Dying St. Thérèse tells her prioress: "I do not wish to suffer less"

LISIEUX, Normandy, October 1, 1897 AD — Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, known in the Carmelite convent here as Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus, died in the convent infirmary at about twenty past seven last evening. She was twenty-four. Tuberculosis had reached both her lungs by August. For more than two hours at the end she breathed with the rattle of the dying, while three of her sisters, nuns of the same convent, waited in the room with the rest of the community.

The struggle was not only for breath. The thought of heaven had comforted St. Thérèse since she was a child. Since Easter of last year it had tormented her instead, and the torment lasted until she died. In June she wrote that out of the darkness she seemed to hear the mocking voice of an unbeliever, telling her that death would give her “not what you hope for, but a night darker still, the night of utter nothingness!”

St. Thérèse was born at Alençon in Normandy on January 2, 1873 AD. Her mother, Saint Zélie Martin, died of breast cancer when St. Thérèse was four. That November her father, Saint Louis Martin, brought his five daughters to Lisieux to live near their mother’s brother, Isidore Guérin. She entered this Carmel on April 9, 1888 AD, at fifteen. Two of her older sisters were already inside: Pauline, now Mother Agnes of Jesus, and Marie, the eldest, now Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart. Céline, the sister nearest her in age, followed them in 1894 AD.

On June 9, 1895 AD, the feast of the Holy Trinity, St. Thérèse offered her life to God as a sacrifice to His Merciful Love. In the prayer she wrote for it she asked: “O Jesus! Let me be that happy victim — consume Thy holocaust with the Fire of Divine Love!” The next spring, in the night before Good Friday, she coughed blood for the first time. On July 8 this year she was carried down to the infirmary, and on July 17 she told Mother Agnes: “Yes, I will spend my heaven doing good upon earth.”

The infirmary was on the ground floor, and the nuns knew that a sister sent down there was going down to die. St. Thérèse lay inside a canopy of homespun cloth, hung round the bed to keep the warmth in at night. Facing her stood the statue of Our Lady before which she had been cured of a long illness at the age of ten. The window was wide open on the garden.

On Wednesday, the day before she died, Céline asked St. Thérèse for a word of farewell. St. Thérèse whispered: “I have said all… all is accomplished!.. It is love alone that counts.” That night St. Thérèse asked to be left alone. The prioress, Mother Marie de Gonzague, refused, and Sister Marie and Céline sat up with her through the night. Upstairs by the dormitory, Mother Agnes prayed before the statue of the Sacred Heart that her sister would not despair in her last moments.

Thursday was a dark day, and it rained. In the morning Mother Agnes sat beside the bed during Mass. St. Thérèse said nothing and could barely breathe. Then she joined her hands, looked at the statue and said: “Oh! how fervently I have prayed to her! But it is all pure agony, without any admixture of consolation.” She had not been able to raise herself in bed for weeks. Later that day she sat up, and her sisters were surprised. St. Thérèse said: “See, Mother, what strength I have today. No, I am not going to die now. Perhaps months await me yet. I do not believe it is death, but just more suffering for me… And tomorrow it will be worse! Ah, well, so much the better!”

In the middle of the afternoon strange pains took hold of every limb. She put one arm on Mother Agnes’s shoulder and gave the other to Céline to hold, and as she did the clock struck three. She stretched her arms out in the form of a cross. The prioress laid a picture of Our Lady of Mount Carmel on her knees, and St. Thérèse asked the prioress to present her quickly to the Blessed Virgin and to prepare her to die well. Of the offering she had made in 1895 AD, St. Thérèse said: “I do not repent of having delivered myself up to Love.” A little later St. Thérèse said: “I would never have believed it possible to suffer so much! Never! never! I can only explain it by my ardent desire to save souls.” Then, in anguish, she said: “I cannot breathe and I cannot die.”

Towards five o’clock, while Mother Agnes was alone with her, St. Thérèse’s face suddenly changed. Her agony, the last struggle before death, had begun. The nuns were called to the infirmary, and St. Thérèse greeted each of them with a smile. Her hands turned purple and her feet icy. A cold sweat ran down her face and soaked her clothes, and even the pillows and blankets. All that time a crowd of small birds sat in a tree beside the open window and sang. At the six o’clock Angelus St. Thérèse lifted her eyes to the statue of Our Lady, pleading.

Céline laid a small piece of ice on her dry lips. St. Thérèse gave her a long look and smiled, and the nuns watching took it for her last goodbye. Then St. Thérèse looked round for the prioress and turned her eyes to her. She had told her sisters beforehand that if God left her free, her last look would go to her prioress.

All through her illness St. Thérèse had said that a clear sky would mark the moment she went to God. Towards seven the clouds broke up quickly and the stars came out. A few minutes after seven, thinking the end was still some way off, the prioress sent the nuns away. St. Thérèse asked her whether this was not the agony, and whether she was not going to die. The prioress told her that it was the agony, but that God might mean to prolong it for some hours. St. Thérèse answered: “Ah, well!.. So be it; so be it!.. Oh! I do not wish to suffer less.” Then she looked at her crucifix and said: “Oh!.. I love Him!.. My God!.. I… love… Thee!”

She fell back at once, her head leaning a little to the right. Thinking it was over, the prioress had the infirmary bell rung to bring the nuns back and called out, “Open all the doors.” The nuns came back in time to kneel around the bed. St. Thérèse raised herself, as if someone had called her, and fixed her eyes on a point a little above the statue of Our Lady. Her face, purple and drawn through the agony, turned as white as it had been when she was well, and her eyes shone with peace and joy. A nun brought a candle close to look at them, and her eyelids did not move. That last ecstasy lasted about as long as it takes to say the Creed. Then she closed her eyes and died.

Her uncle, Isidore Guérin, his wife and her sister Léonie were praying in the convent chapel at that hour. Straight after the death Mother Agnes passed them a note: “My beloved parents, my darling Léonie, Our Angel is in Heaven.”

Mother Agnes and Sister Marie laid out the body with Sister Aimée of Jesus. St. Thérèse was holding her crucifix so tightly that they had trouble freeing it from her hands. A smile stayed on her face, and the three nuns remarked that she looked no older than a girl of twelve or thirteen. Céline had brought a camera into the Carmel, and on August 30 she had photographed her sister alive. This morning, before the body was lifted from the infirmary, Céline photographed St. Thérèse again.