Thérèse de Lisieux

For other people known as "Saint Therese", see Teresa

Saint Thérèse de Lisieux (January 2, 1873 – September 30, 1897), or more properly Sainte Thérèse de l'Enfant-Jésus et de la Sainte Face ("Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face"), born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin, was a Roman Catholic nun who was canonized as a saint, and is recognized as a Doctor of the Church. She is also known by many as "The Little Flower of Jesus."

"For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy
St Therese of Lisieux

''Saint Thérèse de Lisieux
The Little Flower of Jesus
Born	January 2, 1873, Alcon
Died	September 30,1897,Lisieux
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church
Canonized	May 17, 1925
Feast	October 1
Attributes	roses
Patronage	AIDS sufferers; Anchorage, Alaska; Australia; aviators; bodily ills; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Fairbanks, Alaska; Fresno, California; Juneau, Alaska; Pueblo, Colorado; florists; France; illness; Kisumu, Kenya; loss of parents; missionaries; Russia; tuberculosis; Witbank, South Africa
A short hymn or prayer

Early life

St. Thérèse de Lisieux was born in Alençon, France, the daughter of Louis Martin, a watchmaker, and Zélie-Marie Guérin, a lacemaker. Both her parents were very religious. Louis had attempted to become a monk, but a lack of knowledge of Latin hindered him. Zélie-Marie had tried to become a nun, but was told she didn't have the vocation. Instead, she vowed that if she married, she would give all her children to the church. Louis and Zélie-Marie met in 1858 and married only three months later. They had nine children, of whom only five daughters -- Marie, Pauline, Léonie, Céline and Thérèse -- survived to adulthood; the family was subject to tuberculosis. Thérèse was their youngest child.

Her mother died of breast cancer in 1877, when Thérèse was only four years old, and her father, unable to continue to work, sold his business and moved to Lisieux, in the Calvados region of Normandy, where her maternal uncle Isidore Guérin, a pharmacist, lived with his wife and two daughters.

When Thérèse was nine years old, her sister Pauline, who had acted as a "second mother" to Thérèse, entered the Carmelite order of nuns. Thérèse too wanted to enter the Carmelite order, but was told she was too young. At 15, after her sister Marie also entered the same Carmelite convent, Thérèse renewed her attempts to join the order, but the bishop of Bayeux would not allow this on account of her youth. Her father took Thérèse on a pilgrimage to Rome. During a general audience with Pope Leo XIII, she asked him to allow her to enter the Carmelite order, but the Pope stood by the decision of the bishop.

Shortly thereafter, the bishop reversed his decision, and in April of 1889 she became a Carmelite nun. In 1889 her father suffered a stroke and was taken to a private sanatorium, where he lingered for three years before dying. Upon his death, her sister Céline, who had been caring for their father, entered the same Carmelite convent that her three sisters were already in; her cousin, Marie Guérin, also became part of that community. (Léonie, after several failed attempts, would eventually become a nun in the Order of the Visitation.)

The Little Way

Thérèse is known for her "Little Way." In her quest for sanctity, she realized that it was not necessary to accomplish heroic acts or "great deeds" in order to attain holiness and to express her love of God. She wrote, "Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. 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."

This "Little Way" also appeared in her approach to spirituality: "Sometimes, when I read spiritual treatises, in which perfection is shown with a thousand obstacles in the way and a host of illusions round about it, my poor little mind soon grows weary, I close the learned book, which leaves my head splitting and my heart parched, and I take the Holy Scriptures. Then all seems luminous, a single word opens up infinite horizons to my soul, perfection seems easy; I see that it is enough to realize one's nothingness, and give oneself wholly, like a child, into the arms of the good God. Leaving to great souls, great minds, the fine books I cannot understand, I rejoice to be little because 'only children, and those who are like them, will be admitted to the heavenly banquet'."

Passages like this have also left Therese open to the charge that hers is an overly sentimental and even childish spirituality. Her proponents counter that she sought to develop an approach to the spiritual life that was understandable and imitable by all who chose to do so, regardless of their level of sophistication or education.

In her last years, she rejected a spirituality that obsessed with one's faults and the imperative to "store up merits." In Therese's mature view, goodness simply meant loving God and neighbor without expecting reward or recognition. The arc of her life was away from the hypersensitivity that marred her early years towards a balanced spirituality that embraced Christ's core message.

This is evident in her approach to prayer: "For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward Heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy; in a word, something noble, supernatural, which enlarges my soul and unites it to God.... I have not the courage to look through books for beautiful prayers.... I do as a child who has not learned to read, I just tell our Lord all that I want and he understands."

Declining health and death

Thérèse's final years were marked by a steady decline that she bore resolutely and without complaint. On the morning of Good Friday, 1896, she began bleeding at the mouth due to a pulmonary hæmorrhage; her tuberculosis had taken a decided turn for the worse. Thérèse corresponded with a Carmelite mission in what was then French Indochina, and was invited to join them, but because of her sickness, she could not travel there. In June of 1897 she was moved to the convent infirmary, where she died later in the year, at age 24. On her deathbed, she is reported to have said "I have reached the point of not being able to suffer any more, because all suffering is sweet to me."

