Lenten Meditation - April 12, 2006

…it is about your spiritual sons1 who are my brothers that I was thinking when I wrote these words of Jesus and those which follow: ‘I do not pray that You will take them out of the world…I pray also for those who will believe in You, because of their word.’2 How could I not pray for the souls whom they will save in their distant mission through suffering and preaching?
Mother, I think it is necessary to give a few more explanations on the passage in the Canticle of Canticles: ‘Draw me, we shall run’ for what I wanted to say appears to me little understood. ‘No man can come after me, unless the FATHER who sent me draw him,’3 Jesus has said. Again, through beautiful parables, and often even without using this means so well known to the people, He teaches us that it is enough to knock and it will be opened, to seek in order to find, and to hold out one’s hand humbly to receive what is asked for.4 He also says that everything we ask the Father in His name, He will grant it.5 No doubt, it is because of this teaching that the Holy Spirit, before Jesus’ birth, dictated this prophetic prayer: ‘Draw me, we shall run.’

- St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Those Whom You Have Given Me

1 priests
2 John 17:15,20
3 John 6:44
4 Matthew 7:8
5 John 16:23