Jean Khoury
Summary: The Prayer of the Heart is not a private exercise that leaves the world untouched while the soul rests in God. It is the most effective form of evangelisation. Whoever prays it sends forth the Holy Spirit. Thérèse of Lisieux discovered that the Church has a Heart burning with Love, and that only Love makes the members of the Church act. The true container and the true pump of that Love is Mary. To pray the Rosary, even in the simple and profound form of the Prayer of the Heart, is to enter into Mary’s own prayer and to be kept within the divine Heart that holds the Holy Spirit and pours Him out. The Fire thus transmitted is divine: it multiplies without diminishing, as the Host divided remains Christ whole and entire. This article follows Thérèse from the vocation of Love in the heart of the Church, through her prayer “Draw me, we shall run”, to her doctrine of the lever and the fulcrum, and her act of pure love. It then draws out the consequences. Theologically, this teaching must reshape how we speak of prayer, mission, the Church and Mary. Practically, it transforms what a person is doing when he or she prays.
Introduction
We are used to dividing the Christian life into two parts: prayer and action. First we pray, then we go out and work for the Kingdom. The saints refuse this division. For them, prayer is the work, and the work that is not carried by prayer is empty. Thérèse of Lisieux, a cloistered Carmelite who never preached a sermon, was proclaimed patroness of the missions. This is no sentimental paradox. It is the verdict of the Church on a doctrine: that a soul burning with love cannot remain inactive, and that its hidden fire reaches the ends of the earth.
This article takes up one claim and tests it against Thérèse’s own words. The claim is this: when we practise the Prayer of the Heart, we evangelise; we send forth the Holy Spirit; we pump Him out. The image is deliberately physical. The heart is a pump that sends out the blood and radiates life through the whole body. If the Church is a Body, her Heart must do the same for her spiritual life. And the true pump, the true container of the divine Fire, is Mary.
The Development of the Teaching
1. The Church has a Heart
When we practise the Prayer of the Heart, we evangelise; we send forth the Holy Spirit, we pump Him out. “In the heart of the Church, I will be Love,” says Thérèse.[1] She explains what she saw: “I understood that the Church had a Heart and that this Heart was BURNING WITH LOVE. I understood it was Love alone that made the Church’s members act, that if Love ever became extinct, apostles would not preach the Gospel and martyrs would not shed their blood…”
The heart is a pump that sends out the blood and radiates life throughout the whole body. This is the physiology of the Church. Preaching, martyrdom, works of mercy and the sacraments themselves are the limbs and organs of the Body. They move only because the Heart sends out the life. A Church whose Heart has stopped is a corpse, however well organised.
2. Mary, the true container and the true pump
Now, Mary is the true vessel and reservoir of grace, and the true pump that communicates it. Jesus, the source and giver of all graces, dwells in her in all his fullness. Therefore, we need to unite ourselves to Mary, to her capacity to move the world or to give and pour out the Holy Spirit. In this way, we participate in the expansion of the Kingdom of God (“Thy Kingdom come”). To pray the Rosary, even in the profound and simple form of the Prayer of the Heart, is to join in Mary’s prayer; it is to mould our prayer on Mary’s prayer, she who possesses the Fire and gives the Fire.
She is the immense “container” and “engine” that supplies the Holy Spirit to the whole Body. She is that enormous sphere containing the divine Fire, boiling ready to go: “Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”[2]
The Fire of the Holy Spirit is “mobile” and “penetrating through all spirits”: “For wisdom is more mobile than any motion; because of her purity she pervades and penetrates all things. For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her.” And: “Though she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself she renews all things.”[3]
We are invited by our prayer to join ourselves to her, to enter into this great “engine”, this great pump of the Holy Spirit, this immense container of the divine Fire. This is the most useful, the purest and the most effective work. Each “Hail Mary” keeps us within the divine Pump (Mary), within the divine heart that contains the Holy Spirit and pumps Him out. Each “Hail Mary” is an act of sending forth the Holy Spirit. This is certainly invisible, but grace is invisible by definition. It certainly has visible effects. Grace is communicated to our spirit.
The whole work of the Prayer of the Heart consists in entering into Mary, joining ourselves to her prayer and her Fire, and transmitting it.
