I feel in me the vocation of Priest; with what love, O Jesus, I would carry you in my hands when, at my voice, you came down from Heaven… With what love I would give you to souls!… But alas! while desiring to be a Priest, I admire and envy the humility of Saint Francis of Assisi and I feel the vocation to imitate him by refusing the sublime dignity of the Priesthood.
O Jesus! my love, my life… how can I combine these contrasts?
How can I fulfill the desires of my poor little soul?…
Ah! despite my smallness, I would like to enlighten souls like the Prophets, the Doctors, I have the vocation to be an Apostle… I would like to travel the earth, preach your name and plant your glorious Cross on the unfaithful ground, but, O my Good -Beloved, a single mission would not be enough for me, I would like at the same time to announce the Gospel in the five parts of the world and even in the most remote islands… Is 66,19 I would like to be a missionary not only for a few years, but I would like to have been since the creation of the world and to be so until the consummation of the centuries… But I would like above all, O my Beloved Savior, I would like to shed my blood for you until the last drop…
Martyrdom, this is the dream of my youth, this dream it grew up with me under the cloisters of Carmel… But there again, I feel that my dream is madness, because I cannot limit myself to desiring a kind of martyrdom… For satisfy myself, I would need them all… Like you, my Adored Spouse, I would like to be scourged and crucified… I would like to die stripped like Saint Bartholomew… Like Saint John, I would like to be immersed in boiling oil, I would like to undergo all the tortures inflicted on martyrs… With Saint Agnes and Saint Cecilia, I would like to present my neck to the sword and like Joan of Arc, my dear sister, I would like to whisper your name at the stake, O Jesus… Thinking of the torments that will be shared of Christians in the time of the Antichrist, I feel my heart tremble and I would like these torments to be reserved for me… Jesus, Jesus, if I wanted to write down all my desires, I would have to borrow your book of life, there are recorded the actions of all the Saints and these actions, I would like to have accomplished them for you…
O my Jesus! to all my follies what will you respond?… Is there a soul smaller, more powerless than mine!…However, even because of my weakness, you were pleased, Lord, to fulfill my little desires childish, and today you want to fulfill other desires greater than the universe…
In prayer, my desires making me suffer a real martyrdom, I opened the epistles of Saint Paul in order to seek some answer. Chapters XII and XIII of the first epistle to the Corinthians came before my eyes… I read there, in the first, that not all can be apostles, prophets, doctors, etc… that the Church is made up of different members and that the eye cannot be the hand at the same time. …The answer was clear but did not satisfy my desires, it did not give me peace… As Magdalene always stooping beside the empty tomb Jn 20,11-18 ends up finding what she was looking for, thus, lowering me to the point of in the depths of my nothingness I rose so high 45 that I was able to reach my goal. Without being discouraged I continued reading and this sentence relieved me: “Eagerly seek the most perfect gifts, but I will still show you a more excellent way. » And the Apostle explains how all the most perfect gifts are nothing without Love… That Charity is the excellent path which surely leads to God. Finally I had found rest… Considering the mystical body of the Church, I did not recognize myself in any of the members described by Saint Paul, or rather I wanted to recognize myself in all of them… Charity gave me the key to my vocation . I understood that if the Church had a body, composed of different members, it did not lack the most necessary, the noblest of all, I understood that the Church had a Heart, and that this Heart was burning with Love. I understood that Love alone made the members of the Church act, that if Love were to die out, the Apostles would no longer announce the Gospel, the Martyrs would refuse to shed their blood… I understood that the Love contained all Vocations, that Love was everything, that it embraced all times and all places… in a word, that it is Eternal!…
Then, in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: O Jesus, my Love… my vocation, finally I found it, my vocation, it is Love!…
Yes, I have found my place in the Church and this place, O my God, it is you who gave it to me… in the Heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be Love… thus I will be everything… so my dream will be realized!!!…
Why speak of a delirious joy, no this expression is not correct, it is rather the calm and serene peace of the navigator seeing the lighthouse which must lead him to the port… O luminous beacon of love, I know how to arrive until you, I found the secret of appropriating your flame.