St Thérèse of Lisieux

 October 1: Feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux

      October 1st is the feast day of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, or Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, the patron saint of missionaries, priests and florists.

      Thérèse died when she was only 24, after having lived but 10 years as a cloistered Carmelite nun. She never went on missions, never founded a religious order, nor performed great works. The only book of hers, published after her death, was a brief edited version of her journal called "Story of a Soul." Yet, generations of Catholics have admired this young saint, calling her the "Little Flower" and the Church honoured her with the prestigious title of 'Doctor of the Church".

      Like a soldier kitted for war, she was ready for battle: humility was her armour and love was her only weapon. She had a faith of truly mustard seed proportions (Matt. 17:20) enabling her to perform entire mountains of charitable acts and she embraced God’s plan for her, saying “A heart enfolded in Divine love cannot remain inactive.” Her story is a powerful reminder to all of us who feel we can't make a difference, that it is the little things we do that keep God's kingdom growing.

Childhood

      Marie Françoise-Thérèse Martin was born on January 2, 1873, in Alencon, Normandy, France to Louis Martin and Zelie Guerin (both parents were recently canonised saints by Pope Francis on Sunday, October 18, 2015).  Thérèse thrived on the love which surrounded her in her Christian home. It was here, where prayer, the liturgy, and practical good works formed the basis of her own ardent love of Jesus – her desire to please Him and the Virgin Mary.

      After an illness of twelve years, Thérèse's mother Zelie died of breast cancer in August 1877. Shortly thereafter Louis moved his family of five girls to Lisieux, where they would visit a different church each day and pray before the Blessed Sacrament. Sundays were days of rest tinged with melancholy for this youngster who at an early age felt the pang of exile on this earth. “I longed,” she explained, “for the everlasting repose of heaven – that never-ending Sunday of the Fatherland ...” 

       In October 1881, her father enrolled her as a day boarder at Lisieux’s Benedictine Abbey School of Notre-Dame du Pre. Timid and prayfull by nature she was bullied but she found comfort in her second mentor Pauline, who was her teacher. Then one day Pauline told her she was leaving to enter the convent at the Carmelite Monastery in Lisieux. Nine-year-old Thérèse was devastated, having "lost" her second mother in Pauline. 

      Thérèse fell gravely ill soon after but none of the treatments helped. Then, on May 13, 1883, Thérèse turned her head to a statue of the Virgin near her bed and prayed for a cure. “Suddenly”, Thérèse writes, “ ... Mary’s face radiated kindness and love.” Thérèse was cured and the statue has since been called “Our Lady of the Smile.” After her illness, Thérèse was more than ever determined to do something great for God and for others. “I am convinced that the thought of one day becoming a Carmelite made me live,” she later declared.

First rejection

      Thérèse, at age nine years, approached the prioress of the Carmelite Monastery at Lisieux and sought entrance. Carefully little Thérèse explained she wished to enter, not for Pauline’s sake, but for Jesus’ sake. The prioress advised her to return when she grew up. Her resolve to join the Carmelites grew even stronger. During this time her elder sister, Marie, became very close with Thérèse and helped mentor her. Marie also entered the Lisieux Carmel on October 15, 1886. This was very hard on Thérèse, who had now lost her “third” mother. 

Mystical experience

      Now, she could fulfil her dream of entering the Carmelite Monastery as soon as possible to love Jesus and pray for sinners. Grace received at Mass in the summer of 1887 left her with a vision of standing at the foot of the Cross, collecting the blood of Jesus and giving it to souls. Convinced that her prayers and sufferings could bring people to Christ, she boldly asked Jesus to give her some sign that she was right. He did. 

