Chapter 5
The Act of Offering (III)

The act of offering has us discover the fundamental secret of the Little Flower. Our retreat resolution should be to live this act of offering, to make it our own, and to receive it as a great gift from God for today's world, for humanity in the 20th century.

"After the exile of this earth, I wish to enjoy you in the homeland, but I do not wish to accumulate merits for heaven. I wish to work for your love alone, with the unique goal of pleasing you."

Here we see the purity of Thérèse's gaze, the purity of a heart which wishes only to love, to love "with the unique goal of pleasing." It is not "merit" that interests her, for merit is still something that belongs to us. The same holds true regarding the desire for perfection. There are persons who wish to be perfect and who believe that they must be perfect before entering into intimacy with God. They are entirely mistaken. Being perfect still regards us. A philosopher understands that morality implies perfection, and that is fine. But the Christian life is beyond law, although it does not suppress law. Law remains. Law teaches us to be virtuous. It is given to us so that we might be virtuous. That is why not an iota of the law will disappear. God wishes that we be somewhat virtuous--at least for those who are near to us! For if we are always in a bad mood, it is very tiresome for our neighbor. A person who is always in a bad mood, who always seems to be bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, a person out of whom we can never get a smile, is very trying. Bad moods stem from lack of virtue. We must, therefore, be virtuous as much as possible. But this is not what Jesus asks of us first.
What Jesus asks of us is to love God and to love neighbor. And in order for this love to be limpid, there must be something more: seeking to please God. Seeking to please not in order to seduce or in order to be thought of well, to be noticed. Seeking to "please," as Thérèse speaks of it, is wanting to do what pleases God, to do what is pleasing to him; and this is not easy. It is something to be sought. When we love someone deeply, when we love deeply someone who surpasses us completely, who is greater than us, we sometimes have difficulty discovering what exactly pleases him. A fiancé discovers what pleases the heart of his fiancée, whose heart he wishes to conquer; that is why he is so charming. One would like him to remain like this always--so kind--but after the marriage he becomes accustomed, he gets used to his spouse. Becoming accustomed is what is horrible sometimes in communal life. Becoming accustomed is contrary to love. Love never becomes accustomed. Love can only be love if there is renewal and unceasing discovery. Humanly speaking, imagination can have a role to play in such renewal and can be useful, but in the supernatural order the Holy Spirit renews. The Holy Spirit has us discover what pleases the Father, the good will and pleasure of the Father, and that of Jesus. And discovering their good will and pleasure is a particular quality of "first love." First love is inventive.

What is marvelous with the Little Flower is that the first love is always present. The first love is not always expressed or felt; it does not necessarily have psychical repercussions. But the first love is present, and it allows her to bear suffering and to transform suffering. Suffering is then lived with greater intensity, but it becomes light. There is suffering that beats us, and there is suffering which, on the contrary, strengthens us. Only the first love allows us to be victorious over suffering. Why? Because the first love is a great desire, a great desire to love. With first love, one is in the state of wishing to conquer; hence a great desire; whereas wishing to possess is something terrible for love. There is an internal contradiction between possessing and loving. When one loves, one respects the other so much that he does not wish to take him to oneself, to reduce him to oneself; whereas when one possesses, one takes to oneself. This may seem subtle, but when one loves one can understand and see it. When one takes to oneself, one is in conquered territory; whereas when one loves deeply, when one loves with first love; there is both great desire and great respect. With such love, one does not wish to possess; one fully respects the other. Fully respecting the other is also discovering what pleases him. It is loving which entails wishing to give to the other what pleases him most. Love then reaches full strength and also keeps its lightness, its gratuitousness--in other words, all that is proper to love. The act of offering of Thérèse reveals the desire of her heart: she wishes to maintain all that is proper to love. She wishes, all the while progressing in love so as to go always further, to keep the quality of first love: its delicateness, its finesse, its gratuitousness.

"At the evening of this life I will appear before you with my hands empty. I dare not ask you, Lord, to count my works."
Thérèse understood that one must never look at results, for if one looks at results, one eventually acquires a positivistic intellect which remains fixed to results. And someone with such an intellect only looks at the awards he receives or the approval of his results and no longer progresses. If we wish to progress, we must not look at results. Let others be concerned with results.

