EXTENDING OVER MANY YEARS

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PREFACE

As we become acquainted with the histories of those in whom, in
long succession, God has been pleased to show forth examples of
holiness of life, it seems as if every phase of human existence
had in the history of the Church received its consecration as a
power to bring men nearer to their Maker. But there is no limit to
the types of sanctity which the Creator is pleased to unfold
before His Creatures. To many, on reading for the first time the
story of Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face, it
came almost as a shock to find a very youthful member of an
austere Order, strictly retired from the world, engaged in hidden
prayer and mortification, appearing before us to reveal to the
whole world the wonders of the close intimacy of friendship to
which her Divine Spouse had been pleased to call her. Certainly
the way by which Soeur Thérèse was led is not the normal life of
Carmel, nor hers the manner whereby most Carmelites are called to
accomplish the wondrous apostolate of intercession to which their
lives are given. But no less certain is it that, in her particular
case, her work for God and her apostolate were not to be confined
between the walls of her religious home, or to be limited by her
few years on earth.

In the first place, we know that it was by obedience that the
record of God's dealings with her soul were set down in writing.
And again, the long tale of graces granted in such strange