       In the early summer of 1887, a criminal, Henri Pranzini, was convicted of the murder of two women and a child. He was sentenced to the guillotine. The convicted man, according to police reports, showed no inclination to repent. Thérèse immediately stormed heaven for Pranzini’s conversion. She prayed for weeks and had Mass offered for him. There was still no change in the attitude of the condemned man. The newspaper La Croix, in describing Pranzini’s execution, noted the man had refused to go to confession. Then on September 1, 1887, as the executioner was about to put his head onto the guillotine block, the condemned criminal seized the crucifix a priest offered him and, the newspaper noted, “kissed the Sacred Wounds three times.” Thérèse wept for joy, her “first child” had obtained God’s mercy. Thérèse hoped that many others would follow once she was in the Carmelite Monastery.

Second rejection

      Thérèse was not yet fifteen when she approached the Carmelite authorities again for permission to enter. Again she was refused. The priest-director advised her to return when she was twenty-one. “Of course,” he added, “you can always see the bishop. I am only his delegate.” The priest did not realize what kind of determined girl he was dealing with. 

       To his dying day, Bishop Hugonin of Bayeux never forgot her. She came to his office with her supportive father Louis one rainy day and put her surprising request before him. “You are not yet fifteen and you wish this?” the bishop questioned. “I have wanted it since the dawn of reason,” young Thérèse declared. Although charmed by her, Bishop Hugonin did not immediately grant Thérèse's request. He wanted time to consider it and advised Thérèse and her father that he would write to them regarding his decision. 

Papal encounter opens the door to joining the Carmelites

       Thérèse had already planned that, should the Bayeux trip fail, she would go straight to the Pope himself. Thus in November 1887, Louis took his daughters, Thérèse and Celine, to Italy with a group of French pilgrims. Catholics from all over the world were journeying to the Eternal City, to celebrate Leo XIII’s Golden Jubilee as a priest. The great day of the audience with Pope Leo XIII came at the end of their week in Rome. 

       On Sunday, November 20, 1887, “they told us on the Pope’s behalf that it was forbidden to speak as this would prolong the audience too much. I turned toward my dear Celine for advice: ‘Speak!’ she said. A moment later I was at the Holy Father’s feet…Lifting tear-filled eyes to his face I cried out: ‘Most Holy Father, I have a great favor to ask you!… Holy Father, in honour of your jubilee, permit me to enter Carmel at the age of fifteen.'” “Well, my child,” the Holy Father replied, “do what the superiors tell you.” “Resting my hands on his knees,” Thérèse continued, “I made a final effort, saying, ‘Oh, Holy Father, if you say yes, everybody will agree!’ He gazed at me speaking these words and stressing each syllable: ‘Go – go – you will enter if God wills it.'” Thérèse did not want to leave the Holy Father’s presence, so the papal guards had to lift her up and carry the tearful young girl to the door. There they gave her a medal of Pope Leo XIII. On New Year’s Day, 1888, the Prioress of the Lisieux Carmel advised Thérèse she would be received into the monastery, but that she had to be patient and wait a little bit longer. 

Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face

      On 9th April 1888, Thérèse entered Carmel and took the name of "Thérèse of the Child Jesus". To this name she later added “and of the Holy Face”. In Carmel, Sister Thérèse went deeply into Sacred Scripture, mainly the Gospels where she saw the imprints of Jesus. 

       St John of the Cross was her spiritual teacher, and through his writings, she entered more deeply into her journey of love. Thérèse spent the last nine years of her life at the Lisieux Carmel. Externally, there was nothing remarkable about this Carmelite nun. She worked in the sacristy, cleaned the dining room, painted pictures, composed short pious plays for the Sisters, wrote poems, and lived the intense community prayer life of the cloister. 

       She dreamed of being a priest, an apostle, a doctor, a martyr, a Crusader: to plant the Cross on heathen soils, to preach the gospel on all five continents and the most distant islands all at once, and to go on being a missionary until the end of the world. Thérèse loved and frequently referred to that Gospel verse (Matt.11: 12) in which Jesus said. “It is by violence that the Kingdom of Heaven is taken.” The nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire once observed that the devil’s greatest wile is to convince people he doesn’t exist - and Sr. Thérèse was going to change that.