"All of our justices have stains before your eyes."
Justice consists in rendering to each his due. It is the virtue which allows us to respect others. It is one of the fundamental virtues for every community. The foundation of every human community is justice. The end, or finality, of a community is mutual love, concord, trust, but these entail justice (there can be no communal life without a certain justice). If justice, therefore, consists in rendering to each his due, what can be said regarding God since man owes everything to God? As the psalm says, "What can I render the Lord for all that he has given me" (Psalm 115, vs. 3). That is why the just man, fearful of God, as the Scriptures say, is one who adores God and who entrusts himself to his mercy.

"All of our justices have stains before your eyes." Why? Because there is always a certain self-interest when it comes to justice. Someone who is content with justice often seeks a certain self-interest. There is no superabundance with justice. Who pays their taxes superabundantly? Paying taxes stems from justice, and here one is not at all at the level of superabundance. On the contrary, one asks advice from clever persons, "how can I reduce my taxes without getting caught?" When we love, however, we love always superabundantly. This is proper to love. One can never say he loves enough, and one cannot fix a limit to love, for love implies superabundance.

"I therefore wish to clothe myself with your justice and receive from your love the eternal possession of you."
The justice of God is linked to love--Thérèse says it quite often. Human justice is distinct from love. And the justice of the devil is opposed to love. The devil sometimes pleads justice (it may sometimes be a subtle temptation for us), but he pleads hardened justice, because it is justice without love. Thérèse distinguishes well human justice from the justice of God. "I wish to clothe myself with your justice and receive from your love the eternal possession of you." We do not possess love but we possess, in a certain sense, the source of love, which is a Person who gives himself to us. It is said with great clarity, "I wish no other throne or crown but you, O my Beloved."

"To your eyes, time is nothing. A single day is like a thousand years. You can, therefore, prepare me in an instant to appear before you."
What Thérèse says here is very important, for it shows the value, in God's eyes, of intense prayer: a single glance towards him, which takes hold of everything in us, is worth a thousand years. We must also, in prayer, be able to give time. Let us never say, "I'm going to spend a half-hour in prayer." Such expressions have no meaning, for prayer cannot be measured. We should rather say: "I'm going to spend a half-hour trying to pray." "My God I consecrate a half-hour to you; I burn it for you." Or, "I spent five days on retreat; I burned them for you." And during the retreat there may be moments of great fervorŠthe eagle passes by. The Holy Spirit is the eagle, and he passes by and grabs hold of us. When we let ourselves be taken by the eagle, by the Holy Spirit, a single day, a single moment, he has us touch eternity and gives us new strength, for we are close to the source. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we re-ascend to the source of all love. Thérèse ends her act with what is proper to the act of offering (everything that preceded prepared the act).

"So as to live in an act of perfect Love, I offer myself as a holocaust victim to your merciful love."
"So that" refers to the finality. This offering of love is with a view to living "in an act of perfect Love," that is, to meet the very mystery of God, to touch the Source, and to lose oneself in it. Thérèse shows us that the greatest thing we can do is offer ourselves, "I offer myself as a holocaust victim." It is the Lamb, Jesus, who, at the Cross, offers his whole life, offers himself, gives himself completely. "I offer myself," says Thérèse, "in order to live this act, in order that the Holy Spirit might take hold of me and eliminate all obstacles." In offering herself to merciful Love, she wishes to eliminate all obstacles in order to let the divine eagle take hold of her. She offers herself as a "holocaust victim," that is, in a sacrifice wherein everything is burned--as the Greek etymology of the term indicates. One asks that everything be burned by the divine fire. For this reason Thérèse can say, after having done this act, that she was, as it were, "entirely plunged into fire."

