Dear Sister,

How can you ask me if it is possible for you to love God as I love him?

… If you have understood the story of my little bird, you would not have asked me this question. My [___________ (fill in the blank: virtues, talents, many gifts, etc.)] are nothing; they are not what give me the unlimited confidence that I feel in my heart. They are, to tell the truth, the spiritual riches that render one unjust, when one rests in them with complacence and when one believes they are something great…Ah! I really feel that it is not this at all that pleases God in my little soul; what pleases Him is that He sees me loving my littleness and my poverty, the blind hope that I have in His mercy…That is my only treasure…Why would this treasure not be yours?

Oh, dear Sister, I beg you, understand your little girl, understand that to love Jesus, to be His victim of love, the weaker one is, without desires or virtues, the more suited one is for the workings of this consuming and transforming Love…But we must consent to remain always poor and without strength, and this is the difficulty…Ah! Let us remain then very far from all that sparkles, let us love our littleness, let us love to feel nothing, then we shall be poor in spirit, and Jesus will come to look for us and He will transform us in flames of love.

…Oh! How I would like to be able to make you understand what I feel!.. It is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to Love.

St. Therese of Lisieux