The Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of the Little Flower (with Supplemental Reading: Classics Made Simple) [Illustrated]

by Thérèse of Lisieux

On priests need for prayer

To be Your Spouse, my Jesus; to be a Carmelite; to be, through my union with You, a mother of souls, surely this should be enough? Yet I feel the call of more vocations still; I want to be a warrior, a priest, an apostle, a doctor of the Church, a martyr—there is no heroic deed I do not wish to perform. I feel as daring as a crusader, ready to die for the Church upon the battlefield. If only I were a priest! How lovingly I would bear You in my hands, my Jesus, when my voice had brought You down from Heaven. How lovingly I would give You to souls! Yet while wanting to be a priest, I admire St. Francis of Assisi and envy his humility, longing to imitate him in refusing this sublime dignity. Such contradictions! How can they be reconciled? I long to bring light to souls, like the prophets and doctors; to go to the ends of the earth to preach Your name, to plant Your glorious Cross, my Beloved, on pagan shores. One mission field alone would never be enough; all the world, even its remotest islands, must be my mission field. Nor would my mission last a few short years, but from the beginning of the world to the End of Time. But to be a martyr is what I long for most of all. Martyrdom! I dreamed of it when I was young, and the dream has grown up with me in my little cell in Carmel. I am just as foolish about this because I do not desire any one kind of torture; I would be satisfied only with them all. I want to be scourged and crucified like You, my Spouse; flayed alive like St....

Distractions fro Jesus