The Hidden Face

Until then I had not appreciated the beauties of the Holy Face; it was my dear Mother, Agnes of Jesus, who unveiled them to me. As she had been the first of her sisters to enter the Carmel, so she was the first to penetrate the mysteries of love hidden in the Face of Our Divine Spouse. Then she showed them to me and I understood better than ever, in what true glory consists. He whose "Kingdom is not of this world" taught me that the only royalty to be coveted lies in being "unknown and esteemed as naught," and in the joy of self-abasement.

And I wished that my face, like the Face of Jesus, "should be, as it were, hidden and despised," so that no one on earth should esteem me. I thirsted to suffer and to be forgotten.