Mark 3:13 with St. Thérèse of Lisieux
“And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him.”
St. Thérèse opens her Story of a Soul with a reflection on this verse. She says that the verse contains the mystery of her own vocation, meditating on the words “those whom he desired.” It seemed to Thérèse that Jesus had simply chosen her out of desire for her, not because she was worthy, but simply because it pleased him to do so. This fact troubled Thérèse: “I wondered for a long time why God has preferences, why all souls don’t receive an equal amount of graces.” Specifically, she wondered why God chose people who seemed even to have offended him – like St. Paul or St. Augustine. We might add to her list the disciples being called in Mark 3:13, many of whom do not seem well suited to Jesus’ mission, and one of whom betrays him.
Thérèse has a lovely little analogy for helping us see how she resolved this problem in her own mind, writing that “Jesus deigned to teach me this mystery.” She says that she came to see how a field has many kinds of flowers, all different in size, color and scent and that she “understood that if all flowers wanted to be roses nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked out with little wild flowers.” We are the little wild flowers in Jesus’ garden “and just as in nature all the seasons are arranged in such a way as to make the humblest daisy bloom on a set day, in the same way, everything works out for the good of each soul.”[1]
