“Since I could not be a missionary through action, I wanted to be one through prayer and penance” (Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus).
Saint Thérèse is the patron saint of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network. From childhood, she lived the charism and spirit of the Apostleship of Prayer in her spirituality and love for the Heart of Jesus.
“My God, I offer you all the actions I perform today for the intentions of the Sacred Heart and for your glory. I want to sanctify the beating of my heart, my thoughts, and my simplest works by uniting everything to your infinite merits, and to make reparation for my faults by throwing them into the burning furnace of your merciful love.”
“I have a vocation as an apostle… I would like to travel the earth, preach your name, and plant your glorious cross in unfaithful soil. But my Beloved, a single mission would not be enough for me. I would like to proclaim the Gospel at the same time in all 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 to have been one since the creation of the world and to continue to be one until the end of time…”
“My Jesus, what will you say to all my follies?
“Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that if the Church had a body composed of different members, it could not lack the most necessary, the most noble of them. I understood that the Church had a Heart, and that this heart was burning with love.”
“I understood that love encompassed all vocations, that love was everything, that love encompassed all times and places… In a word, that love is eternal…! Then, on the verge of delirious joy, I exclaimed: Jesus, my love… I have finally found my vocation! My vocation is love…!
It is the Heart of Jesus that captivated Saint Thérèse, which today also calls us to live our vocation of love as missionary apostles of the mission of compassion. The Heart burning with love continues to beat in the world, and is active today in every corner of the earth, in the lives of all men and women. May we unite ourselves to this Heart in order to collaborate in Christ’s mission with a generous heart like that of Saint Thérèse.
María Bettina Raed
Vice International Director
Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network