3. The Fire is multiplied without being diminished
When the Fire is transmitted, since it is divine, it is not lost, nor does it diminish. This is the quality of the divine Fire: we give it, yet there is still more, without any loss; it remains intact. It is like what Thérèse says: a small flame lights an immense fire. In other words, an immense number of people now possess the divine flame, or are united to God. She marvels at the fact that the Fire is multiplied without being diminished. It is like the Host: we divide it, yet each fragment is Christ whole and entire. This is what takes place in the Prayer of the Heart and what demonstrates its power: we give the Spirit to people and to the Church invisibly; a Ray is sent forth through an act of love, and yet nothing is lost and we are not diminished. The power to send forth (to pump out) and the quality of the Spirit remain the same; they are of God. He is there as though “anew”, intact, ready to be sent forth once again.
In this fiery prayer, there is a sending forth and a multiplication, but no diminution.
4. “Draw me, we shall run”: the lever and the fulcrum
This is also what Thérèse attempts to explain at the end of Manuscript C, when she sets out the doctrine she describes as known to all the saints: how to lift the world. She could have said: how to pump out God during the Prayer of the Heart (and beyond the Prayer of the Heart).[4] Here is her text in full:
“I think it is necessary to give a few more explanations on the passage in the Canticle of Canticles: “Draw me, we shall run [Sg 1.3]” 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 [Jn 6.44],” 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 [Mt 7.7] . . . He also says that everything we ask the Father in His name, He will grant it [Jn 16.23]. No doubt, it is because of this teaching that the Holy Spirit, before Jesus’ birth, dictated this prophetic prayer: Draw me, we shall run [Sg 1.3].
What is it then to ask to be “Drawn” if not to be united in an intimate way to the object which captivates our heart? If fire and iron had the use of reason, and if the latter said to the other: “Draw me,” would it not prove that it desires to be identified with the fire in such a way that the fire penetrate [36 r] and drink it up with its burning substance and seem to become one with it? Dear Mother, this is my prayer. I ask Jesus to draw me into the flames of His love, to unite me so closely to Him that He live and act in me [Ga 2.20]. I feel that the more the fire of love burns within my heart, the more I shall say: Draw me, the more also the souls who will approach me (poor little piece of iron useless if I withdraw from the divine furnace), the more these souls will run swiftly in the odor of the ointments [Sg 1.3] of their Beloved, for a soul that is burning with love cannot remain inactive. No doubt, she will remain at Jesus’ feet as did Mary Magdalene, and she will listen to His sweet and burning words. Appearing to do nothing, she will give much more than Martha who torments herself with many things and wants her sister to imitate her [Lk 10.40-41]. It is not Martha’s works that Jesus finds fault with. His divine Mother submitted humbly to these works all through her life since she had to prepare the meals of the Holy Family. It is only the restlessness of His ardent hostess that He willed to correct. All the saints have understood this, and more especially those who filled the world with the light of the Gospel teachings. Was it not in prayer that St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. John of the Cross, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis, St. Dominic, and so many other famous Friends of God have drawn out this divine science which delights the greatest geniuses? A scholar has said: “Give me a lever and a fulcrum and I will lift the world.” What Archimedes was not able to obtain, for his request was not directed by God and was only made from a material viewpoint, the saints have obtained [36 v] in all its fullness. The Almighty has given them as fulcrum: HIMSELF ALONE; as lever: PRAYER which burns with a fire of love. And it is in this way that they have lifted the world; it is in this way that the saints still militant lift it, and that, until the end of time, the saints to come will lift it.”[5]
Notice what Thérèse does with Martha and Mary Magdalene. She does not abolish Martha’s works. She relocates their source. The one who “appears to do nothing” gives “much more”, because she stays in the furnace. This is exactly the position of the one who prays the Prayer of the Heart within Mary: apparently still, in truth set in motion by the Fire.
