OUR FOUNDRESS
BEATIFIED May 13, 2006 ~ Bisdom, Roermond
Foundress of the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus
1891 - 1938
Mother Mary Teresa, Foundress of the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus, named Anna Maria Tauscher by her parents, was the oldest daughter of a prominent Lutheran minister, whose Lutheran roots reached back to the time of Martin Luther. But, as she grew up Maria, protected, she believed, by the Blessed Mother, never embraced Lutheranism. Guided by the Holy Spirit, Maria, through her own inner convictions and personal reading of scripture, adhered to and professed what she could only call her “own religion.” When she was thirty years old, Maria responded to a notice in a Cologne newspaper for a position as head nurse of a mental institution, Lindenburg. Maria had lived most of her life in Berlin, the stronghold of Protestantism as it was called. Cologne and Lindenburg exposed Maria for the first time to a great number of Catholics and Catholic devotions and worship. Everything about what she experienced corresponded with the beliefs in her heart. A chaplain of the institution gave her a catechism and as she read it she knew she had found the faith the Holy Spirit had been leading her to all her life. Maria began to secretly receive instructions in preparation to enter the Church.
Eventually, the director of Lindenburg, a fierce anti-Catholic, discovered Maria’s intentions to enter the Church. He immediately informed Maria’s father and requested that he take his daughter home. After a few weeks, however, the director relented and asked Maria’s father to allow her to return to Cologne. As Maria said goodbye to family, her father, Pastor Tauscher, demanded from Maria the promise that she would not enter the Catholic Church. Maria could only promise that it would not be that day or the next. Thus, when Maria eventually entered the Catholic Church, on October 30, 1888 she left behind her all she had known.
Disowned by her father and released from her position at Lindenburg without hope of finding a new position due to the bad references of the director, she could only place her trust in God. With the help of her Catholic friends, Maria was offered a situation as a guest at a convent where the sisters ran a home for the aged. Here Maria lived with the Eucahristic Presence of Our Lord for the first time and entered upon one of the most spiritually fruitful times of her life. “During the first days of my stay at the convent, the Forty Hours Devotion was observed. It was the first exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and nocturnal adoration I had ever attended. I cannot find words to describe my feelings. I was so filled with holy joy that I knelt in front of the Blessed Sacrament from nine o’ clock in the evening until two o’clock in the morning without realizing the time. God inflamed my heart with such fervor that later on, all the sorrows sent to me, or allowed to happen to me by God’s grace, seemed to me only a drop of water on a glowing iron. When I awoke in the morning, my heart was filled with a burning love of God.”
In those months of prayer, silence, and suffering from illness, poverty, and her uncertain future, Maria came to know Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament as her true Friend and Spouse. Love for the Victim of Love in the Tabernacle inflamed her with a zeal to return love for love and to likewise become a holocaust of Love in order that He who Created and Redeemed mankind might be known and loved. Daily Maria prayed as she meditated on the Way of the Cross, “O Lord send me wherever You will to work for the salvation of souls. Fulfill the ardent longing of my soul , O God, to prove my love and gratitude to You. If it is possible do not send me to Berlin. However, Your Will be done, not mine.” After ten months at the convent, the answer to her prayer came in a letter from the Countess Von Savigny in Berlin. Again through her Catholic friends, Maria had been offered a position in the home of this good and pious woman as her traveling companion. Despite sorrow at leaving Cologne, Maria could only accept.
“Did I only have to say farewell to the Rhine, to Cologne, and to dear friends and acquaintances? No, my heart was also tied by a sincere, burning, deep love for the Tabernacle. After the evening prayers, the sisters would file out of the Chapel and only here and there a sister would remain on the night watch. The lights were turned off and only the sanctuary light illumined the chapel. Now I started my audience with my Divine Lover. Here I found Him who loves my soul. These were heavenly hours for me. Finally, the last evening arrived. I thought my heart would break with pain and sorrow! The thought of being separated from the Blessed Sacrament, perhaps for a long time, overwhelmed me.”
Being able to visit the poor, a work of mercy Maria had practiced all her life, consoled her during her first days in Berlin. Through this, Maria saw the great need in Berlin for a Catholic home for children. With her usual determination, she approached Monsignor Jahnel, the provost of Berlin, and received permission to open a home for children. Using 700 marks the Countess had given her in gratitude, Maria opened the first St. Joseph’s Home for homeless children with three children, two nurses, and a maid in a few rooms of a tenement house in a poor neighborhood of Berlin on August 1, 1891. Due to the effects of the Kulturkampf during which many Churches were closed, the nearest Church or chapel was over thirty minutes away from St. Joseph’s Home. Thus, Maria continued to live at the home of the Countess Van Savigny and would take up permanent residence at the home under only one condition- our Lord’s companionship in the Eucharist. Her constant prayer became, “If You come, I will come.”
Maria’s first request for permission for a chapel in the St. Joseph’s Home was absolutely refused by Monsignor Jahnel. The provost required Maria to find a priest to say Mass and that all the other tenants in the building be moved out before he would grant permission. Despite these obstacles, Maria remained undaunted and continued in prayer and hope. Due to illness from being overworked, Maria became very ill and Monsignor Jahnel ordered her to take a rest. While in the mountains, Maria met the chaplain of a nearby Marian Shrine, Fr. Dasbach. He became greatly interested in her project and volunteered to say Mass at St. Joseph’s Home several days a week and recruit other priests, as well.
The blessing of the chapel took place on December 8, 1891. That night, as Maria remained alone in the glow of the sanctuary lamp, she knew the greatest joy and peace in her life. “At last all were gone and I was alone-no not alone- and never again to be alone, for He Whom I had longed for so ardently, over Whose absence- ever since leaving the convent in Cologne twenty-five months ago- I had shed so many tears, He was here now, the great King, hidden in the most Blessed Sacrament. And oh! Unutterable bliss; He was mine and I was His!
This was the happiest day of my life. After this day, after those hours before the tabernacle during that quiet night, even the making of my profession was no longer a feast for me. No, that was, as far I was concerned, merely an act of obedience. But on December 8, 1891 I had become His, His own wholly and eternally.
My whole soul was aflame with love and I had but one desire: to prove this love for God by suffering and working. Yes, to give pleasure to Him- that had been the desire that filled me since I was twenty- two years old, and now I wanted to make that desire a reality.”
In her personal union with God hidden in the Blessed Sacrament, Mother Mary Teresa found the greatest joy, peace, and love open to the human heart and this bore a two fold fruit in her- a great zeal to make God more loved and a great compassion for those she saw living without this love. She wanted to gather all souls around this Fount of Love. She knew however, that only by drawing continually from this same Fountain could she and others who would join in this work become instruments of God. “At this fountain of Love, the most holy Sacrament, our souls are refreshed and enkindled…with the fire of Divine love, of that love which can never rest, but sends forth new flames, which consumes itself in charity toward others.” Mother wanted the St. Joseph’s Homes to be true homes and she knew that it is love that makes a real home. She had experienced that the greatest source and most profound love is found in the Holy Eucharist. Thus, “If You come, I will come,” remained her requirement for all apostolic activity and every foundation of the Congregation.
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