little visits from Therese. Therese would come to communicate to her spirit. Now, the most important aspect of the message that Therese left for the 20th Century, and especially the end of the 20th Century, is the act of offering to merciful Love. We are, therefore, going to begin with this and re-read it so as to try to live it, for it is not a question of reciting but of personally committing ourselves.
Let us first re-read the words recounted in the yellow notebook by Mother Agnes, as she had asked her little sister to "recount what had occurred after her offering to Love." After having noted that she had done so the very day of her offering but that Mother Agnes "had not paid attention" Therese continues:

I began my stations of the Cross and, behold, all of a sudden I was seized by such violent love for the Lord that I cannot explain it, except by saying that it was, as it were, like being plunged completely into fire. Oh, what fire and what gentleness at the same time! I was burning with love, and I felt that I could not bear this ardor another minute or another second without dying. I then understood what the saints say about these states which they experienced so often. As for me, I only experienced it once and for a single moment, and then I fell back into my customary dryness.

Here we touch the humility of Therese. She speaks the truth. It only lasted a moment but it marked her entire life. One thinks of St. Bernadette who was so marked by the gaze of Mary, she sought it her whole life...and so when we are granted a burning contact with God, a contact of fire with Jesus, with the Father, this marks us even more. It marks our soul in its deepest aspect, and it is indelible. One cannot change it. In theology we say that the "character" of Baptism ("the mark upon our soul") is indelible, but the sacrament in itself is something less deep than sanctifying grace to which it is ordered. Baptism is with a view to sanctifying grace. It is so to have us live this direct contact with God, this participation in the very life of God. The character of Baptism is, therefore, only perfectly in act in this intimacy with the three divine persons. We must all ask the Holy Spirit to take hold of us in this fashion so that the mark of God upon our soul might be living. We all need the Holy Spirit to have us effectively live this participation in the life of God. This is what allows us to be faithful. For we are faithful to Love; and when we have been taken hold of deeply by someone who is our God, when our soul has been seized by Him, it lasts, it remains. Not that we are always conscious of it. Therese herself soon fell back into her customary dryness; but in faith it remains. Therese adds,

From the age of 14, I also had these intense moments of love. Oh, how I loved the Lord! But it was nothing like after my offering to Love. It was not a true flame that was burning me.

She recognized, therefore, that everything before her act of offering was a disposition and that, after this act, something marked her soul in such a way that, thenceforth, despite and beyond the dryness, there was something that lasted. We must always recall this when we want to do this act of offering with her. We must understand it to be the direct fruit of the action of the Holy Spirit upon our souls, our wills, our hearts. This act is not something "composed." It is something that comes directly from the Holy Spirit - for Therese and for the whole Church. One might even say that as regards the Holy Spirit guiding the Church here is something new. If we were truly attentive to this, we would understand that we can no longer live as before.

We all know the text of this offering but it is good to re-read it, for a retreat is not for the purpose of inventing new things but to re-actuate our love with respect to the three divine persons, through Mary. We are, therefore, going to try to see successively all that is entailed in this act of offering so to discover through it the great secret of Therese: "Oh, my God, Blessed Trinity! I desire to love you and to have you loved."

From the age of 14, she is seized by a desire to love that will not leave her rest. Even before she had the desire to give herself entirely to the Lord, and here she does not say, "I love you" but "I desire to love you." It is very powerful. As St. Augustine says, "One who desires to love loves." We are not sufficiently convinced of this and very often we remain at the consciousness that we have of loving, at what we feel, yet the last teaching that Christ gives us, "I thirst," expresses this well. Jesus himself does not stop at the "interiorly lived experience" of his love for the Father. He goes beyond it: "I thirst", because he always wants to go further. Catherine of Siena says, very powerfully, that the greatest thing on earth is desire, the desire to love, which is, as it were, the common fruit of faith, hope, and charity, and the divine exercise of the gifts of wisdom and fear. This desire is with respect to a person for we can only spiritually love a person . Here, the desire is with respect to three persons in the unity of the Trinity.

A desire to love you and have you loved, (here is revealed the apostolic soul of Therese) to work for the glorification of the Church by saving souls on earth and delivering those who suffer in purgatory.

