accomplish the
most heroic deeds--the spirit of the Crusader burns within me, and
I long to die on the field of battle in defence of Holy Church.

The vocation of a Priest! With what love, my Jesus, would I bear
Thee in my hand, when my words brought Thee down from Heaven! With
what love would I give Thee to souls! And yet, while longing to be
a Priest, I admire and envy the humility of St. Francis of Assisi,
and am drawn to imitate him by refusing the sublime dignity of the
Priesthood. How reconcile these opposite tendencies?[11]

Like the Prophets and Doctors, I would be a light unto souls, I
would travel to every land to preach Thy name, O my Beloved, and
raise on heathen soil the glorious standard of Thy Cross. One
mission alone would not satisfy my longings. I would spread the
Gospel to the ends of the earth, even to the most distant isles. I
would be a Missionary, not for a few years only, but, were it
possible, from the beginning of the world till the consummation of
time. Above all, I thirst for the Martyr's crown. It was the
desire of my earliest days, and the desire has deepened with the
years passed in the Carmel's narrow cell. But this too is folly,
since I do not sigh for one torment; I need them all to slake my
thirst. Like Thee, O Adorable Spouse, I would be scourged, I would
be crucified! I would be flayed like St. Bartholomew, plunged into
boiling oil like St. John, or, like St. Ignatius of Antioch,
ground by the teeth of wild beasts into a bread worthy of God.[12]

With St. Agnes and St. Cecilia I would offer my neck to the sword
of the executioner, and like Joan of Arc I would murmur the name
of Jesus at the stake.

My heart thrills at the thought of the frightful tortures
Christians are to suffer at the time of Anti-Christ, and I long to
undergo them all. Open, O Jesus, the Book of Life, in which are
written the deeds of Thy Saints: all the deeds told in that book I
long to have accomplished for Thee. To such folly as this what
answer wilt Thou make? Is there on the face of this earth a soul
more feeble than mine? And yet, precisely because I am feeble, it
has delighted Thee to accede to my least and most child-like
desires, and to-day it is Thy good pleasure to realise those other
desires, more vast than the Universe. These aspirations becoming a
true martyrdom, I opened, one day, the Epistles of St. Paul to
seek relief in my sufferings. My eyes fell on the 12th and 13th
chapters of the First