even at their difficulty, but at the LOVE with which we do them," and hence, "the least act of pure love is worth more for God and the Church than all other good works put together." What a subject for earnest reflection and self-examination!
(2) Hidden Crosses.—St. Therese had a predilection for hidden crosses. "I know a source," she wrote, "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." Hence she also sang:
"Oh, what charms doth pain reveal
Veiled in wreathing smiles of flowers!
I would suffer silently
That my Jesus find relief.
Joy is mine His smile to see,
Though an exile in my grief."
Referring to her bitter interior trials she wrote: "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." Just why this special love for hidden crosses? "My God, what joy can he 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." Hence, "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 the missionaries, and gain for them plentiful alms, thus building both spiritual and material dwellings for our Eucharistic Lord." Even in the weeks of her fearful and prolonged agony she preferred to be alone at night: "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." She saw very clearly the wounds that are inflicted on the soul that has no rest until it enjoys the human consolation of having others know its pains, as is evident from her reproof to a novice; "You feel this fatigue so much because no one is aware of it. This is indeed a very natural feeling—the
