St. Teresa of the Andes

Letter # 141 to Amelia Montt Martinez

October, 1919

“May the grace of the Holy Spirit be with your soul.

There are only a few more days left before my taking the habit.  And the days seem so long while I wait to be clothes with it.

I am the happiest person with my vocation and never tire of thanking God for having brought me to this little corner of heaven.  I live for God alone.  My soul concern is to know Him that I may love Him more.  I have begun the life of heaven here on earth, a life invented and thought of by God through all eternity; a life of love alone and of ceaseless praise.  If you could see but for an instant what’s in the soul of this Carmelite postulant, you’d understand the happiness of living always near the tabernacle.  Alone with Him in His aloneness, I am there at the chapel grates or in my humble cell.  There is nothing between Him and His creature now.  I hear His divine voice always.  I gaze on always and contemplate His infinite beauty.  I feel always the beating of my God’s Heart, begging me for love because He knows that love contains everything; sacrifice and souls.

Sister dear, without doubt, as Jesus Himself said to Magdalene, He has chosen for me “the best part.”  A Carmelite is to be concerned with her God alone.  She’s to live no longer on earth, but in God.  She is to move and to work and to breathe far from people, far from earthly things.  We are to remember the world but only in order to pray for it and for people but without letting ourselves be influenced by them, without breathing in their impure atmosphere.  Jesus has imprisoned me here to unite Himself with me, nothing disturbing this gaze, this vision of this adorable Face of His which one day I shall possess in its fullness there in heaven.  I often imagine that I am like a queen; for while others serve the King in the apostolate of action, I, like a queen, am by His side, listening to Him, contemplating Him, praying together with Him, and joining Him in His own suffering.  He exchanged His own feelings with my own by divinizing them.  He surrounds me with His divine light, beautifying my soul with His teachings.”

Letters of St. Teresa of Jesus of the Andes Discalced Carmelite. Translated by Michael D. Grifin, O.C.D Teresian Charism Press Holy Hill 1525 Carmel Road Hubertus, WI 53033. All Rights are Reserved to the Discalced Carmelite Friars of the Washington Province. Copyrighted 1994.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download