At an early age, St. Therese of the Child Jesus, overcome with love for God, was amazed to consider how no one in hell could raise an act of love to God.

Newsroom (01/11/2023 09:00, Gaudium Press) “One night, not knowing how to tell Jesus that I loved Him and how much I wanted Him to be loved and glorified everywhere, I thought with pain that He could never receive a single act of love from hell. So I told the Good Lord that, in order to please Him, I would consent to see myself immersed there so that He would be eternally loved in this place of blasphemy… I knew that this could not glorify Him, because He only wants our happiness, but when you love, you feel the need to say a thousand crazy things.

“If I spoke like this, it was not because Heaven did not ignite my desire, but because my Heaven was nothing other than Love, and I felt like St. Paul, that nothing could separate me from the divine object that had captivated me… What will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation? Anguish? Persecution? Hunger? Nakedness? Danger? The sword? Indeed, it is written: ‘For your sake we are given over to death all day long; we are treated like cattle destined for the slaughterhouse. But in all these things we are more than conquerors through the power of Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor Angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor heights, nor depths, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love which God witnesses to us in Christ Jesus our Lord‘” (cf. Rom 8:35-39).

SAINT TERESINHA DO MENINO JESUS. Story of a soul. São Paulo: Cultor de livros, 2022, p.109.

Compiled by Sandra Chisholm