Status Updates From With Empty Hands: The Messa...

I'm actually finished with this as of today, but I plan to go back over this as there is so much, so so much, I can't begin to write the review it deserves yet.

Thérèse often used the words ‘hope’, ‘trust’ or ‘confidence’, and ‘surrender’ or ‘abandonment’ interchangeably, and she would seem to have referred to her hope as ‘trust’ when she wished to describe a greater degree of intimacy on her part and a greater certainty of being heard. Thérèse trusted in God’s fidelity.

O Jesus! Let me, in the excess of my extreme gratitude, let me tell you that your love is utter foolishness. ... How can you not expect my heart to throw itself upon you? How could my trust have any bounds? ... I am too little to do big things ... and my particular folly is to hope that your love will accept me as a victim.

With Empty Hands: For the time being, her desire for humility and self-effacement coincided entirely with love – a magnificent perspective and synthesis! She longed to become ever lowlier in order to love all the more – indeed, in order to love more ardently, more purely, more constantly, and to begin again and again.

For the time being, her desire for humility and self-effacement coincided entirely with love – a magnificent perspective and synthesis! She longed to become ever lowlier in order to love all the more – indeed, in order to love more ardently, more purely, more constantly, and to begin again and again.