Dear Mother, what I have just written amazes me.  I had no intention of writing it.  When I said:  “The words which Thou gavest me I have given unto them,” I was thinking only of my little sisters in the noviciate.  I am not able to teach missionaries, and the words I wrote for them were from the prayer of Our Lord:  “I do not ask that Thou shouldst take them out of the world; I pray also for them who through their word shall believe in Thee.”

How could I forget those souls they are to win by their sufferings and exhortations?

But I have not told you all my thoughts on this passage of the Sacred Canticles:  “Draw me—­we will run!” Our Lord has said:  “No man can come to Me except the Father Who hath sent Me, draw him,"[4] and later He tells us that whosoever seeks shall find, whosoever asks shall receive, that unto him that knocks it shall be opened, and He adds that whatever we ask the Father in His Name shall be given us.  It was no doubt for this reason that, long before the birth of Our Lord, the Holy Spirit dictated these prophetic words:  “Draw me—­we will run!” By asking to be drawn, we desire an intimate union with the object of our love.  If iron and fire were endowed with reason, and the iron could say:  “Draw me!” would not that prove its desire to be identified with the fire to the point of sharing its substance?  Well, this is precisely my prayer.  I asked Jesus to draw me into the Fire of His love, and to unite me so closely to Himself that He may live and act in me.  I feel that the more the fire of love consumes my heart, so much the more shall I say:  “Draw me!” and the more also will souls who draw near me run swiftly in the sweet odour of the Beloved.

Yes, they will run—­we shall all run together, for souls that are on fire can never be at rest.  They may indeed, like St. Mary Magdalen, sit at the feet of Jesus, listening to His sweet and burning words, but, though they seem to give Him nothing, they give much more than Martha, who busied herself about many things.  It is not Martha’s work that Our Lord blames, but her over-solicitude; His Blessed Mother humbly occupied herself in the same kind of work when she prepared the meals for the Holy Family.  All the Saints have understood this, especially those who have illumined the earth with the light of Christ’s teaching.  Was it not from prayer that St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa, and so many other friends of God drew that wonderful science which has enthralled the loftiest minds[?]

“Give me a lever and a fulcrum on which to lean it,” said Archimedes, “and I will lift the world.”

What he could not obtain because his request had only a material end, without reference to God, the Saints have obtained in all its fulness.  They lean on God Almighty’s power itself and their lever is the prayer that inflames with love’s fire.  With this lever they have raised the world—­with this lever the Saints of the Church Militant still raise it, and will raise it to the end of time.