Therese of liseux and holocaust of love

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Mara

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I’m trying to understand the Little Flower on a deeper level. Her convent sisters would offer themselves as a holocaust of justice (taking on suffering to save other souls and save them from justice, I think?) Therese told the Superior she wanted, instead, to offer herself as a Holocaust of Love and Mercy, taking on to herself love and mercy others disregarded…I’m not entirely clear how she intended this to work/how it did work…how it benefitted others? Its a beautiful idea, but Im trying to get deeper into it…

Mara
 
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I may not be able to respond directly to your question, but since you mentioned about Therese de Lisieux, I’d like to share to you the prayer below:

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Who knows, this might be the answer to someone who’s going through difficulties in life. GOD bless!
 
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You’re most welcome , @Mara! Also, I’ll be including you in my prayer in the “Let’s pray a perpetual rosary” thread. May the peace of our Lord be with you always, my sister in Christ.
 
I take it you’ve read her Oblation to Merciful Love which is what she wrote, expressing this desire you’re asking about.

stpaulcenter.com

St. Thérèse’s Act of Oblation to Merciful Love

St. Thérèse believes that God is ready to set our humanity on fire. Though we are guilty before the Face of God, the Father does not look on us with anger, but gazes on us to contemplate His only begotten Son. He is no passive observer of human affairs. He stands ready to give everything to us for
stpaulcenter.com stpaulcenter.com

As I understand it, St. Therese was living in a Church heavily influenced by Jansenism, the idea that you had to store up merits in order to somehow compensate for your sins. She had suffered from scruples as a young person and even if you didn’t have scruples, the idea that you have to run around racking up merits every minute would be exhausting because you’re always going to be sinning and falling short. The whole “saving people from God’s justice” business is rooted in Jansenism because it suggests that if you don’t have enough merits racked up then God’s justice is going to go against you.

Fortunately, Therese received the insight that this approach of balancing the justice scales with sins on one side and merits on the other wasn’t the right way to proceed. Instead she just wanted to love Jesus and do everything out of love for Jesus, and to give away all her merits and appear before the Lord with empty hands and rely on his Merciful Love to get her into heaven.

It’s sort of an early conception of the Divine Mercy teachings of St. Faustina.

In the end, this is really the best way to proceed because there is no way you could ever chalk up enough merits to compensate for all your sins from a pure justice standpoint. And you’d drive yourself crazy with scrupulosity trying. And that is part of why St. Therese is a Doctor of the Church today.
 
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Tisbearself, that is EXTREMELY helpful…thank you so much…breaks it down for me…I’ve read the oblation, and now looking for good “analyses”…I will open that link you sent!

Blessings - live Jesus!

M
 
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