       Thérèse was aware of her littleness. She knew as a Carmelite nun she would never be able to perform great deeds.  “I can't grow up, so I must bear with myself as I am with all my imperfections. But I want to seek out a means of going to heaven in a little way, a way that is very straight, very short and totally new. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love." She seized every opportunity to love others more than herself: she smiled at nuns she did not like, she refused to complain, and she performed small hidden favours for others. She took every chance to sacrifice, no matter how small it would seem. "Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love", she said. 

       It was Sister Thérèse's "little way" of trusting in Jesus to make her holy and relying on small daily sacrifices instead of great deeds that would appeal to the thousands of Catholics and others who were trying to find holiness in their own ordinary lives.

Story Of A Soul

      Thérèse had her first evidence of tuberculosis, the illness that would eventually end her life, in April 1896.  By the following April, she was gravely ill.  Confined to the infirmary at Carmel, she spent her time, at the request of her Prioress Mother Marie de Gonzague, writing out her life story.  This manuscript, though heavily edited, eventually became part of her book, “Story of a Soul” (In French, L’histoire d’un ame). 

       It became apparent in the summer of 1897 that Thérèse would not rally from her illness and she received Extreme Unction in July.  Thérèse died at 7:20 PM on September 30, 1897, at age 24.  She died believing that her life was really just beginning for God, promising to spend her heaven doing good on earth. Her final words were, “Oh, my God, I love you!”

 

      “Story of a Soul” was published in October 1898 and became a best-seller around the world. Soon pilgrims began to visit her gravesite at Carmel. Within months, the Carmelites at Lisieux began to receive thousands of reports of “favours and graces” attributed to Thérèse. The cause for beatification and canonization grew at the beginning of the twentieth century. 

       She was canonized by Pope Pius XI on May 17, 1925, at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome with 500,000 crowding St. Peter’s Square. Pope Pius XI also proclaimed her Universal Patron of the Missions, alongside Saint Francis Xavier, on 14 December 1927. She is also the patron saint of florists.

      On the occasion of the centenary of her death, many Episcopal Conferences asked Pope John Paul II in 1997 to declare her a Doctor of the Church, given the soundness of her spiritual wisdom inspired by the Gospel, the originality of her theological intuitions filled with sublime teaching, and the universal acceptance of her spiritual message, which has been welcomed throughout the world and spread by the translation of her works into over fifty languages.

       On World Mission Sunday, 19 October 1997, St. Thérèse was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II, making her only the third woman to be so proclaimed, after Saint Catherine of Siena and Saint Teresa of Avila. Pope St. John Paul II stated: Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face is the youngest of all the “Doctors of the Church”, but her ardent spiritual journey shows such maturity, and the insights of faith expressed in her writings are so vast and profound that they deserve a place among the great spiritual masters.

      Pope Francis has said St Thérèse is his favourite saint and keeps a picture of her on his bookcase, stating: “Do not be afraid to depend solely on the tenderness of God as Saint Thérèse of Lisieux did, who, for this reason, is a beloved daughter of the Blessed Mother and a great missionary saint.” He has also said: “When I have a problem I ask the saint, not to solve it, but to take it in her hands and help me accept it.”

We end with a prayer to St. Thérèse of Lisieux:

O Little Thérèse of the Child Jesus, please pick for me a rose

from the heavenly gardens and send it to me as a message of love.

O Little Flower of Jesus, ask God to grant the favour (s)

I now place with confidence in your hands ...

(mention favor(s) in silence here)

St. Thérèse, help me to always believe as you did in

God’s great love for me, so that I might imitate your “Little Way” each day.

Amen

References

1. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. (2024, September 17). Franciscan Media. Retrieved October 2, 2024, from https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-therese-of-lisieux/
2. St. Therese of Lisieux - Saints & Angels. (n.d.). Catholic Online. Retrieved October 2, 2024, from https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=105
3. Sparrow, S. (2006, September 28). St. Thérèse of Lisieux: Patron Saint of Common Sense. Catholic Education Research Center. Retrieved October 2, 2024, from https://catholiceducation.org/en/faith-and-character/st-therese-of-lisieux-patron-saint-of-common-sense.html