Throughout the eighteen months before she died, Therese underwent agonizing doubts about the existence of an after-life, reporting that, despite her redoubled prayers, she feared the prospect that death would only bring about a "nothingness of being", rather than eternal life. In this, she is seen as a very modern saint, anticipating the loss of faith that characterized the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, particularly in Europe.

L'histoire d'une âme

St. Thérèse is known today because of her spiritual autobiography, L'histoire d'une âme ("The Story of a Soul"), which she wrote upon the orders of two prioresses of her convent. She began the work as a memoir of her childhood, under orders from her sister Pauline, who was known in religion as Mother Agnes of Jesus, who only gave the order after being prompted by their eldest sister, known in the convent as Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart. A second part, a letter to Sister Marie, was written while Thérèse was on a retreat. When the seriousness of her condition became obvious in 1897, Mother Marie de Gonzague, who succeeded Mother Agnes as prioress, gave permission for Thérèse to finish her work. It was published posthumously, and was heavily edited by her sister Pauline. (Aside from considerations of style, Mother Marie de Gonzague had ordered Pauline to alter the first two sections of the manuscript to make them appear as if they were addressed to Mother Marie as well.) It became a devotional best-seller on account of its appealing style, and on account of her trust in God despite her sufferings. More recently, restored versions of her journals and letters have also been published. Her writings reveal an empathetic and encouraging correspondant.

Recognition

In 1902, the Polish Carmelite priest Father Raphael Kalinowski (later Saint Raphael Kalinowski) translated her autobiography "Story of a Soul" into Polish.

Pope Pius X signed the decree for the opening of her process of canonization on June 10, 1914. Pope Benedict XV, in order to hasten the process, dispensed with the usual fifty-year process required between death and beatification. She was canonized in 1925 by Pope Pius XI, only 28 years after her death. Her feast day was celebrated on October 3 until the calendar revision of 1970, when it was moved to October 1.

Thérèse of Lisieux is the patron saint of AIDS sufferers, aviators, florists, illness, and missions. She is also considered by Catholics to be the patron saint of Russia although the Russian Orthodox Church officially recognizes neither her canonization nor her patronage. She is the secondary patroness of France (after Saint Joan of Arc). In 1927 she was made a patron saint for foreign missions.

By the Apostolic Letter Divini Amoris Scientia ("The Science of Divine Love") of October 19, 1997, Pope John Paul II declared her one of the thirty-three Doctors of the Universal Church, one of only three women so named (the others being Teresa of Avila (Saint Teresa of Jesus) and Catherine of Siena). Saint Thérese was the only saint to be given recognition as a Doctor of the Church during Pope John Paul II´s pontificate.

A movement is under way now to canonize her parents, who were declared "Venerable" in 1994 by Pope John Paul. The unexpected cure of a child with a lung disorder was accepted by the Archbishop of Milan in 2004 as attributable to their intercession. A date for the beatification of Louis Martin and Zelie Guerin, however, has not yet been set. Some interest has also been shown towards promoting for sainthood Therese's sister, Leonie, the only one of the five sisters who did not become a Carmelite nun. Leonie Martin died in Caen in 1941 where her tomb in the crypt of the Vincentian convent can be visited by the public.

Together with St. Francis of Assisi, St. Therese of Lisieux is perhaps the most popular Catholic saint since Apostolic times. As a Doctor of the Church, she is the subject of much theological comment and study and, as an appealing young girl whose message has touched the life of millions, she remains the focus of much popular devotion.

Parishes and Schools

In 1939, Cardinal Dougherty built a high school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in honor of St Therese - Little Flower Catholic High School for Girls.

In 2000 the St Therese of Lisieux primary school was opened in the parish of Ingleby Barwick, in the diocese of Middlesbrough, England.

The National Shrine of the Little Flower Catholic Church, in Royal Oak, Michigan, was built in 1925 in honor of Saint Therese of Lisieux, the church-originally located in a largely Protestant area-was torched by the Klan in 1936. Rebuilt out of copper and stone, a dramatic stone tower displays a cross bearing a 28-foot-high figure of Jesus. On the surrounding wall is a carved portrait of Saint Therese of Lisieux, who was also known as the Little Flower. The Church has been declared a national Shrine, a distinction given to only a few churches in the United States.

Quotations

I am a very little soul, who can offer only very little things to the Lord.

I will spend my Heaven doing good on earth.

After my death I will let fall a shower of roses.

I feel in me the vocation of the priest. With what love, O Jesus, I would take You in my hands when, at my voice, You would come down from heaven. And with what love would I give You to souls! But alas! while desiring to be a Priest, I admire and envy the humility of St. Francis of Assisi and I feel the vocation of imitating him in refusing the sublime dignity of the Priesthood.

0 Jesus, my Love, my vocation, at last I have found it ... my vocation is Love! Yes, I have found my place in the Church and it is You, 0 my God. who have given me this place; in the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be love.

"Everything is a grace, everything is the direct effect of our father's love - difficulties, contradictions,humiliations, all the soul's miseries, her burdens, her needs - everything, because through them, she learns humility, realizes her weakness - Everything is a grace because everything is God's gift. Whatever be the character of life or its unexpected events - to the heart that loves, all is well."

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