Saint Margaret Mary recounted that, in one of Christ’s appearances, he spoke of his heart’s passionate love for us, telling her that, “unable to contain the flames of his burning charity, he must spread them abroad”. 208Autobiography, n. 53. Since the Lord, who can do all things, desired in his divine freedom to require our cooperation, reparation can be understood as our removal of the obstacles we place before the expansion of Christ’s love in the world by our lack of trust, gratitude and self-sacrifice.
To help us reflect more deeply on this mystery, we can turn once more to the luminous spirituality of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus. Therese was aware that in certain quarters an extreme form of reparation had developed, based on a willingness to offer oneself in sacrifice for others, and to become in some sense a “lightning rod” for the chastisements of divine justice. In her words, “I thought about the souls who offer themselves as victims of God’s justice in order to turn away the punishments reserved to sinners, drawing them upon themselves”. 209Ms A, 84r. However, as great and generous as such an offering might appear, she did not find it overly appealing: “I was far from feeling attracted to making it”. 210Ibid. So great an emphasis on God’s justice might eventually lead to the notion that Christ’s sacrifice was somehow incomplete or only partly efficacious, or that his mercy was not sufficiently powerful.
With her great spiritual insight, Saint Therese discovered that we can offer ourselves in another way, without the need to satisfy divine justice but by allowing the Lord’s infinite love to spread freely: “O my God! Is your disdained love going to remain closed up within your heart? It seems to me that if you were to find souls offering themselves as victims of holocaust to your love, you would consume them rapidly; it seems to me, too, that you would be happy not to hold back the waves of infinite tenderness within you”. 211Ibid.
While nothing need be added to the one redemptive sacrifice of Christ, it remains true that our free refusal can prevent the heart of Christ from spreading the “waves of his infinite tenderness” in this world. Again, this is because the Lord wishes to respect our freedom. More than divine justice, it was the fact that Christ’s love might be refused that troubled the heart of Saint Therese, because for her, God’s justice is understood only in the light of his love. As we have seen, she contemplated all God’s perfections through his mercy, and thus saw them transfigured and resplendent with love. In her words, “even his justice (and perhaps this even more so than the others) seems to me clothed in love”. 212Ms A, 83v.; cf. Letter 226 to Father Roulland, 9 May 1897.
This was the origin of her Act of Oblation, not to God’s justice but to his merciful love. “I offer myself as a victim of holocaust to your merciful love, asking you to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within you to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of your love”. 213Act of Oblation to Merciful Love, 9 June 1895, 2r-2v. It is important to realize that, for Therese, this was not only about allowing the heart of Christ to fill her heart, through her complete trust, with the beauty of his love, but also about letting that love, through her life, spread to others and thus transform the world. Again, in her words, “In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be love… and thus my dream will be realized”. 214Ms B, 3v. The two aspects were inseparably united.