When we love the Trinity in and through the heart of Jesus, our Savior, who is the Savior of all men, our love necessarily takes on this dimension. We cannot stop at ourselves nor at a limited horizon.

I desire to accomplish perfectly your will and to arrive at the degree of glory that you have prepared for me in your Kingdom.

After desiring to love there is a "desire to perfectly accomplish His will." This is for hope. Obedience is food for hope. It allows it to grow. We should all have the desire to make our hope grow. This desire which is linked to that of accomplishing perfectly the will of the Father has us aspire to the degree of glory he has prepared for us in his Kingdom.

In a word, I desire to be a saint, but I feel my powerlessness and I ask you, O my God, to be yourself, that you yourself be my holiness.

Everything is contained here: "Christ is our holiness." But so that he be our holiness we must desire to be a saint. And desiring to be a saint, is desiring to accomplish fully, to the end, the will of the Father, through everything. This is what matters, and we are certain that we will receive grace for this.

My grace suffices.

How God leads us is very demanding. God wishes to act directly and he wishes to act as God, that is, with the absolute of God. We must not relativize or diminish the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity by reducing them to our prudence. Prudence is us; the theological virtues is God in us. And God does not like when we reduce the theological virtues to our virtue of prudence, for it would be like trying to drive with the parking brake on... one can imagine the results. When we try to start and drive without releasing the brake, we do not move. Why do so many Christians not move? Because they are not concerned with having their faith, hope and charity grow. They leave the parking brake on, that is, "I must be prudent," "I must do as everyone else does," etc. The theological virtues, however, place us alone before God as Moses before the one who revealed himself to be I am . In the very act of faith, hope, and charity we are alone before Jesus who says to us: "I Am." "I am the bread of life." "I am the Good Shepherd." "I am the Resurrection"....

Because you have loved me to the point of giving me your Only Son to be my Savior and my Bridegroom. The infinite treasures of his merits belong to me. I offer them to you with happiness, begging you to gaze upon me only through the face of Jesus and in his heart burning with love.

Here we understand why she wished to be called "Therese of the Holy Face." It is through the face of Jesus that she wishes the Father to gaze upon her, and she knows that He only gazes upon her in this way. What she says here is very correct, for the Father predestines us through the face of Jesus, through the wound in his heart. He only gazes upon us, therefore, in Jesus and through his wounded heart.

I, therefore, offer to you all the merits of the saints (those who are in heaven and on earth) their acts of love and those of the angels. Finally, I offer you, O Blessed Trinity, the love and the merits of the Blessed Virgin, my beloved mother. It is to her that I abandon my offering, beseeching her to present it to you.

We first see here the littleness of Therese and then the place that Mary has in her life. Here, Therese says (probably without knowing it for she never read him) the same thing as Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Monfort. She is conscious that she cannot do this act if it is not presented to God by Mary. She is conscious that she cannot do this act if it were not through the face of Jesus. The two mediations are present: that of the unique Mediator, and that of Mary, Mediatrix of all graces.

Her divine Son, my beloved Spouse, during the days of his mortal life said to us: "All that you ask of the Father in my name, He will give you." I am, therefore, certain that you will fulfill my desires. I know it, O my God: the more you wish to give, the more you arouse desire. I feel in my heart immense desires, and it is with trust that I ask you to come take possession of my soul.

"Immense desires." We know that Therese had written "infinite desires," but that in response to her desire to have her text reviewed by a theologian, Father Lemonnier had asked that "infinite" be replaced by "immense." One understands the concern of the theologian, but it remains true to say that she had infinite desires; for grace, our sanctifying grace, linked to the plenitude of grace in Jesus, gives us quasi-infinite desires. Our grace in itself is not infinite, but to the degree that we let ourselves be "animated by the spirit of God" who dwells in us, we can, moved by Him, do acts which completely surpass not only our human capacities but even the "ordinary" exercise of charity. We then have "infinite" desires to belong to Jesus and to live by his own holiness and to live by the holiness of Mary. Therese continues, "Ah, I cannot receive Holy Communion as often as I desire but, Lord, are you not Almighty? Remain in me as in the Tabernacle. Do not distance yourself from your little wafer."

