{"id":508,"date":"2014-09-28T05:00:03","date_gmt":"2014-09-28T05:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sjcmetheology.wpengine.com\/?p=508"},"modified":"2014-09-28T05:00:03","modified_gmt":"2014-09-28T05:00:03","slug":"my-vocation-is-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/my-vocation-is-love\/","title":{"rendered":"My Vocation is Love!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"St.<\/a>

St. Therese at 15 just prior to joining the Carmel at Lisieux<\/p><\/div>\n

I am always delighted to see that, especially among younger Catholics, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Martin (1873-1897) is increasingly becoming one of the Church\u2019s more \u201cpopular\u201d saints. I am sure that many of us are already familiar with the broad outlines of her life. That she was one of five children, of Louis and Z\u00e9lie (Guerin) Martin, all of whom entered the religious life. That, during a family pilgrimage to Rome, she implored Pope Leo XIII to grant her a dispensation to allow her to enter the Carmel at Lisieux at age 15; which, though not due to the pope\u2019s intervention, she in fact did. That, after dying at the tender age of 24, her reputation grew largely due to the posthumous publication of her spiritual diary Histoire d\u2019une Ame<\/em> [Story of a Soul<\/em>]. And, that she was canonized in 1925 by Pope Pius XI and proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1997 by Pope St. John Paul II.<\/p>\n

In my household, moreover, the feast day of St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se (October 1st<\/sup>) holds a particular significance. My wife and I, quite deliberately, selected that day on which to be married; thereby making St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se the patron saint of our marriage and family. (Just as an aside, our son was born on the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. I think the LORD is trying to tell us something about the spiritual direction of our family.) One portion of St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se\u2019s Story of a Soul<\/em> has always resonated with my wife and me in particular. In fact, we placed this text on the last page of our wedding programs.<\/p>\n

Charity gave me the key to my vocation\u2026I understood it was love alone that made the Church\u2019s members act, that if love ever became extinct, apostles would not preach the Gospel and martyrs would not shed their blood. I understood that love comprised all vocations, that love was everything, that it embraced all times and places\u2026 In one word, that it was eternal (chapter 9).<\/p>\n

St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se was prompted to write this passage based on her meditation of 1 Cor 13:1-13, and it illustrates well why she is truly a Doctor of the Church. St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se had a great desire to join the ranks of the martyrs of the Church. \u201cMartyrdom was the dream of my youth,\u201d she writes \u201cand this dream has grown with me within the Carmel\u2019s cloisters.\u201d She also had the ambition to be a Carmelite missionary which, because of her ill health, she was not allowed to fulfill. But reflecting upon St. Paul\u2019s great exhortation to love, St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se realized that love is the vocation of every Christian; it is the universal vocation. Much like holiness, all Christians are called to live out their particular vocations in love; whether one is called to the married life, or the consecrated religious life, or to some other particular vocation. Further, and this is one St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se\u2019s great insights, if one lives out perfectly this universal<\/strong> vocation to love, one is embracing all of the particular<\/strong> vocations. In other words, the saint who loves perfectly is, in the realm of love, an apostle, and a prophet, and a martyr, etc. \u201cThus I shall be everything,\u201d writes the Little Flower, \u201cand thus my dream will be realized.\u201d In a way, the Church has formally endorsed the Little Flower\u2019s theology on this point. For, while she never left the confines of the Lisieux Carmel during her religious life, upon her canonization St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se was made co-patron \u2013 along with St. Francis Xavier \u2013 of missionary work. By doing \u201call the smallest things and doing them through love,\u201d St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se lived perfectly her, and every, vocation.<\/p>\n

And that is the great reminder which St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se gives to my wife and me as the patroness of our married life: that every particular vocation is lived through the universal vocation to love. And, in knowing this, we should all exclaim with St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se: \u201cO Jesus, my Love\u2026my vocation, at last I have found it\u2026My vocation is love!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Therese<\/a>

St. Therese as St. Joan d\u2019Arc in a play at the Carmel<\/p><\/div>\n

Anthony Coleman<\/strong> teaches theology for Saint Joseph\u2019s College Online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am always delighted to see that, especially among younger Catholics, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Martin (1873-1897) is increasingly becoming one of the Church\u2019s more \u201cpopular\u201d saints. I am sure that many of us are already familiar with the broad outlines of her … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,21,1],"tags":[165,281],"class_list":["post-508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-saints","category-uncategorized","tag-love","tag-st-therese-of-lisieux"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}