St. Thérèse of Lisieux composed this prayer on June 9, 1895, one year before her death from tuberculosis. She offered herself as a victim to God’s merciful love, not his justice. Pray it when you need to let go of trying to earn holiness and simply receive it.
O my God, most blessed Trinity, I desire to love thee and to make thee loved, to labor for the glory of holy Church by saving souls upon earth and freeing those who suffer in purgatory. I desire to accomplish thy will perfectly, and to reach the degree of glory thou hast prepared for me in thy kingdom. In a word, I wish to be a saint, but feeling my powerlessness, I beg thee, O my God, to be thyself my sanctity. In order to live in one single act of perfect love, I offer myself as a victim of holocaust to thy merciful love, asking thee to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within thee to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of thy love, O my God.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux, June 9, 1895
How this prayer works
Thérèse asks God to be her sanctity because she has given up trying to manufacture it herself. The prayer turns on the phrase “feeling my powerlessness.” She is not asking for strength to climb higher. She is asking to be consumed by love the way a holocaust offering is consumed by fire.
In the 19th century, French spiritual writers debated whether souls should offer themselves as victims to God’s justice or his mercy. Thérèse chose mercy. Her Act of Oblation became the cornerstone of her Little Way, the spirituality of spiritual childhood that earned her the title Doctor of the Church in 1997.
Pray this when you are tired of scorekeeping, when you have tried to be holy and failed again. Pray it slowly, pausing at “I beg thee, O my God, to be thyself my sanctity.” Let that line sit. Then finish the prayer and go about your day knowing that holiness is gift, not achievement.
Carry it through this morning.
