St. Thérèse of Lisieux, whose feast day is October 1st, was very dedicated to praying for priests. She had great respect for the priesthood, but understood that priests are not perfect, and they need the support of our prayers to help them in their vocation.
St. Thérèse was already devoted to interceding for people since she was very young, especially praying for the conversion of sinners. In her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, she admitted that she did not at first understand why Carmelites are asked to pray for priests. She realized that priests need prayer while on a pilgrimage to Rome with her father and sister at fifteen years old. She wrote:
I met many holy priests during the month I was away, but I saw that some of them were still men, weak and subject to human frailty…Now if prayers are needed for these holy priests whom Jesus called “the salt of the earth,” how much more it is needed for priests of lukewarm virtue. …What a wonderful vocation we Carmelites have! …We offer our prayers and penance for God’s apostles and we are their apostles, while, by word and deed, they bring the Gospel to our brethren. (2001, p.68)
From that time on, St. Thérèse was very dedicated to interceding for priests, and in several letters to her sister, Céline, she encouraged her to always pray for priests. In one letter, dated July 14th, 1889, she wrote, “Let us live for souls, let us be apostles, let us especially save the souls of priests…Let us pray, let us suffer for them, and, on the last day, Jesus will be grateful. We shall give Him souls!” (1949, p.112). A year later, she wrote, “Céline, let us pray for priests, ah! let us pray for them, let our life be consecrated to them. Every day Jesus makes me feel that is what He wants from us two” (1949, p.134).
St. Thérèse wrote that she would have liked to have had a brother who was a priest. She knew that her parents had hoped they might have a son who would become a priest and a missionary, but their two sons died while they were very young, before Thérèse was even born. Still, God granted St. Thérèse’s wish for a priest brother; after becoming a nun, God sent her a seminarian and a missionary priest who became like brothers to her.
On October 15th, 1895, Maurice Bellière, a young seminarian, wrote to the prioress of the Carmelite monastery asking for a nun to pray for him. The prioress, St. Thérèse’s sister Pauline, asked Thérèse to be his spiritual sister and help him by her prayers. St. Thérèse was very happy to be chosen for this assignment. She wrote in her autobiography:
The unexpected fulfillment of my longing awoke in me a joy that I can only call childlike, for I must go back to my childhood days to remember pleasure so great. My heart was too small to hold it. (2001, p.148)
A year later, St. Thérèse was asked by the new prioress, Mother Gonzague, to pray for another priest, Fr. Adolphe-Jean-Louis-Eugène Roulland, who had contacted the prioress a month before his ordination, requesting that a nun pray for him. Soon after his ordination, he was sent to be a missionary in China. Fr. Roulland and St. Thérèse met one time when he celebrated Mass at the Carmelite monastery chapel, the month before he departed for China.
In addition to praying for Maurice and Fr. Roulland, St. Thérèse also corresponded with them, encouraging them in their vocation, and offering her support and advice. She prayed for Maurice for a year before ever writing to him. Their correspondence began when Mother Gonzague was ill and asked St. Thérèse to reply to Maurice’s letter for her. After this initial letter, St. Thérèse was allowed to continue their correspondence and was also permitted to write to Fr. Roulland.
St. Thérèse promised both of her spiritual brothers that after her death, she would continue to pray for them and assist them in their missionary work. In the letter she wrote to Maurice to let him know that she would die soon, she told him that after she went to Heaven, she would stay close to him and support him the rest of his life. She concluded her next letter to him, “believe that I shall be your true little sister for all eternity” (1998, p.169). In her last letter to Fr. Roulland, she wrote:
Ah! Brother, I feel I shall be much more useful to you in Heaven than on earth, so it is with joy I announce my approaching entry into that blissful city, sure that you will share my joy and thank the Lord for giving me the means to aid you more effectively in your apostolic labours. (1949, pp.352–353)
In St. Thérèse’s autobiography, she wrote that it gave her great happiness to pray for and encourage her spiritual brothers. But she did not pray only for Maurice and Fr. Roulland. She wrote, “I pray for everyone and do not forget ordinary priests whose ministry is sometimes just as difficult as that of missionaries preaching to the heathen” (2001, p.149). She prayed too for the pope and his intentions.
St. Thérèse said that her vocation was love, and she understood the importance and necessity of prayer. As a cloistered nun, her life was completely dedicated to prayer. In another letter to her sister Céline, she wrote, “Is not the apostolate of prayer lifted higher, so to speak, than the apostolate of preaching? Our mission, as Carmelites, is to form those Gospel laborers, they will save millions of souls, whose mothers we shall be…” (1949, pp.174–175).
At the end of her life, St. Thérèse said, “I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth” (2007, p.185). We believe that she is continuing to assist priests now from Heaven. They can always turn to her for her intercession. She is also an example and an intercessor for the many religious sisters and laywomen who are spiritual mothers to priests through their constant prayers.
St. Thérèse, pray for us and our priests!
Photo by Sidney Pearce on Unsplash
