A hidden flower keeps its perfume only for heaven.
ST. THERESE OF LISIEUX 1873 - 1897
"I am content to suffer alone."
St. Therese once reproved a complaining novice with these words: "You feel this fatigue so much because no one is aware of it. This is indeed a very natural feelings - the desire that people should know our aches and pains; but in giving way to it we play the coward."
She wrote elsewhere: “I know a source where 'they that drink shall yet thirst,; but with a delicious thirst, a thirst one can always allay... That source is the suffering known only to Jesus."
"For five years this way was mine, but I alone knew it; this was precisely the flower I wished to offer to Jesus, a hidden flower, which keeps its perfume only for heaven."
"My God, what joy can be greater than to suffer for Thy love? The more the suffering is and the less it appears before men, the more it is to Thy honor and glory."
"God does not despise these hidden struggles with ourselves, so much the richer in merit because they are unseen... Through our little acts of charity, practiced in the dark, as it were, we obtain the conversion of the heathen, help of the missionaries, and gain for them plentiful alms, thus building both spiritual and material dwellings for our Eucharistic Lord."
"I am only too glad to be in a cell far removed from my Sisters that I may not be heard (the violent cough). I am content to suffer alone; as soon as I am pitied and loaded with attention, my happiness leaves me."
ST. BERNADETTE SOUBIROUS
1844 - 1879
"I must die to myself continually and accept trials without complaining. I work, I suffer, and I love with no other witness than His heart."
Although she considered joining the Carmelites, her health precluded from her entering a strict contemplative order. Instead, she joined the Sisters of Charity where she spent the rest of her brief life at the motherhouse, working as an assistant in the infirmary and later as a sacristan, creating ornate embroidery for altar cloths and vestments.
The Sisters admired her humility and spirit of sacrifice. One day, when asked about the apparitions, she humbly replied: "The Virgin used me as a broom to remove the dust. When the work is done, the broom is put behind the door again."
On another occasion, Bernadette asked a fellow Sister, “What do you use a broom for?” “Why, to sweep with, of course!’ replied the Sister. “And when you have finished with it?” asked Bernadette. “I put it back in its place.” "Where is that?” "Why, in the corner, behind the door.” “Exactly!” responded Bernadette, “that is just my case; the Blessed Virgin made use of me, and when my work was done, put me away in corner. It is the proper place for me. I am happy in it, and there I shall stay."
Once clothed in the livery of Christ, she withdrew still deeper into the hidden recesses of her soul: “I came here to hide myself,” she said. The child of the Grotto had taken refuge in the shadow of the Cloister “to hide herself.”
Her fellow novices were unanimous in testifying that she seemed to have but one ambition: to be forgotten, to be reckoned as naught.
How she loved this, her chosen refuge, and how much she feared that having fled the world, the world might come and seek her out in her retreat.
“She preferred not to speak of the past, it seemed almost as if she desired to forget it, or at any rate to allow it to be forgotten by those around her. She had come hither to bury herself completely in solitude, hiding within her the secret of the King, and never ceased to proclaim that she was supremely happy in her self-effacement.
ST. CATHERINE LABOURE
1806 - 1876
St. Catherine’s life was notable for her humility and profound silence.
When St. Catherine Laboure revealed to her confessor the vision she had seen of the Blessed Virgin and the medal requested by her, Catherine was insistent that her own identity as the visionary remain a secret. Our Lady had told her to "tell this to him who has charge of you," and Catherine would obey this instruction. Catherine made her confessor promise not to reveal her identity.
Catherine kept this secret for forty-six years. Within the community, the identity of the visionary was a topic of extreme interest. There were endless guesses, endless wonderings, endless baitings. The keeping of her secret was the most significant act of her life after the Apparitions.
From earliest childhood she had lived in the back lanes and quiet corners; she worked behind the closed doors of her village homes. She was a quiet girl from the country, she spoke little, she was withdrawn and interior. Her sanctity was a hidden thing, a shy blossom that bloomed unseen and unknown.
At the end of her life, when her confessor had been long-since dead, Catherine found it necessary to confide her secret to her Mother Superior. "Since I have not much longer to live, I feel that the moment to speak has come. But, as the Blessed Virgin told me to speak only to my confessor, I shall say nothing to you until I have asked Our Lady's permission in prayer. If she tells me I may speak to you, I will do so; otherwise, I will remain silent."
Her last years, in fact, are an excellent source for the study of her sanctity. Her secret lay in the fact that she did what she was supposed to do, as well as she could, and for God. It was as simple as that.
A letter from Sister Grand after Catherine's death:
"Good and holy Sister Catherine! At last she has reached the harbor, and the Blessed Virgin has crowned the faithful servant, who so well guarded the secret of her gifts, and by her life, hidden in the shadow of silence, left all the glory to God."
"The ordinary soul occasionally breaks under strain and charity is wounded; the heroic soul suffers in silence and becomes a saint." -Fr. Joseph I. Dirvin, C.M.
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