Flora Cantábrica

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Saint Therese of Lisieux and the Last Illness.

Last sickness of the saint

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The last years that the Servant of God spent on earth were the echo of her life; She did not back down for a single moment from her tender abandonment to God, from her patience, from her humility. Her countenance had an expression of indefinable peace. She saw that her soul had come to where her lifelong desires had led, directed toward a single end, now achieved. As Our Lord before expiring, she told me on the eve of her death with a deep intonation of voice:

«Everything is fine, everything has been fulfilled, the only thing that counts is love».

The physical suffering that she endured in the last few months was atrocious, for to the chest disease was added intestinal tuberculosis, which produced gangrene, while ulcers formed due to her extreme weakness: evils that we could not in any way alleviate. .

I was very close to my dear Little Sister during her illness, because as second nurse, she entrusted me with her care. I slept in an adjoining cell and only left it for the hours of the Divine Office and to provide some care to other patients. During this time I was replaced by Mother Inés de Jesús, who wrote down on loose sheets all the words of our Little Sister as she pronounced them. Thanks to these true documents we have preserved the memory of the events, which are as alive today as the first day.

Strength in physical suffering

2 After her first hemoptysis on Good Friday 1896, Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus was holyly joyful to obtain permission to end Lent in all its rigor, that day and the next. Seeing her follow all her exercises in this way, I did not suspect what had happened to her. I learned later that she had suffered a lot because of the fast that year, but according to her custom she had not complained.

In the same way, she did not claim any relief from the extreme fatigue that she experienced each day in the recitation of the Divine Office, which coincided precisely with the hour when the fever was hottest. She was careful not to tell us, at the right moment, that certain jobs made her suffer more, for example washing and hanging her clothes.

3 And what encouragement to endure painful cures!

I still see her suffering from more than five hundred fire buttons on her back (I even counted them). While the doctor operated, the angelic patient, without ceasing to speak to our Mother about indifferent things, was standing, leaning against a table. She offered -she told me later- her sufferings for souls. and she thought of the martyrs. After the session, she would go up to her cell, without waiting for a word of compassion to be spoken to her; she would sit, all trembling, on the edge of her poor pallet, and, there, she alone would bear the effect of the painful treatment.

When night came, not having permission to put a mattress on it, I had no other recourse than to fold the blanket in four and pass it over the mattress, which my poor little Sister gratefully accepted, without a single word of encouragement escaping her lips. criticism of the primitive way in which sick women were cared for at that time.

It is true that in the midst of the most acute pain she maintained great serenity and joy. As I internally admired myself, thinking that it was because she was not suffering as much as we thought, I wanted to surprise her in a moment of crisis. A short time later I saw her smile with an angelic air