St. Thérèse of Lisieux prayed this Act of Oblation on June 9, 1895, offering herself completely to God’s merciful love. If you feel powerless to become the saint you long to be, or if you need to surrender control and trust God’s transforming fire, pray this with her today.
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 is asking God to be her holiness because she knows she cannot manufacture it herself. She offers herself not as a victim to God’s justice (the traditional language of her era) but to his merciful love, a radical shift that defined her Little Way. The prayer names her desire for sanctity while confessing her powerlessness, then asks God to fill that gap with his infinite tenderness.
This was a controversial prayer in 1895. Offering oneself as a holocaust victim traditionally meant accepting suffering as reparation for sin. Thérèse reframed it: she wanted to be consumed by love, not punishment. She prayed this Act daily after Mass for the remaining two years of her life, through the tuberculosis that killed her at age 24.
Pray it when you are tired of trying to be good on your own strength. Pray it when you see the gap between who you are and who you want to be. Pray it slowly, one phrase at a time, and let the phrase “be thyself my sanctity” sit with you. That is the hinge of the whole prayer.
Carry it through this day.
