Saint Therese of Lisieux: A Gateway

Maurice Belliere. Photo Credit: White Fathers (Missionaries of Africa)After the 21-year-old seminarian, Maurice Belliere, wrote to the prioress of the Lisieux Carmel asking her to designate a nun to pray and sacrifice herself especially for his vocation and mission, and Mother Agnes of Jesus, Therese's sister Pauline, chose Therese for this mission, Therese composed her first prayer for Maurice Belliere (ACL).  This is the eighth of the twenty-one formal prayers found among her writings.  (She often suddenly "lapsed" into spontaneous prayers in her other writings).  This prayer was in Therese's voice; she wrote it to pray herself, but she gave it to her prioress, who, without allowing Therese to correspond with Maurice, sent him the prayer no later than October 22, 1895.  (Their exchange of letters came only later, under the priorate of Mother Gonzague). 

Characteristically, Therese begins "O my Jesus!  I thank you for having fulfilled one of my greatest desires . . . ."  She means business: "I offer you joyfully all the prayers and sacrifices at my disposal."  In fact, in her rough draft, she wrote "I want my life to be consecrated to him," a line later struck out.1  In a phrase reminiscent of her June "Offering of myself as a Victim of Holocaust to Your Merciful Love," she asks Jesus to look on her as "a religious wholly inflamed with your love."  She declares solemnly "Now my desire will be reaized." 

Since the state no longer exempted seminarians from military service, Maurice is about to leave the seminary for the barracks.  He has written the Carmel for help at a vulnerable moment in his young life, and Therese asks Jesus to "keep him safe amid the dangers of the world."  She then turns to Mary, the "gentle Queen of Carmel," drawing a comparison between how Mary wrapped Jesus in swaddling clothes and how Maurice will hold the Eucharist in his hands at the altar.  Read the full text of Therese's "Prayer for Abbe Bellliere" thanks to the generosity of the Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites and the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux. 

Notes

ACL = Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux.

1.  The Prayers of Saint Therese of Lisieux, ed. Steven Payne, O.C.D., tr. Aletheia Kane, O.C.D.  Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1997, p. 81.

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