MORE ABOUT ST. TERESA MARGARET
“Habitual
examination of conscience”
“I propose to have no other purpose in all my activities, either
interior or exterior, than the motive of love alone, by constantly asking
myself: ‘Now what am I doing in this action? Do I love God?’ If I should notice
any obstacle to pure love, I shall take myself in hand and recall that I must
seek to return my love for His love.”
“Since nature resists good, even though the spirit may be
willing, I resolve to enter upon a continual warfare against self. The arms
with which I shall do battle are prayer, the presence of God, silence; yet I am
aware how little I am able to use these weapons. Nevertheless I shall arm
myself with complete confidence in you, patience, humility and conformity with
your divine will ... but who shall help me to fight a continual battle against
enemies such as those which make war on me? You, my God, have declared yourself
my captain; you have raised the standard of the Cross, saying: ‘Take up the
cross and follow in my footsteps.’ To correspond with this invitation, I
promise to resist your love no longer; rather, I will follow you to Calvary
without hesitation.”
On
the Hidden Life
St. Teresa Margaret can almost be named "the saint of the
hidden life," so thoroughly did she absorb its meaning and mystery. The
life of Jesus and Mary at Nazareth is indeed the model par excellence for all
religious, but this silent and self-effacing saint penetrated deeply into it,
and gave its application such wide horizons that she can really be said to have
proposed something essentially original.
It is a commonplace to use the life at Nazareth as a type of the
Hidden Life, because the enclosed religious is completely withdrawn from the
world. But in this sense Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were not "hidden,"
at least not from their neighbors and the inhabitants of Nazareth and its
environs. Probably, like small country towns the world over, everybody knew and
discussed the least event around the village well, and anything that happened
in Joseph's house would be common knowledge, as with everybody else. But where
one can claim that their hiddenness was absolute was that while all their
exterior activities were watched, and every visitor noted, so well was their
interior life concealed from all eyes, that they passed for the most ordinary
and unremarkable among a community that was in itself insignificant. The
revelation of miraculous powers in Jesus was received with shocked disbelief.
They had known him since childhood and could vouch for his likeableness,
kindness, generosity, no doubt - but not sanctity, let alone divinity! This was
Teresa Margaret's method of practicing the "hidden life." Everyone in
the community saw all she did, talked with her, worked with her, and were warm
in their praise of her goodness and charity. But the real depths of her
interior life were completely hidden and were one day to prove a revelation and
surprise to these intimate daily companions. She passed every minute under
their very noses, so to speak, but managed to remain unnoticed, keeping her
soul's secret for God alone.
“Obedience,” said St. Gregory the Great, “is rightly placed
before all other sacrifices, for in offering a victim as sacrifice, one offers
a life that is not one’s own; but when one obeys one is immolating one’s own will.”...
One may leave home, family, friends, renounce social position and material
possessions, detach oneself from every created thing, but unless he
dispossesses himself of his own will, the sacrifice is worthless … [and Teresa
Margaret] developed what one biographer described as “the art of never doing
her own will.” ... She had a strong character and a warm, ardent nature, and
she seemed to sense that the conflict between her own rebellious temperament
and her desire for sanctity would be resolved by the perfection of her
submission.
“At the foot of the Cross,” wrote Father Gabriel of St. Mary
Magdalene, O.C.D., “suffering becomes more a proof of love than a punishment.
Teresa Margaret became a saint not through multiplying penitential exercise,
but by having effected an uninterrupted adhesion of her will to the crucified
Redeemer.”
Lest the fact that sympathy might provide some consolation - for
it is well-known that a trial shared loses much of its cutting edge - she
endeavored to conceal from those around her any pain or sorrow she endured, or
the discomfort of fatigue, the weather, minor indispositions, or the small
misunderstandings and inevitable frictions of community life. She continued to
practice the incessant mortification of consistently presenting a smiling and
serene exterior no matter how harassed she might be by interior sufferings or
trials.
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