"I offer myself as a holocaust victim to your merciful Love begging you to consummate me unceasingly allowing to overflow in my soul the torrent of infinite tenderness enclosed in you and that I thus become a martyr of your love, O my God."
"A martyr of your love": this is indeed what Mary lived at the Cross, where she is queen of martyrs. Why? Because, at the Cross, she offered everything to Jesus and became one with him in his sacrifice. And at the Cross, Jesus sends her the Paraclete. We can say that it was the first moment of Pentecost, that is, the first gift of the Paraclete; and it was for Mary a particular giving of the Holy Spirit to Mary. The second moment is the giving of the Holy Spirit to the apostles after the Resurrection. And the third moment is for the entire Church, in the Upper Room, at Pentecost, properly speaking (Acts 2:1-4). It is important to consider these three Pentecosts of love, and not to forget the one the Little Flower understood so well and asked for herself. If she asks this act of perfect love for herself in order to be entirely consummated in the fire of love, in order to be taken by the "adored Eagle," the "eternal Eagle," it is because she knows that Mary lived it, and that Mary lived it for her. She, therefore, can live it. "That I thus become a martyr of your love, O my God."

How is one a martyr of the love of Christ's heart? By being with him at the Cross and living with him his holocaust. Christ is the Lamb who bears the iniquity of the world. He accepted to present himself before the Father as the only one responsible for sinful humanity. He took everything upon himself so that, in and through him, we might receive the merciful love of the Father. In trying to grasp the depths of Thérèse's act of offering to merciful Love, we truly find ourselves in the presence of the mystery of Mary at the foot of the Cross, of Mary and her cooperation with Christ at the Cross. This is what the Little Flower wishes to live: the mystery of the compassion in its most powerful and ultimate aspect. What she says reveals what Mary lived. She can reveal it because she lived it.

To us, children of the twentieth-century, who have the privilege of receiving the proclamation of the dogma of the Assumption, it was granted the blessing of hearing Pope John Paul II proclaim a Pentecost of love. Martha Robin had such a desire that the Holy Father proclaim a Pentecost of love. The Pope proclaimed it in Czestochowa, Poland, on August 15, 1991, on the solemnity of the Assumption, so that we might understand that the most wonderful fruit of the Pentecost of love is Mary in her Assumption.

Thérèse shows us how we can anticipate this mystery: through her act of offering. The mystery of the Assumption is what the Holy Spirit wishes to give us in this act of offering to love. And when the Pope officially says on the day of the Assumption that we are in the presence of a Pentecost of love, is he not suggesting that we are entering the last stages of the pilgrimage of the Church? What is certain is that this new Pentecost--which passes through the heart of Mary, a heart which "co-suffered" at the Cross and which, at that moment, knows and lives the glory of Christ--is for us.

"Begging you to consummate me unceasingly, allowing to overflow in my soul the torrent of divine tenderness enclosed in you that I thus become a martyr of your love, O my God...May this martyrdom, after having prepared me to appear before you, have me finally die, and may my soul fly without hesitation into the eternal embrace of your merciful Love."
This act, which allows her to enter into the eternal embrace of the Trinity, has her anticipate glory.

"I wish, O my beloved, with each beat of my heart, to renew this offering an infinite number of times until, the shadows having disappeared, I can restate my love in an eternal face-to-face."
What disposes, in the most powerful fashion to this entry to the Beatific Vision, to this eternal face-to-face, is indeed this act of offering to merciful Love. And (once again) it is the act of Mary at the Cross, living the mystery of Jesus who offers himself to the Father in order to glorify him and to save us. The Little Flower lived this under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What Mary lived at the Cross--the last act of Christ on this earth--is the very act of Jesus offering his life to the Father in the holocaust of the Cross, his cry of thirst, and the complete commending of himself into the hands of the Father. After the Cross, Mary can live nothing but this last act of the life of Jesus-until she herself lives her last act of love in the obscurity of faith and the poverty of hope. Mary cannot live any other act, for it is a peak, a summit. She is entirely relative to Jesus and, at the Cross, she lives, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the incredible attraction exercised by Christ crucified. "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to myself" (John 12:32). Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, she is drawn to Jesus, drawn by his cry of thirst and the wound of his heart. Mary lives this mystery to the end of her earthly pilgrimage, for she cannot live anything greater than this.

