Day 8: Mission of Universal Love

The eighth day of the Saint Therese Novena turns to a dimension of her vocation that may seem paradoxical: the cloistered Carmelite who never left France was named in 1927 Patroness of the Catholic Missions, jointly with Saint Francis Xavier, by Pope Pius XI. Therese understood, with the clarity that her hidden Carmelite life made possible, that the universal mission of the Catholic Church is principally a work of prayer and love, and that the cloistered nun who prays daily for the missions does as much for the salvation of souls as the missionary in the field.

Today's invocation

Saint Therese, Little Flower of Jesus... (the full opening prayer)

Today's meditation

In Manuscript B of Story of a Soul (the autobiographical letter to her sister Marie composed in September 1896), Therese writes about her vocation in language that reaches beyond the cloister of the Carmel: "In the heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be love." She has discovered, by interior insight, that the various roles in the Mystical Body of Christ (apostle, prophet, doctor, martyr, missionary, contemplative) all flow from the one fundamental vocation of love. The cloistered nun who is love in the heart of the Church participates in every other vocation by way of her prayer and her offered sufferings. The work of the missionary in the field is supported and made effective by the work of the contemplative in the cloister.¹

Therese in particular took two missionary priests as her spiritual brothers during her last years and corresponded with them by letter. Father Maurice Bellière, a Missionaries of Africa priest, and Father Adolphe Roulland, a Foreign Missions Society priest serving in China, both received from Therese a steady stream of spiritual support during their missionary years. Therese understood her relationship with them as an integral part of her Carmelite vocation: she was mission by being love.

When Pope Pius XI named Therese the universal Patroness of the Missions in December 1927 (only two years after her canonization), the Catholic Church formally recognized this theological insight. The cloistered Carmelite of Lisieux, who never left France, became the patroness of every missionary in every land, of every Catholic mission society, of every effort by the Catholic Church to extend the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

Today's intention

Today, bring to Saint Therese your principal intention with the broader vision of universal love. Saint Therese, Patroness of the Missions, who loved every soul as your own, intercede for me. Make my prayer effective not only for myself but for all souls who need it.

Pray today specifically for the Catholic missionary work of the Church: for the missionaries serving in dangerous lands, for those preparing for missionary work, for the conversion of the unevangelized peoples, for the recovery of fallen-away Catholics, for the unity of the divided Christian communities. Therese's vocation was the love of every soul; the day's prayer should reflect this universality.

Reflection

The Catholic devotion to Saint Therese as Patroness of the Missions is a particular gift to the modern Catholic spiritual life because it dissolves the false distinction between active and contemplative vocations. The Catholic Church has always taught that the contemplative orders (Carthusians, Trappists, Carmelites, the cloistered Benedictines) have a particular role in supporting the active mission of the Church through their prayer. The active orders (Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, the missionary congregations) carry out the visible work that the contemplative prayer makes effective.

For the lay Catholic, this means that one's own ordinary Catholic life, joined to the prayer of the cloistered orders and to the saints in heaven, has more missionary fruitfulness than we suppose. The mother praying for her children, the worker offering his daily Mass for the conversion of his colleagues, the elderly Catholic praying the rosary for the missions, are all participating in the same universal mission that Therese carried out from her Carmel cell. The Saint Therese Novena, prayed for the missions, is a Catholic act of joining this work.

Closing prayers

Conclude with the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.

Saint Therese, Patroness of the Missions, pray for us and for all the missionaries of the Catholic Church.

Footnotes

1. Saint Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Manuscript B (composed September 1896). Pope Pius XI, Tradita ab Antiquis (apostolic letter, 14 December 1927), declaring Saint Therese the universal Patroness of the Missions. Available at vatican.va. ↩