“Christmas Vocation” – St. Therese of the Child Jesus
“…As a matter of fact it was not on that day that I received my religious vocation : Our Lord, wishing my first glance to be for Him alone, deigned to ask me for my heart actually in the cradle, if I may put it so. The night of Christmas 1886 was, it is true, decisive for my vocation, but to give it a more exact name I should call it the night of my conversion. On that blest night, of which it is written that it illumines God’s own delights, Jesus, who became a child for love of me, deigned to bring me forth from the swaddling clothes and imperfections of infancy. He transformed me so utterly that I no longer recognized myself. …If the Lord had not clad me in His divine strength, if He had not Himself armed me for war.”