Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus

Virgin and Doctor of the Church
(1873–1897)

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux was born on January 2, 1873, at Alencon in Normandy, France, the youngest of the five daughters of Louis and Zélie Martin, both of whom have since been beatified. She was a sensitive and passionate child who suffered a mysterious illness in her childhood that was cured through a smile of the statue of Our Lady of Victories, and who from a very early age showed an intense desire for holiness. She entered the Carmelite monastery at Lisieux at the exceptional age of fifteen in 1888 and died there nine years later, at twenty-four, of tuberculosis.

During her brief religious life she discovered what she called the Little Way, a path of spiritual childhood and confidence in God's merciful love that she described in her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, written at her prioress's command. The Little Way consists in recognising one's own smallness and weakness, accepting it without discouragement, and trusting entirely in God's love to raise the soul to holiness not through extraordinary feats of virtue but through the faithful performance of little things with great love.

She expressed the desire to spend her heaven doing good on earth and to let fall from heaven a shower of roses. She died on September 30, 1897, with the words My God, I love you on her lips. Within a few years of her death, miraculous favours were being reported throughout the world in response to her intercession, and the shower of roses that she had promised was being reported by thousands. The Story of a Soul spread with extraordinary speed and was translated into almost every language.

She was canonised by Pope Pius XI in 1925, who called her the greatest saint of modern times, and declared a Doctor of the Church by John Paul II in 1997, the centenary of her death and the youngest person ever to receive this title. She is the patron of the missions, of France, and of all who seek holiness in the ordinary circumstances of daily life. Her feast is celebrated on October 1st.