The Little Flower grasped this mystery in a very surprising fashion. Martha Robin also lived Christ's cry of thirst when she suffered the passion with Mary. All of this is for us in a century of secularization. "When the Son of Man comes" what will he find on earth? Will he not find instead "the abomination of the desolation on the wing of the temple" (Daniel 9:27). Are we not witnessing this, if we are a bit clairvoyant, and if we try to see what is happening around us? This is not pessimism, but rather great hope. In the midst of suffering there is an élan, there is the prodigious attraction of Jesus on the Cross, that is, if we have the courage, as did Thérèse, to consider the wisdom of the Cross? It is something great, for it is the secret of our Christian life. The Eucharist reminds us daily of this wisdom, for the Eucharist is given to us so that the mystery of the Cross might be actual in our lives, so that we might live this mystery as much as possible.

When Thérèse says, "I wish, O my Beloved, with each beat of my heart, to renew this offering," it shows that she knows that this offering is a summit, and that it must constantly be renewed. It is not repeating, but renewing the act, constantly reliving it in order to meet up with the act of full love that Mary lived. How beautiful it is to see this little child revealing to us the secrets of her Mother. A mother is always silent. The children reveal the secrets. And the Little Flower reveals this great secret of Mary. She reveals it in her act of offering, in being completely burned like Mary at the foot of the Cross, for Mary remained standing. We must not believe the paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries which depict Mary fallen, fainting and swooning at the foot of the Cross. John tells us stabat mater; she was standing. Why? Because she is strong with love that comes directly from Jesus. She is strong with a fire that seizes and takes hold of her. The Little Flower has this same strength, and she renews this offering an infinite number of times, like Mary, in the footsteps of Mary, and with Mary until the eternal face-to-face.

"With each beat of my heart" signifies also that this love is lived by Thérèse through her heart and her body. She wishes to use her body to renew this offering, for she wishes to belong to Jesus entirely. It is not in a dis-incarnate fashion, but through her body that she loves Jesus, that she wishes to burn with love and desire for him.

Offering oneself to merciful Love is an act of love in an élan, that is, in a desire. And the martyrdom that this offering entails is not only dying to our desires in order to have only one desire, that of being drawn to Jesus; it is living this attraction. This attraction is the very attraction the Father exercises upon the human will of Christ entirely transformed by his plenitude of charity, and which leads him to offer himself upon the Cross as a holocaust victim.

In order to better understand this offering it is good to reread certain enlightening passages from Story of a Soul. Shortly after offering herself, Thérèse understands the greatness of this act that she was moved to do the day of the feast of the Trinity. Indeed it is beautiful that it was on the feast of the Trinity, for the Cross, the wisdom of the Cross is indeed the great revelation of the Trinity. At the Cross there is, as it were, an icon of the Holy Trinity.

"This year, the 9th of June, feast of the Holy Trinity, I received the grace to understand, more than ever, how much Jesus desires to be loved."
Hence this act of offering. This act is to manifest to Jesus that she loves him. And we saw how Jesus, a few days after, gives her a sign (a passing, sensible experience, but powerful nevertheless) in order to show that, beyond all sensible graces, he has completely taken her to himself.

"I was thinking about the souls that offer themselves as victims to the justice of God in order to draw to themselves punishment reserved for the guilty."
What we have here is a spirituality (that of lightning rods which seek to attract the lightning of divine justice) which is not very popular today but which existed at one time. With great charity Thérèse shows that this is not what she bears in her heart, and she opens the door to something in much greater conformity with what the Holy Spirit is asking of us. In this sense, she is truly a source of renewal.

"Such an offering seemed great and generous, but I was far from sensing that I was to do it. O, my God, I cried from the depths of my heart, is it only your justice that will receive souls immolating themselves as victim?"
The attraction of justice is not as powerful as the attraction of mercy. Jesus does not like when we stop at justice too much, for he is the only one who can exercise it perfectly. Theologically, this we must state. Hence one can never advise someone to offer himself to the justice of God. Theologically, we must say that Jesus could offer himself as a victim (of love) to the justice of the Father, for he was and is the only one able to bear this justice. Thérèse saw correctly. And the merciful love of Jesus to which she offers herself in holocaust as a victim of love, so penetrates her soul that there is no longer "any trace of sin," such that she no longer "fears purgatory." She also understands that Jesus cannot desire for us useless suffering, and that he cannot inspire the desires that she feels if it were not to fulfill them. There is great doctrinal precision here which shows how much Thérèse is moved by the gifts of the Holy Spirit and truly received the charism of sermo sapientiae.

