Tuesday, October 17 : Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus

What an extraordinary thing it is, the efficiency of prayer! Like a queen, it has access at all times to the Royal presence, and can get whatever it asks for. And it’s a mistake to imagine that your prayer won’t be answered unless you’ve something out of a book, some splendid formula of words, specially devised to meet this emergency. If that were true, I’m afraid I should be in a terribly bad position. You see, I recite the Divine Office, with a great sense of unworthiness, but apart from that I can’t face the strain of hunting about in books for these splendid prayers-it makes my head spin. There are such a lot of them, each more splendid than the last; how am I to recite them all, or to choose between them? I just do what children have to do before they’ve learned to read; I tell God what I want quite simply, without any splendid turns of phrase, and somehow he always manages to understand me. For me, prayer means launching out of the heart towards God; it means lifting up one’s eyes, quite simply, to heaven, a cry of grateful love, from the crest of joy or the trough of despair; it’s a vast, supernatural force which opens out my heart, and binds me close to Jesus.

maronite readings – rosary,team