I loved reading and would have spent my whole life doing it.

Saint Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897)
Carmelite

“Saint Thérèse of Lisieux is the counterpart of Brother Charles [de Foucauld]. Both lived, not in terms of a special task, but of the entire universe. Both received a Catholic vocation. Both heard a voice which said to them: Circumspice Jerusalem! Charles died a martyr for this world, and all that it circumscribes, the whole world, to whom he brought the heart of Jesus. Couldn’t we say that he ran to the aid of the whole universe? Or maybe it is better to say that it is the four cardinal points that he called to God’s aid? Thérèse did not move. She was under the press, the entire universe pressing her down, like wine for the sacrifice. And the Church has made this woman, willingly incarcerated in the strictest of enclosures and the most exacting of rules, the patroness of Missions. It was the entire universe that weighed down upon her asking for her blood, and it was the entire universe that needed this burning fire of love to consume its darkness in an odor of sweetness. She did not move; she could not move. How could she, for the benefit of this or that person, escape this geometric captivity, this duty towards the entire universe? Or, to use a bolder image, she was like a cauterization on the wounds of Humanity, suffering the terrible ordeal by the hands of God who wished to close and heal those wounds by means of her great suffering… She asked nothing for herself. That would have hindered the work of God in whom she was entirely absorbed. Thérèse was entirely annihilated in her role. The Child Jesus at Christmas put himself in her arms, and, believe it or not, he was not alone, but had this ball in his hands that he did not want to let go!”

Paul Claudel (1868-1955)
Writer