Therese was aware that the Sacraments, in particular that of the Eucharist, act as a remedy to our fragility and our distractions. The Eucharist gives us the actual presence of Jesus under this particular mode known as "sacramental." It is normal when we love intensely and when we desire to love always more, to desire that the one we love be present. Now Jesus is present in the Eucharist. He is really, substantially present. And yet the "how" does not matter (the mode, as they say in theology). When one loves, that is of little consequence. To meet someone we love in a beautiful room or in a cold cave is of little consequence. The essential thing is that we be with him, that there be nobody else, and that we be tranquil. When there are animals present, it is a little bothersome. When there are thieves, it is even more bothersome. When there are other persons who are listening, it is even more bothersome.

Here, we see the distinction that Therese makes between desiring to love and the means . If there is a desire to love then we take any possible means, or we use any means to intensify this love. Such is desire: intensifying love. The love that I currently have I wish to make grow. And for this I need means. Loving Jesus and the Trinity is truly awesome; and it must grow. Now there is a means given by God himself: the Eucharist. When Therese communicates, she knows that after a few minutes the host dissolves and, consequently, the Eucharistic presence disappears. But the sacramental presence is ordered to the growth of the presence of grace. If the sacramental presence disappears, therefore, it is so that the deep, substantial presence of sanctifying grace increase, and that this "transubstantiation" of which St. Augustine speaks, come about: "It is not you who change me into you as food for your flesh. It is I who change you into me." Therese said, " We are also the wafer that Jesus wishes to change into himself." But we do not live the sacrament of the Eucharist perfectly enough, that is why we always need to communicate, to receive Communion. Therese felt this very strongly. Hence, the expression of her "desire." We must recognize that from a theological point of view it is a bit curious. Certain theologians have commented upon this. But one must understand the language of this little child. It is not cold, theological language. It is language burning with the fire with which she is animated. Since this act of offering is done in this fire that burns her, we understand that the fire remained in her (even when she does not feel it).

I wish to console you for the ingratitude of the mean, and I beg you to remove from me the freedom to displease you. If out of weakness I sometimes fall, may your divine gaze as quickly purify my soul consuming all of my imperfections as fire which transforms everything into itself....

If we wish to take note of all the excesses of the Little Flower (which would be very interesting), we would underscore a second one here. The "excesses" of Therese are excesses of fervor, and fervor, as St. Thomas says, is like water when it boils and raises the lid of the casserole. In other words, fervor is love surpassing limits. Therese, therefore, sees the limits of the sacrament of the Eucharist, limits inherent to a sacrament (which imply a sensible reality) and she is distraught at not being the tabernacle for the Eucharist. She is also distraught at being able to be distracted. Being distracted is unbearable. Not always being seized by the presence of Jesus and being able to give one's attention to a reality that is not Him is unbearable. Hence this second excess with respect to human conditioning: "I beg you to remove the freedom to displease you, to offend you." These excesses can unnerve certain theologians because they are not the language of scientific theology, i.e., a rigorous language which uses "proper" terms. One must understand, however, the state in which Therese is. One does not speak in the same manner when comfortably seated in a chair, and when one is burning with fire. When one burns with fire, one cries his love (it gives courage) and one calls. Therese cries for love. Her excesses are cries and calls.

I thank you, O my God, for all the graces that you have granted me. In particular, for having had me pass through the crucible of suffering.

We will return to this, for one cannot speak about the Little Flower without speaking about suffering and without showing the place of suffering with respect to love.

It is with joy that I will contemplate you at the last day bearing the scepter of the Cross. Because you have deigned give me a share in this precious Cross, I wish to resemble you in heaven and see shining, on your glorified body, the sacred stigmata of your Passion....

Therese was not stigmatized, but she had this ardent desire to be eternally stigmatized, and she is; for everything that she desired the Father gave to her as to his beloved child.

After this exile on earth, I hope to rejoice in you and the Homeland. But I do not wish to accumulate merits for heaven. I wish to only work for your love, with the unique goal of pleasing you, of consoling your sacred heart and of saving souls that will love you eternally.
At the evening of this life, I will appear before you with empty hands for I dare not ask you, Lord, to count my works. All of our justices bear stains before your eyes. I, therefore, wish to clothe myself with your justice and receive from your love the eternal possession of you. I wish to have no other throne and crown but you, O my beloved....