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From
Saint Thérèse’s autobiography
In the heart of the church I
will be love
 Since
my longing for martyrdom was powerful and unsettling, I turned to the epistles
of Saint Paul in the hope of finally finding an answer. By chance the twelfth
and thirteenth chapters of the first epistle to the Corinthians caught my
attention, and in the first section I read that not everyone can be an Apostle,
prophet or teacher, that the Church is composed of a variety of members,
and that the eye cannot be the hand. Even with such an answer revealed before
me, I was not satisfied and did not find peace.
I persevered in the reading and
did not let my mind wander until I found this encouraging theme: Set your
desires on the greater gifts. And I will show you the way which surpasses
all others. For the Apostle insists that the greater gifts are nothing
at all without love and that this same love is surely the best path leading
directly to God. At length I had found peace of mind.
When I had looked upon the mystical
body of the Church, I recognised myself in none of the members which Saint
Paul described, and what is more, I desired to distinguish myself more favorably
within the whole body. Love appeared to me to be the hinge for my vocation.
Indeed I knew that the Church had a body composed of various members, but
in this body the necessary and more noble member was not lacking; I knew
that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with
love. I knew that one love drove the members of the Church to action, that
if this love were extinguished, the Apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel
no longer, the martyrs would have shed their blood no more. I saw and realized
that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything,
that this same love embraces every time and every place. In one word, that
love is everlasting.
Then, nearly ecstatic with the
supreme joy in my soul, I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found
my calling: my call is love. Certainly I have found my place in the Church,
and You gave me that very place, my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother,
I will be love, and thus I will be all things, as my desire finds its
direction.
—Saint Theresa of the Child
Jesus, virgin and doctor
Office of Readings, 1 October
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