“The mysticism of the school of Carmel could not claim to be true mysticism if it were not apostolic in its own peculiar way. St. Therese of Lisieux shows us the true sense of the Apostolate of the school of Carmel. ‘I would be a missioner,’ she says, ‘I should like to have been one from Creation till the end of the world. I should want to preach the Gospel in all continents at once, as far as the farthest isles. Above all I should like martyrdom. One torture would not satisfy me, would not be enough. I should want to undergo them all. Open, O Jesus, the book of life in which the acts of the saints are written down, I should like to have performed them all for You.’ But then she recollects that God calls her along a different road to the practice of the Apostolate. The Apostolate as a work of God’s grace has to be seen as a work of the mystical Body of Christ of which God is the head and the soul, of which we are the members, animated by God. Not all have to fulfill a like duty. Love gave to St. Therese the key of the vocation of Carmel in the Apostolate. ‘I understood,’ she says, ‘that if the Church has a body, built up of different organs, the chief, the most necessary organ of all, could not be wanting. I saw that it must have a heart burning with love. I understood that only love sets the limbs in motion, that if love were to be extinguished, the apostles would no longer preach the Gospel, the martyrs would refuse to spill their blood. I understand that love contained all vocations. My vocation is love. I have found my proper place in the Church. I shall be love. In this way I shall be everything. In this way my dream has come true.‘“
St. Titus Brandsma
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