October 1, 2020
St. Therese of the Child Jesus, Virgin, Doctor of the Church
Dear Family of Mary!
“Dear children! …May the measure of your [way of] living be love…” (September 25, 2020)
Our Lady can say so much with so few words! On this wonderful feast day of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, let’s listen to her as she recounts her great discovery of her vocation in the Church. To be love in the heart of the Church, this we can all strive to become!
St. Therese wrote these words to her sister, Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart:
During my meditation, my desires caused me a veritable martyrdom, and I opened the Epistles of St. Paul to find some kind of answer. Chapters 12 and 13 of the First Epistle to the Corinthians fell under my eyes. I read there, in the first of these chapters, that all cannot be apostles, prophets, doctors, etc., that the Church is composed of different members, and that the eye cannot be the hand at one and the same time. The answer was clear, but it did not fulfill my desires and gave me no peace. But just as Mary Magdalene found what she was seeking by always stooping down and looking into the empty tomb, so I, abasing myself to the very depths of my nothingness, raised myself so high that I was able to attain my end. Without becoming discouraged, I continued my reading, and this sentence consoled me: “Yet strive after the better gifts, and I point out to you a yet more excellent way.” (1Cor 12 :31) And the Apostles explains how all the most perfect gifts are nothing without LOVE! That Charity is the excellent way that leads most surely to God.
I finally had rest. Considering the mystical body of the Church, I had not recognized myself in any of the members described by St. Paul, or rather I desired to see myself in them all. Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that if the Church had a body composed of different members, the most necessary and most noble of all could not be lacking to it, and so I understood that the Church had a Heart and that this Heart was Burning with love! I understood it was Love alone that made the Church’s members act, that if Love ever became extinct, apostles would not preach the Gospel and martyrs would not shed their blood. I understood that Love comprised all vocations, that love was everything, that it embraced all times and places…in a word, that it was eternal!
Then, 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 it is You, O my God, who have given me this place; in the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be Love! Thus I shall be everything, and thus my dream will be realized!
(Story of a Soul – the Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux. Trans. John Clarke, O.C.D. p.193-194)
Dear St. Therese, please pray for us as we strive to live our vocations through love. We know that only Divine Love can transform the world, but that Love wants to work through each one of us to save souls and bring peace. Our Lady is with us in a very special way to guide us into that love. Pray for us to recognize our call, as you did so well. Pray that we can become love!
In Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2020