"O, how sweet the path of love. How I wish to apply myself to accomplishing, with ever greater abandonment, the will of the Lord."
Thérèse herself recognizes this as the most precious fruit of the act of offering: total conformity with the will of the Father and abandonment into his hands. Before her opens a horizon other than that of justice which she mentioned before, a path which surpasses justice. She does not reject justice, for she knows that the justice of God is eternal and inseparable from his love. However, it is a true surpassing which, as it were, places her beyond justice. We must grasp what she says. She is rigorously theological and she wonderfully shows what might be a mystical theology which contemplates the mystery of God through his merciful love: seeing the attributes of God--his simplicity, his infinity, his justice, his providence, etc.--through his merciful love. Scientific theology, that is, the theological perspective with the greatest rigor, sees everything through the simplicity of God (this is the first perspective of Thomas Aquinas on God contemplated in his unity). In mystical theology, everything is seen through merciful love--including justice--in order to maintain an order of wisdom.

As we said before, the devil sometimes pleads justice, that is, pushes us to say sometimes: "God is not just. God is unjust." Today, many persons are scandalized by what appears to be unjust by God, and they say that the greatest obstacle for them, what impedes them from believing in the existence of God, is all the suffering seen in the world. Already Thomas Aquinas, in the Middle Ages, said that one of the greatest obstacles to the discovery of God is suffering, the disorder that exists in suffering (suffering always brings with it a disorder). For many Jews, as well, the great obstacle to recognizing Jesus as the Messiah, as the Emissary of God to us, is the disorder that reigns in the world. "If Jesus were truly the Emissary of God, there would be peace in the universe. Because such peace does not exist, because suffering continues to exist and injustice is still present, Jesus is not the true Messiah." This temptation comes from the devil; the order of justice being taken as an absolute. It can be found with persons who refuse certain aspects of the Church, who refuse the guidance of the Church. The devil is very clever in his temptations. He separates justice from mercy and from love. Justice is order and order then becomes an absolute. In so doing, we separate it and give it a very formal character. In so doing, justice is opposed to the Holy Spirit's guidance of the Church--which is guidance regarding persons. When we focus on order, we do not consider persons primarily; order is placed above everything. Considering order as greatest is a temptation that exists today. In reality, order is not what is greatest; what is greatest, is mercy and love. The guidance of the Holy Spirit is guidance in love and in mercy regarding persons. For the Holy Spirit there is not a common good beyond persons (as claim those who place political order above everything), for the holiness of each person is what is absolute as regards the guidance of God.

This passage from Story of a Soul alludes to the end, "How will this story of a little white flower end?" It is good to reread in parallel this passage from Mother Agnes dated Thursday, the 30th of September, "the day of Thérèse's precious death," for it helps us to understand how Thérèse lived abandonment until the end. It is indeed the act of abandonment which sheds light on her last day.

Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his saints. Until the end, God willed suffering, aridity, and the dryness of faith for her, so that love might be victorious over everything. We must consider this passage (beautiful in its simplicity and truth) in the light of the Holy Face, in the light of Christ crucified, in order to see how God wills the connection between love and suffering. Such is the wisdom of the Cross, and this is what moved Thérèse to her offering to merciful Love. Thanks to this offering to merciful Love, she was able to live suffering to the end. Only merciful Love can assume human suffering, leaving its acuteness, but transforming it from within so that it might be entirely ordered to love, as wood or hay allow the fire to burn more, to consume everything.

The mystery of the wisdom of the Cross is the only response that we can give to those for whom present suffering proves that Jesus is not the Emissary of the Father. This suffering continues in the heart of Mary, it continues in the hearts of the saints, in the heart of the Little Flower, and in our hearts. At the Agony, Jesus asked the Father to remove the cup and, at the same time, fully accepted what the Father willed: "Not my will but your will." The Father willed that the chalice, the cup, bring about unity between the hearts of Jesus and Mary, between the hearts of the Little Flower and Mary. The Father wills this so that merciful Love might go to the end.