5. The act of pure love
This is also the “act of pure love” of which Thérèse speaks in Manuscript B and in the Act of Oblation. She takes it from St. John of the Cross [6a]. It is the act by which our action becomes God’s action, and this is why it is called “pure”. In letter 245 Thérèse copies the following passage from St. John of the Cross: “The smallest movement of pure Love is more useful to the Church than all other works combined! It is therefore of the highest importance that the soul should exercise itself greatly in Love, so that, being consumed rapidly, it may linger but little here below and arrive promptly at seeing its God Face to Face.”[6b]
“O my Jesus! I love you; I love the Church, my Mother. I remember that: ‘The smallest movement of PURE LOVE is more useful to her than all the other works put together […]’” (Ms B 4 v°)
And in her Act of Oblation, wanting to live in this act of perfect and pure love, she prays: “In order to live in an act of perfect Love, I OFFER MYSELF AS A VICTIM OF HOLOCAUST TO YOUR MERCIFUL LOVE, imploring you to consume me unceasingly, allowing the floods of infinite tenderness contained within you to overflow into my soul, so that I may thus become a Martyr of your Love, O my God!…
May this martyrdom, after having prepared me to appear before you, at last cause me to die, and may my soul hasten without delay into the eternal embrace of your Merciful Love…
I wish, O my Beloved, with every heartbeat, to renew this offering to you an infinite number of times, until the shadows having vanished, I may tell you of my Love in an Eternal Face-to-Face encounter!…”[7]
The final line is decisive. “With every heartbeat”: the offering is renewed at the rhythm of the heart. Here Thérèse’s own heart becomes a small pump within the great Heart of the Church, and every beat sends forth the Fire.
Spiritual Canticle B Stanza 29 (Text)
Theoretical Consequences
1. Theological consequences
If this teaching is true, it cannot remain a pious corner of spirituality. It must pass into Dogmatic Theology, Liturgy and govern the way everything is taught.
First, it forces a recovery of the Holy Spirit as the real agent of mission. The Church does not propagate herself by method, strategy or eloquence. She is propagated by Love, which is the Spirit sent forth. Missiology without the Prayer of the Heart is a technique. With it, it becomes a participation in the Trinitarian sending.
Second, it places Mary where the tradition has always wanted her, at the centre and not at the edge. She is not a decorative addition to Christology and ecclesiology. She is the immense container of the Fire, the engine that supplies the Spirit to the whole Body.[8] A theology of the Church that speaks of structures and offices but is silent on the Heart that makes them live has misread the Body.
Third, it corrects the opposition between contemplation and action that has distorted spiritual theology for centuries. Thérèse’s doctrine is that the saints lift the world with prayer as lever and God alone as fulcrum. Contemplation is therefore not a retreat from the apostolate. It is its source and its most efficient form. “The smallest movement of pure Love is more useful to the Church than all other works combined.” A theology that cannot say this has not yet understood the Church. Contemplative Prayer is the apostolate of the frontline, because it is heart against heart, i.e. our heart against the persons to evangelise’s heart.
Fourth, it clarifies the nature of grace. Grace is invisible by definition, but it has visible effects. The Fire transmitted is divine, and so it is multiplied without loss, as the Host divided is Christ whole and entire. Sacramental theology and the theology of grace converge here: God gives Himself integrally in every gift, and the one who transmits is not impoverished.
2. A transformed understanding of prayer
The most radical consequence concerns prayer itself. Prayer has too often been taught as a request addressed to God from outside, or as a pious duty, or as a method of interior peace. Thérèse’s teaching overturns all three. Prayer is union with the Fire. It is to be drawn into the furnace until God acts in us and our action becomes His. This is the meaning of the act of pure love: “our action becomes God’s action”.
Prayer – i.e. fiery prayer – is therefore the place where the heart of the Church beats. It is the interior of the Church’s own life.[9] The prayer of the individual believer is not a private matter added to the public mission of the Church. It is the circulation of the Spirit through the Body. Every course in theology that treats prayer as an appendix, a pious closing chapter, should be rewritten from this centre.
Practical Consequences
Theory must become life. Here is what follows for the person who prays.
First, prayer is work, and the most useful work. When I say a single “Hail Mary” within the Prayer of the Heart, I am not escaping from the world’s needs. I am staying inside the divine Pump, within the divine heart that contains the Holy Spirit and pumps Him out. Each “Hail Mary” is an act of sending forth the Holy Spirit. Even when I feel nothing and see nothing, something is happening, because grace is invisible by definition.
Second, I do not need to be anywhere else. The one who prays does not have to wait for the right project, the right platform or the right gifts. The humble believer in a hospital bed, the elderly woman with her rosary, the Carmelite behind a grille, all have the same access to the Heart of the Church. Thérèse’s “little piece of iron” is useless alone and powerful in the furnace.
