On Pentecost Monday, June 7, 1897, three days before his twenty-third birthday, Father Maurice was writing to Teresa:
Yesterday, my dear sister, at the very hour when the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles with His light and His strength, I received His command through the lips of my spiritual guide: You have a serious calling, I firmly believe in it, and God uniquely manifests His Providence in it. Furthermore, He wants you to be a missionary, the path is open, go. (…) Let us worship God, dear sister, thank Him with me. I ask you to believe that I deserve this honor of being a missionary less than anyone else. I look at it only with trepidation, and this divine love somewhat frightens me – and yet I want trust to triumph, and I surrender unconditionally. (…) I want to give without counting.
Two weeks later, Teresa replied to him:
My dear Brother,
I thanked the Lord with you for the great grace He granted you on the day of Pentecost. On this beautiful feast, I also received (ten years ago) not from my guide, but from our Father the permission to become an apostle at Carmel. So this is another closeness between our souls. (…) You know: now we are two, the work will go faster…
On the day of Teresa's death, September 30, 1897, Father Maurice boarded in Marseille and set sail for Africa to enter the novitiate of the "White Fathers", Missionaries of Africa. In 1927, Teresa was proclaimed by Pope Pius XI as the patroness of missions.
(Father Maurice Bellière /1874–1907/, letter to Teresa of the Child Jesus, KT 186, June 7, 1897;
Teresa of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, letter to Abbé Bellière, DT 247, June 21, 1897)
