Reflections 2006
Prayer and Mission

1 October is the feast day of St Teresa of the Child Jesus, better known as St Thérèse of Lisieux, or perhaps even more familiar to many as ‘The Little Flower.’ This saint and ‘Doctor of the Church’ has a special place in the hearts of many Australians, partly because in the days when Australia was still viewed as a ‘mission country,’ St Thérèse was our national patron together with the other great patron of missions, St Francis Xavier. Many of us here in Melbourne will also have special memories from the visit of the relics of St Thérèse in 2003.

It may seem strange that St Thérèse should be a patron of missions; she herself spent all her adult years (before her death at the age of 24) as a cloistered nun in the Carmel at Lisieux. Her writings, however, reveal a paradoxical vocation:

“Like the prophets and doctors, I would be a light unto souls. I would travel the world over to preach Thy Name, O my Beloved, and raise on heathen soil the glorious standard of the Cross. One mission alone would not satisfy my longings. I would spread the Gospel in all parts of the earth, even to the farthest isles. I would be a missionary, but not for a few years only. Were it possible, I should wish to have been one from the world’s creation and to remain one till the end of time.”

In reality, her commitment to the cloister and her poor health prevented her from fulfilling her missionary vocation as she imagined. With time, she came to realise a much greater truth about the nature of all vocations:

“I understood that the Church had a heart and that this heart was burning with love. I understood that love comprised all vocations.”

True vocations from God will never be frustrated. Therese knew this from experience. At age 15, before she had reached the usual minimum age for entry into the Carmel, she was convinced that she should enter religious life as soon as possible. She even took the opportunity to appeal to the Pope himself during an audience in Rome. The Pope’s answer was not perhaps the one she was looking for: he told her to follow the directives of her superiors, but assured her that “all is well; if God wants you to enter, you will.”

Two things are necessary for a true vocation: first, the inner conviction of the call, but secondly (and perhaps more importantly), the outer confirmation of that call through external circumstances and the authority of the Church.

As with her inner conviction to enter the Carmel, so too later in her life St Thérèse felt the inner call to be a missionary. But in this case, the outer confirmation came in an unexpected manner.

A seminarian preparing to be a missionary priest wrote to the Prioress asking that a nun be assigned to pray for him. The task was given to St Thérèse. In this way she found the external confirmation of her missionary vocation. Unlike her fellow patron of missions, St Francis Xavier, she could not be an active missionary who travelled to foreign lands, but with a heart still ‘burning with love’ she could support the mission work of the Church through intercessory prayer.

Activism is a perennial problem among those called to the Lord’s service. We fall into the error of thinking that we have to ‘do it all,’ and that God demands endless activity in His name. Recently, the Holy Father, Pope Benedict, was visiting the priests of the Italian diocese of Albano, and took the opportunity to answer questions they put to him. One priest spoke about the many tasks and duties a parish priest is expected to perform, and asked how anyone could respond to all these requests. The pope answered that it was easy to become a little pessimistic:

“I must say that all of us have moments when we can lose heart in the face of the great many things there are to be done and of the limitations of how much we can really do. This is also true of the new Pope. What things should I be doing at this very moment for the Church, with the many problems, many joys, many challenges in regards to the universal Church? Many things come up from day to day and I cannot answer in relation to them all. I must take my part, and do what I can, but I search for the priorities.”

He went on to say that of all these priorities – for himself, for priests, and for all who contribute to the mission of the Church – the greatest is prayer.

Jesus Himself taught that the work of mission must be supported by prayer “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” (Matt 9:37-38)

Pope Benedict says:

“The time put aside for prayer is not time wasted from our pastoral responsibilities – it is a proper pastoral work to pray for others… It is proper for a pastor that he be a man of prayer, that he stand before the Lord praying for others, even taking the place of others, who perhaps don’t know how to pray, don’t want to pray, don’t find time to pray.”

All the faithful – not only priests – have a role to play in the mission of the Church. Thérèse and Pope Benedict show the way: Let our hearts burn with love as we keep the mission of the Church in our prayers. Together with love, prayer is the only activity of this life which continues beyond our death. St Thérèse remains today the patron of missions, supporting the mission of the Church by her prayers. As she herself declared: “I want to spend my Heaven doing good on earth.” In the end, her inner vocation to be a missionary ‘till the end of time’ was granted by God.

+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne.