My Vocation is Love

by Saint Thérèse of Lisieux  |  07/21/2024  |  From the Clergy

O Jesus! my love, my life... how to combine these contrasts?

How to fulfill the desires of my poor little soul?... Ah! despite my smallness, I would like to enlighten souls like the Prophets, the Doctors, I have the vocation to be an Apostle... I would like to travel the earth, preach your name and plant your glorious Cross on the unfaithful ground, but, oh my Beloved, a single mission would not be enough for me, I would like to announce the Gospel at the same time in the five parts of the world and even in the most remote islands... I would like to be a missionary not only for a few years, but I would like to have been so since the creation of the world and to be so until the consummation of the centuries...

Charity gave me key to my vocation. I understood that if the Church had a body, composed of different members, the most necessary, the noblest of all was not missing, I understood that the Church had a Heart, and that this Heart was burning with love. I understood that Love alone made the members of the Church act, that if Love were to be extinguished, the Apostles would no longer announce the Gospel, the Martyrs would refuse to shed their blood. I understood that the love contained all vocations, that love was everything, that it embraced all times and all places... in a word, that it is eternal!... So in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: O Jesus, my Love... my vocation, at last I have found it, my vocation is love... Yes, I have found my place in the Church and this place, oh my God, it is you who have given it to me... in the Heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be Love... so I will be everything... so my dream will be realized !!!...