While reading a text on St. Thérèse, I reflected that I had never wished for extraordinary things, either, convinced as I was that they were more of a danger than anything else for our weakness, and I bewailed the fact that my mission had placed me precisely on this extraordinary way. I moaned, “Why, my God? Why such a big thing for me, so small? Why such a dangerous thing for me, so weak? Why this thing so proper to adults for me, who could be saved only through spiritual childhood?”
I was in the midst of these thoughts when St. Thérèse herself appeared to me in the full Carmelite habit - that is, with the ample white mantle, but without roses or the Crucifix adorned with flowers. No, just the way she must have looked a thousand times in her Carmel when she went to the Chapel.... She approached me and passed her arms over my shoulders in such a way that her lovely left hand was on my left shoulder, and her right hand, on my right shoulder, and she thus had me feel her embrace and spoke:
“Do not fear, my little sister. It was a simpler way But you did not ask for this other one. It is Love who gave it to you - indeed, who placed you thereupon. And you are walking along it with your heart of a child who wants to remain a child. And your way thus becomes doubly heroic. Because of childhood and extraordinariness. To be faithful to both is a great thing. But you will always be a child because you want to. A child on whose lips the Spirit will place the words which are more than an adult’s because they are not human words. Maria will always be the little child on the way of spiritual childhood. The spokesman, moreover, in the hours of his office, will follow the extraordinary way, and, so that he will not experience fear or harm on that account, he will follow it in the arms of God. Simply to do the will of God, whatever its grandiosity may be, is to conserve oneself always as a child. For only children act without measuring the greatness of what they do - they act only because they are told to act. Do not fear, little sister. Jesus, who placed you there, protects your heart and will not allow what is extraordinary to harm your heart as a spiritual child.” And she had me feel the pressure of her beautiful hands, and I felt the mantle extended over my shoulders like a protecting, isolating, defending veil.... I felt her face bending over my head, so fraternally that I was completely comforted by it. I felt protected... loved. Fears ceased.... I raised my head and encountered her smile, the gaze of her most beautiful eyes.... How lovely she was! Heaven shone from every part of her.... She had me feel all her love and then disappeared in an intense golden light. And peace and the memory of her embrace remained.... 254
254 We omit about thirty-three handwritten pages, dated August 25 and September 1, 8, 15, and 22, 1946, containing Azariah’s commentaries on the Masses for the Eleventh and Twelfth Sundays after Pentecost, the Nativity of Mary, and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Sundays after Pentecost.