From the day when St. Thérèse had read in a work of Father Arminjon the glowing description of the reception which God has in store for those who have laboured and suffered for Him, suffering had become dear to her.

A major factor in determining her future career, was the reading of Abbe Arminjon's Conferences on the End of the World and the Mysteries of the Future Life. That book seemed to add the "Amen" to the conclusions which she had carefully, though painfully, reached without the help of any human advice. She would enter Carmel and there labor for souls.

I was nourished for a long time on the "pure flour" contained in the Imitation of Christ.... At the age of fourteen, with my desire for knowledge, God found it necessary to join to the "pure flour" some "honey and oil in abundance." This honey and oil He showed me in Father Arminjon's conferences on the end of the present world and the mysteries of the future life.... All the great truths of religion, the mysteries of eternity, plunged my soul into a happiness not of this earth. I experienced already what God reserves for those who love Him (not with the eye but with the heart), and seeing that the eternal rewards had no proportion to life's small sacrifices, I wanted to love, to love Jesus with a passion, to give Him a thousand proofs of my love while I still could.