When you feel too small for the holiness God asks of you, pray this. St. Thérèse of Lisieux wrote her Act of Oblation to Merciful Love on June 9, 1895, one year before her death, offering herself completely to God’s transforming love rather than his justice.
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 knows she cannot manufacture it herself. This is the heart of her Little Way: accepting spiritual childhood rather than striving for heroic feats. She offers herself not to God’s justice (as religious of her era commonly did) but to his merciful love, a radical departure that shocked her confessor.
The phrase “victim of holocaust” sounds severe to modern ears, but Thérèse means complete gift, total combustion in love’s fire. She wants God’s infinite tenderness to overflow into her small soul until she becomes a living expression of his love. She wrote this prayer after meditating on how few souls offered themselves to Love rather than Justice.
Pray it when you’re tired of trying to be good enough on your own. Say it slowly in the morning, especially the line “I beg thee, O my God, to be thyself my sanctity.” Let God do the work of transforming you. Carry it through the day’s small surrenders.
Return to it when you need to remember that holiness is received, not achieved.
