I was still being tormented by this question of unfulfilled longings and it was a distraction in my prayer, when I decided to consult St. Paul’s epistles in the hopes of getting an answer. It was the 12thand 13th chapters of First Corinthians that claimed my attention. The first of these told me that we can’t all of us be apostles, all of us prophets, all of us doctors, and so on; the Church is composed of members who differ in their use; the eye is one thing and the hand is another. It was a clear enough answer, but it did not satisfy my aspirations, did not set my heart at rest. Reading on to the end of the chapter, I met this comforting phrase: “Prize the best gifts of heaven. Meanwhile, I can show you a way which is better than any other.” What was it? The Apostle goes on to explain that all the gifts of heaven, even the most perfect of them, without love, are absolutely nothing; charity is the best way of all because it leads straight to God. Now I was at peace; when St. Paul was talking about the different members of the Mystical Body I could not recognize myself in any of them; or rather I could recognize myself in all of them. But charity, that was the key to my vocation. If the Church was a body composed of different members, it could not lack the noblest of all; it must have a heart, and a heart burning with love. And I realized that this love was the true motive force which enabled the other members of the Church to act. Love, in fact, is the vocation which includes all others; it is a universe of its own, comprising all time and space – it is eternal. I was beside myself with joy, I cried out: ‘Jesus, my love! I have found my vocation, and my vocation is love.’ I had discovered where it is that I belong in the Church, the place God has appointed for me. To be nothing else than love, deep down in the heart of Mother Church; that’s to be everything at once –my dream was not a dream after all.~Adapted from Story of a Soul by St. Therese
