Novena Prayer
Dear St. Therese, ever happy, smiling, and joyous in the midst of pain, in spite of your extreme sensitiveness to suffering, I rejoice with you in the glorious triumph which you have won over self through your tender love of God. Obtain for me the grace to walk in your footsteps, that I may always find a sincere delight in that which gives joy to God, even though it be the very fact of my being utterly deprived of all sensible joy. May that which pleases God always be pleasing to me. Help me to realize that the cross is His most precious gift, most priceless token of His love. I, too, wish to thank Him for all His gifts, even those which seem less beautiful than the ones He bestows on others. Above all, I desire to thank Him at all times for the crosses and sufferings He sends me knowing that one "Thanks be to God" in trials is worth a thousand in things according to our will. St. Paul bids us "give thanks in ALL things," and daily throughout the year the Church makes the priest pray in the name of every one of the faithful: "It is truly meet and just, right and salutary, that we should at ALL times and in ALL places give thanks to Thee, O Holy Lord, Almighty Father, Eternal God." O St. Therese, pray for me, that these words may sink deep into my soul and that I may truly give thanks and rejoice in ALL things, that thus my joy, like yours, may attain to the heroic, the very refinement of all joy, a joy pure and wholly unselfish. I also recommend to you the special intentions for which I am making this Novena…. God will refuse you nothing.
Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory be.
Other Novena Prayers on page 46.
FIFTH DAY
St. Therese's Impregnable Fortress—Prayer
(1) Constant Prayer.—What were the means which St. Therese used to gain such a triumph over suffering? In the first place, she shut herself up in the impregnable fortress of prayer. From her earliest years she was filled with a high
