Therese of Lisieux - Meditation on Love

This meditation has touched me ever since I first read it, and I want to share it as a worthy meditation for Advent. After much searching for her place in the church, whether she would be a martyr or a missionary or how best to apply her gifts, after many earnest thoughts and grand meditations of great service that were within her desire but probably not within her reach, she meditated:

"... I continued my reading, and this sentence gave me relief:

Now eagerly desire the greater gifts. And yet I will show you the most excellent way. [I Cor 12:31]

And the Apostle explains how the most perfect gifts are nothing without Love, and that charity is the excellent way that leads surely to God. Finally, I had found rest.  

Considering the mystical body of the Church, I had not recognized myself in any of the members described by St Paul, or rather, I wanted to recognize myself in all of them. 

Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that if the Church had a body composed of different members [I Cor 12:12], it was not missing the most necessary, the most noble of all: I understood that the Church had a heart and that this heart was burning with Love. I understood that Love alone can cause the members of the Church to act. If Love were to be extinguished, the Apostles would no longer preach the gospel, the Martyrs would refuse to shed their blood. I understood that Love contains all he Vocations, that Love is all, that it embraces all times and all places; in a word, that it is Everlasting! 

Then in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out "Oh, Jesus, my Love, I have finally found my vocation: my vocation is Love!   

Yes, I have found my place in the Church, and that place, my God, You have given me. In the Heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be Love. 

 (Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, from chapter 9)