I have in my hands the letters and intimate notes of Mother Thérèse and the testimonies of the nuns who knew her most intimately, and it seems to me that it will be useful to give in a sort of précis the spiritual teachings of the venerable Mother. It will be easy to correlate them if one bears in mind that her entire life was orientated towards the mystery of the Cenacle.

It was on the Day of Pentecost itself that Marie Victoire Couderc made her First Communion at the age of ten years. From that time began to be verified in her regard the Divine Promise: ‘If you love me, keep my Commandments. And I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you forever. The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, nor knoweth him; but you shall know Him; because He shall abide with you, and shall be in you’ (St. John xiv, 15, 16, 17).

Her whole life, like that of her Institute, will be to reproduce the role of Mary in the Cenacle. Now the Blessed Virgin in the Cenacle gives herself up (se livre) entirely to God, lives with God without ever losing consciousness of His Presence, and enjoys that permanent habitation of the Three Adorable Persons within her which is a foretaste of Eternity. But the contemplation of the Divinity does not make her lose the remembrance of the mysteries of the life and passion of her Son, and the Mother who was martyr with Jesus upon Calvary longs to fill up in her own person that which is wanting to the passion of the Redeemer.