Third, the whole task of prayer is simplified: to enter into Mary, to join myself to her prayer and her Fire, and to transmit it. I do not have to manufacture fervour. I have to remain in the one who possesses the Fire and gives the Fire. This ends the anxiety of those who measure their prayer by feelings and distractions. The question is not “Did I feel anything?” but “Did I stay in the Heart?”
Fourth, generosity cannot exhaust me. Because the Fire is divine, I can give without fear of running dry. A small flame lights an immense fire and is not diminished. The apostle who prays does not burn out by giving, because he gives what he receives afresh from God at every moment. Intercession for the whole world, for the dying, for nations I will never see, costs me nothing that God does not replace.
Fifth, action finds its order. Thérèse does not condemn Martha’s works, and neither do we. Practical charity, teaching, service and administration are all necessary. But they are borne by the Fire or they are mere restlessness. The one who prays first and works from that prayer will accomplish more with less agitation. “Appearing to do nothing, she will give much more.”
Finally, every beat of the heart can become an offering. Thérèse’s wish “with every heartbeat, to renew this offering to you an infinite number of times” is a programme for ordinary life. At the desk, in the kitchen, on the bus, a movement of the heart toward God in Mary sends the Spirit forth. The day becomes continuous prayer, and continuous prayer becomes continuous evangelisation.
Conclusion
The Church has a Heart, and that Heart is burning with Love. Thérèse saw it, desired to be Love within it, and understood that without it apostles would not preach and martyrs would not shed their blood. The true container and pump of that Love is Mary, the immense sphere of the divine Fire, always ready to send it forth to the end of the world. To pray the Prayer of the Heart is to enter her, to be kept in her, and to transmit the Fire through her.
The consequences are as large as the claim. Theology must rediscover prayer as its source and the Spirit as the agent of mission, and put Mary at its centre. The believer must stop apologising for hidden prayer and understand that it is the Church’s most effective work. The lever is prayer that burns with a fire of love. The fulcrum is God alone. With these, the saints have lifted the world, they lift it still, and until the end of time those who come after them will lift it.
Read also:
Mary’s Fiery Prayer (very important!)
The Act of Oblation of St. Therese of the Child Jesus
Bibliography
John of the Cross. The Collected Works of St John of the Cross. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez. Revised edition. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991.
Second Vatican Council. Lumen Gentium: Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 1964.
Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd edition. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997.
Thérèse of Lisieux. Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St Thérèse of Lisieux. Translated by John Clarke. 3rd edition. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996.
Thérèse of Lisieux. Letters of St Thérèse of Lisieux. Vol. 2: 1890–1897. Translated by John Clarke. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1988.
Thérèse of Lisieux. Act of Oblation to Merciful Love, 9 June 1895. In Prayers of St Thérèse of Lisieux. Translated by Aletheia Kane. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1997.
The Holy Bible: Canticle of Canticles; Wisdom; Psalms; Luke; John; Romans; Galatians; Matthew.
Notes
[1]Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Manuscript B, 3v. The passage is her discovery of her vocation in the heart of the Church.
[2]Ps 19:4; Rm 10:18. Paul applies the psalm to the apostolic preaching of the Gospel.
[3]See Wis 7:22–27, the portrait of Wisdom as a breath of the power of God, which the Church’s liturgy and tradition have long applied to Mary and to the Holy Spirit.
[4]See Thérèse, Manuscript C, 36r–37r, where the saints’ way of lifting the world is set out as a doctrine common to all of them.
[5]Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Manuscript C, 36r–36v. The bracketed scriptural references are those of the critical edition. Obvious scanning and typing errors in the received text have been corrected.
[6a] See Spiritual Canticle B, Stanza 29.
[6b]Thérèse of Lisieux, Letter 245, in which she copies a passage of St. John of the Cross. The passage is taken from the Living Flame of Love B, I,29, and she cites it as a sentence to be lived.
[7]Thérèse of Lisieux, Act of Oblation to Merciful Love, 9 June 1895.
[8]Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, §§ 61–65, on the maternal office of Mary in the economy of grace and her place in the mystery of the Church.
[9]See Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§ 2562–2563, on the heart as the dwelling place of prayer.