Leading up to her feast day on October 1, we will pray a Novena to St. Thérèse, posting reflections from Pope Francis, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II.

Please join us in this novena, posted each day on the website and social media, praying for Pope Francis, the Church and for all the challenges facing humanity.

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Reflection

“St Thérèse is presented as a doctor of the Church on the day we are celebrating World Mission Sunday. She had the ardent desire to dedicate herself to proclaiming the Gospel, and she would have liked to have crowned her witness with the supreme sacrifice of martyrdom (cf. Ms B, 3rº). Moreover, her intense personal commitment supporting the apostolic work of Fr Maurice Bellière and Fr Adolphe Rulland, missionaries respectively in Africa and China, is well-known. In her zealous love for evangelization, Thérèse had one ideal, as she herself says: “What we ask of him is to work for his glory, to love him and to make him loved” (Letter 220).

The way she took to reach this ideal of life is not that of the great undertakings reserved for the few, but on the contrary, a way within everyone’s reach, the “little way”, a path of trust and total self-abandonment to the Lord’s grace. It is not a prosaic way, as if it were less demanding. It is in fact a demanding reality, as the Gospel always is. But it is a way in which one is imbued with a sense of trusting abandonment to divine mercy, which makes even the most rigorous spiritual commitment light.”

– St. John Paul II (Homily, October 19, 1997)

Novena Prayer

St. Thérèse, keep me close to the Heart of Jesus; help me to serve the needs of the Church and the world through my prayer and loving service.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s Daily Offering

Oh my God!  I offer You all my actions of this day for the intentions and for the glory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I desire to sanctify every beat of my heart, my every thought, my simplest works, by uniting them to His infinite merits; and I wish to make reparation for my sins by casting them in the furnace of His merciful love.

Oh my God! I ask of You for myself and for those dear to me the grace to fulfill perfectly Your holy will, to accept for love of You the joys and sorrows of this passing life, so that we may one day be united together in Heaven for all eternity.  Amen.

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