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Prayer — Prayers of the Saints

Three Prayers of St. Thérèse: Love, Gratitude, Hope

by St. Thérèse of Lisieux

'At the close of evening I shall appear before Thee with empty hands' — three short prayers from her own writings, gathered for evening prayer in 1925, the year she was canonised.

The Prayer

English · Original

LOVE OF GOD.
At the close of evening I shall appear before Thee with empty hands, for I ask not, Lord, that Thou wouldst count my works. All our justice is tarnished in Thy sight. It is therefore my desire to be clothed with Thine own justice and to receive from Thy love the eternal possession of Thyself. I crave no other throne or other crown but Thee, O my Beloved.

GRATITUDE.
O my God, how good Thou art to me, the victim of Thy merciful love. Now even though Thou dost join physical suffering to the trials of my soul, I cannot say: 'The sorrows of death have encompassed me.' But I cry out in my gratitude: 'I have gone down into the valley of the shadow of death, yet I fear no evil, because Thou, O Lord, art with me.'

HOPE.
A day… an hour… and we shall have reached the port! My God, what shall we see then? What is that life which will never have an end?… Jesus will be the soul of our soul. Unfathomable mystery! 'Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man what great things God hath prepared for them that love Him.'

When the Prayer is Said

Evening prayer; on 1 October, the saint's feast; in sickness.

History & Background

The first of these is the closing of her Act of Oblation to Merciful Love (9 June 1895): she will come to God with empty hands, not asking Him to count her works, wanting to be clothed in His justice rather than her own. The second is from her last months, when to the trials of her soul was joined the tuberculosis that killed her at twenty-four: she cries out in gratitude, not in fear, with the words of the twenty-second Psalm. The third is her looking toward the end — 'a day, an hour, and we shall have reached the port'.

Thérèse was canonised on 17 May 1925. In the same year Callan and McHugh printed these three passages, under the headings Love of God, Gratitude, and Hope, among the evening prayers of Blessed Be God, and the text is theirs. The full Act of Oblation is on this site as its own prayer.

Related Saints

St. Thérèse of Lisieux

January 2, 1873 – September 30, 1897

All Prayers