From: pruss@unixg.ubc.ca (Alexander Pruss)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Offering to Merciful Love
Date: 18 Aug 92 06:16:07 GMT
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada

Act of Offering to Merciful Love                     by St. Therese of Lisieux
               Badly translated from the French by Alexander Pruss.
 
 
                                    J.M.J.T.
 
                               Offering of myself
                            as a sacrificial victim
                      to the Merciful Love of the Good God
 
  O my God!  Blessed Trinity, I wish to _Love_ you, and to do _Love_ for
you, to work for the glorification of the Holy Church in saving the souls
on earth and delivering those who suffer in purgatory.  I wish to
do your will perfectly and arrive at the measure of glory which you have
prepared for me in your kingdom; in a word, I wish to be a Saint, but I
feel my weakness and I ask you, O my God! that you yourself be my
_Saintliness_.
 
  Since you have loved me, even up to giving me your only Son to be my
Saviour and my Spouse, the infinite treasures of his merits belonging to
me, I offer them to you with happiness, beseeching you not to regard me
except through the Face of Jesus and in his Heart burning with _Love_.
 
  I offer to you again all the merits of the Saints (those in Heaven and
on earth), their acts of _Love_ and those of the Holy Angels;  finally I
offer you, _O Blessed Trinity_! the _Love_ and the merits of the _Holy
Virgin, my dear Mother_, my sacrifice having been abandoned to her before
being presented to you.  Her Divine Son, my _Beloved_ Spouse, in the days
of his mortal life said to us: "_All that you ask of my Father in my namy
he will give you!_"  I am thus certain that you will fulfill my desires;
I know it, O my God! _the more you wish to give, the more you make us
desire_.  I feel in my heart the immense desires and with confidence I ask
you to come and take posession of my soul.  Ah! I cannot receive holy
Communion as often as I desire, but, Lord, are you not the _Almighty_?...
Rest in me, like in the tabernacle, do not move out of your little host...
 
  I would like to console you from the ingratitude of the wicked and I
beseech you to take away my freedom to displease you, if through weakness,
I fall several times, that rightaway your _Divine Care_ may purify my
soul, consuming all my imperfections, like the fire which transforms all
things into itself...
 
  I will repay you, O my God! all the graces which you have given me, in
particular that of making me pass through the crucible of suffering.  It
is with joy that I contemplate you in the last day carring the sceptre of
the Cross; since you have deigned to give me a share in this so precious
Cross, in Heaven I hope to look like you and see the sacred stigmata of
your Passion shining on my glorified body...
 
  After this earthly exile, I hope to enjoy you in my Native Land, but I
do not wish to gather merits for Heaven; I wish to work for your _only
Love_, in the only goal of pleasing you, of consoling your Sacred Heart
and of saving the souls who love you eternally.
 
  In the evening of this life, I will present before you my empty arms,
for I do not ask you, Lord, to count my works.  All our justice is a
blemish before your eyes.  I thus wish to put on your own _Justice_, and
receive from your _Love_ the eternal posession of _Yourself_.  I do not at
all desire another _Throne_ nor another _Crown_ but _You_, O my
_Beloved_!...
 
  In your eyes, time is nothing, a day like a thousand years;  you can
thus prepare me in an instant to appear before you...
 
  In order to live in an act of perfect Love, I OFFER YOU MYSELF AS A
SACRIFICIAL VICTIM TO YOUR _MERCIFUL LOVE_, beg you to consume me without
wait, leaving my soul overwhelmed by the waves of _infinite tenderness_
which are contained in you, and that I may thus become a _Martyr_ of your
_Love_, O my God!...
 
  That this _Martyrdom_, before you have prepared me to appear in front of
you, may make me finally die and that my soul may dash forth without delay
to the eternal embrace of _Your Merciful Love_...
 
  I wish, O my _Beloved_, in each beat of my heart to renew for you this
offering an infinite number of times so when these shadows disappear,
I will be able to repeat my _Love_ in an _Eternal Union Face-to-Face_!...
 
          Marie, Francoise, Therese of the Child Jesus
                 and of the Holy Face, o.c.d.
 
Feast of the Most Holy Trinity.
9th of June, year of Our Lord 1895.
 
 
Translator's Notes:  I do not know what J.M.J.T. stands for.  I suspect
        J.M. is "Jesus, Mary."  Perhaps Jesus, Mary, John, Theresa?
 
        Instead of "o.c.d." the original has "rel. carm. ind."  I suspect
        we can translate it as "religious of the order of Carmel,
        Discalced."
 
        The last paragraph ("I wish ... Face!") was difficult to
        translate, and I may have missed the meaning.           - ARP