- Chapter 41 Her life at Carmel.

“The light which has filled my soul since I entered the “Little way” has not come from books but from the Holy Ghost, although I have had neither ecstasies nor visions. My prayer time always passed either in dryness and in struggling against distractions, in trying to forget the pains in my stomach, or in keeping my mind at rest in the presence of God Whom I felt within my heart. I think that the latter was a form of prayer of quiet, an obscure contemplation in which, as with our saint, “the Master instructed me without the sound of words.” I felt with delight that He was beautifying my soul. I was like a flower endowed with consciousness and able to love and enjoy the sun which had made it bloom and given it colour.

Without seeing anything with the eyes either of the body or the soul I realised that God was present, I felt His gaze bent on me full of gentleness and affection, and that He smiled kindly upon me. I seemed plunged in God.

My imagination was submissive and did not act. I did not hear any noise that might be going on around me. My soul looked fixedly into the gaze invisibly bent on me and my heart repeated untiringly “My God, I love Thee!” While reiterating it with obscure but deep joy, I longed that the divine gaze, the spiritual Sun, should cause the virtues to flourish in my soul, and was conscious that my longing was granted and that this profound peace and simple act of love concealed an in comprehensible activity. Sometimes, remembering that our Mother, Saint Teresa, said that when we feel we are so near the King we should make our petitions to Him, I used to plead for souls; but as a rule I did not pause for that, being convinced that to repeat My God, I love Thee! pleased Him better and included all the rest.”

TIME 5:00

MOTHER ISABEL OF THE SACRED HEART Carmelite Nun of Lisieux. 1882-1914 Book written from a circular letter sent to Carmelite convents on her death. Authorised translation from the French, with an introduction by Dom Benedict Weld-Blundell, O.S.B. THE KINGSCOTE PRESS, 3 DYER S BUILDINGS, HOLBORN, LONDON, E.G. 1916.

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