The man, the woman

Their readings

Two reading lists show the sources from which Mother Thérèse liked to draw inspiration: the French School of Spirituality, the great mystics, and the Jesuits. There she found encouragement for “a simplified spiritual life but one of high union with God ” (P. de Lassus, Thérèse Couderc (1805-1885), The Woman, The Saint, 1985, p. 59). 59).

The two founders clearly read with a pencil in hand. Father Terme copies excerpts from Father Lallemant’s Spiritual Doctrine almost word-for-word in some of his letters to Mother Thérèse.

And she is so steeped in her favourite reading, the Fragments of Selected Letters on Holy Abandonment by R.P. Claude-François Milley, that she quotes an excerpt from it in a letter dated 23 October 1867 to Mother Marie-Aimée: “God alone is everything; the rest is nothing,”

Mother Thérèse seems to have had a few personal books. She also made use of the community library, no doubt on the advice of a lecturer or spiritual director. She once said to Mother de Gaudin: “One book is enough for me for a year” (Mother Félicie Rostaing, ordinary process in Lyon, 1920). But she knew how to make the most of it by amassing “an abundance of very precise memories” (Marie Desgrands, ordinary process in Lyon, 1920).

Further reading: list of books and readings by Fr. Terme and Mother Thérèse

A book that belonged to Father Terme: Soliloquies by St Augustine, and a book that belonged to Mother Thérèse: The Imitation of Christ