J. M. J. T.
Long live Jesus!
Little Thérésita,
What a joy to see you well! How good the Blessed Virgin really is! I offered her your beautiful bouquet, and she seemed to be all radiant with her little daughter’s flowers. . . . Along with the flowers, I expressed a big “merci,” which was as tender as it was big, and I begged her to continue her work and to complete it soon.
Poor darling, how eager I am to see your little face so dear to my heart. I can see it from here, that’s true, but for some time my telescope is no longer any good; when you were so sick, I let a tear fall on the lens and suddenly it became blurred.
Well, the Blessed Virgin keeps us together under her mantle; she is watching over us in her heart, blessing us, loving us and caressing us with the same hand!
How can you say that Thérésita is far from Agnes, and Agnes far from Thérésita?
How beautiful the weather is today! Look, how blue the sky is! From time to time, I see little swallows passing by, [cheerful] and light, just like a little girl in good health, and I think of my Benjamin, and I pray to the dwellers of this very blue heaven to have a little pair of wings fall down from on high for my own swallow. With this pair of wings she would run through the fields, she would play in the beautiful sun, she would come and rest from time to time in her Agnes’ very sweet nest, up there high on the mount of Carmel where the weather is so good, so good! and where one breathes in heaven’s air and is always able to see, even during the winter, the sun and flowers….
Little child, let us ask our dear Mother not to allow her month to pass by without reuniting us.
Adieu! Let us love the Blessed Virgin, let us love her; she is a Mother, and beneath her glance, beneath her hand, the little [ship] of her heart is safe and is sailing peacefully toward heaven.
I kiss your little [ship], my cherub; always keep at the bottom of its hold the love I know you have for me. I need it just as a little mother needs to be paid in return for the love she has for her child,
Your Agnes
Sister Agnès of Jesus, O.C.D.
(Pauline Martin)
Letter written from the Carmel of Lisieux
14 or 15 May 1883 after the healing of Thérèse on 13 May
Featured image: The Virgin of the Smile is a statue of the Blessed Virgin that was a favorite image in the Martin family home at Les Buissonets in Lisieux. It was the statue that was present in the bedroom of St. Thérèse on 13 May 1883 when she was healed by the “ravishing smile of the Blessed Virgin.” It held a place of prominence in the Carmel of Lisieux in the ante-chamber of the monastic cell of Thérèse in June 1897 and moved to the infirmary with her on 8 July, where it remained in front of her bed until her death on 30 September 1897.
Carmelite Quotes 
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