Feast day: 1 October
Therese of Lisieux was born in Alençon in 1873. Her father was Louis Martin, a watchmaker, and her mother Marie-AzélieGuérin (normally called Zélie. Zélie and Louis Martin were canonized in 2015 by Pope Francis, the only married couple to be so honoured). They had both intended to enter religious life but had been turned down. They originally had agreed to live in perpetual continence but they were discouraged by their confessor and went on to have nine children. Five girls survived: Marie, Pauline, Léonie, Céline, and Therese the youngest. Zélie had established a successful lace-making busines, while Louis gave up watch-making and managed the travelling and bookkeeping parts of his wife’s business.
Therese was a frail baby and was sent out to a wet nurse for the first fifteen months of her life. She returned home and was received with great affection. The household was very religious. There was mass at 5:30am and strict observance of fasts. The family visited the sick and shared their meals with the poor. Therese sometimes had tantrums when she didn’t get her way but her mother described her as good and intelligent, remembering everything.
Zélie developed breast cancer and died aged 45 in 1877. Therese was only four and a half and remembered her mother’s death vividly. “The first part of her life stopped that day.” She said that she changed from being open and lively to being withdrawn. Louis moved his family to Lisieux, where his brother-in-law, a pharmacist, lived with his wife and children. He sold the lace business and bought a house with a large garden. Pauline acted as mother towards Therese, who was educated at home until she was eight. She did well at the school, run by Benedictine nuns, but was bullied and was very unhappy, being a sensitive child. She had a very close relationship with her father who comforted her. However in 1882 her sister Pauline, who had acted as mother to her, left home to enter the Carmelite order. Therese became sick, suffering from nervous tremours. There was a statue of Our Lady in Marie’s room, into which Therese had been moved, and the child saw Mary smile at her. She recovered but another sorrow followed when Marie left to become a nun. Now only Céline and herself were left. Therese, who had struggled with scruples, saw a turning point in her life on Christmas Eve 1886. She had left her shoes out like a Christmas stocking to be filled and she overheard her father say impatiently that she was too old for this kind of thing and this would be the last year it happened. Therese was initially upset but took charge of herself and ran down the stairs to open her presents. She felt that Jesus had helped her regain her strength of soul and to forget her own concerns for love of others.
She was now about fourteen and read The Imitation of Christ which had a profound influence on her. She pondered on the words: “The kingdom of God is within you... Turn thee with thy whole heart unto the Lord and forsake this wretched world, and thy soul shall find rest." She read other spiritual works and also science and history.
In 1887 she approached her father who was now in his sixties and had suffered a small stroke. She told him that on the anniversary of her “conversion” she wanted to enter Carmel. They both burst into tears. Louis picked up a small white flower and described how God had cared for it. Therese saw herself in it and that it was destined to be transplanted into another soil. She applied to enter Carmel but was turned down by the priest superior because of her youth.
At this time the newspapers were full of the shocking murder of two women and a child by a man called Pranzini. Therese prayed for him constantly and was overjoyed to hear that he repented as he went to the guillotine. Meanwhile it was the jubilee year of Pope Leo XIII and Louis took his two daughters to Rome. In an audience with the pope, Therese fell on her knees before him and asked him to allow her to enter Carmel at the age of fifteen. Leo told her that it was for the superiors to decide but she would enter if it was God’s will.
Louis and his daughters visited Pompeii, Naples and Assisi before going on to Genoa and Pisa. She had led a very sheltered life and had previously revered priests. Now she met many and discovered that they had the same weaknesses as everyone else. Growing up in a household of mostly women she had only known men such as her father and uncle. She was shocked when a young man showed affection for her and was convinced that she must remove herself from the world before she succumbed to such tenderness. Soon after this the Bishop of Bayeux authorised the prioress to receive Therese into Carmel. In 1888 she became a postulant.
Therese found a very mixed community. Some nuns were sick and old; their backgrounds were mostly petty bourgoise and artisan class. The prioress and novice-mistress were from old Norman nobility. Only the Martin sisters were from the rising bourgoisie. Therese always found it difficult to accommodate the different temperaments in the community. Mother Marie Gonzague would be Therese’s superior for most of her life. She was a difficult woman. Her noble status meant that she quickly rose to high office and was jealous of her authority. She was capricious and changeable in humour. Though Therese felt she must not seek the company of her sisters the Superior put her in their charge. Nevertheless the young woman settled.
Life in the convent was harsh. Only one room was heated. Therese felt the cold more than any other hardship. For seven months there was one meal in the day. Unnecessary speech was forbidden except at recreation. Therese, who had never done housework, was expected to sweep the floor, which was difficult for her because she was terrified of spiders.
She chose a Jesuit spiritual director who helped her overcome her scruples but very soon he went to Canada. She was sad that he was not able to attend her reception as a novice. She took the name of Therese of the Holy Child Jesus. Carmelites take the name of a saint and an epithet to go with it. This is supposed to be the particular subject of contemplation for the nun. Therese also wanted to have devotion to the Holy Face added, with the words of the suffering servant in Isaiah in mind. At this time she was eagerly reading the works of St John of the Cross. She was professed in 1890. She felt terror at the final commitment but on the day found inner peace.
She worried about her father whose mind had wandered and had to be confined to an asylum. He died in 1894. Meanwhile she was praised by her superior who saw her as far more mature than her years. Therese began to develop in her religious life. She practised what she called ”The Little Way”: “Whosoever is a little one let him come to me” ( Proverbs 9:4).
She did small acts of charity and accepted criticism even when it was unjustified. She smiled at sisters who were unpleasant to her. She ate everything that she was given and sometimes because of this she was given the nastiest leftovers. She prayed particularly for priests, especially one who had left an important position and married. Some of the priests who acted as chaplains were anything but helpful, preaching hell and damnation which would have disturbed a sensitive soul like Therese. On the other hand, she got great support from a Franciscan. He encouraged her and told her that her faults did not offend God.
Her sister Pauline was elected superior in 1893. She appointed the former prioress mistress of novices and named Therese as her assistant. She asked Therese to remain a novice when the time came for her to be promoted. This was because she did not want the other nuns to think that one family was taking over the convent (their cousin Marie Guérin would join the four sisters in Carmel in 1895). Therese had also asked that she remain a novice. This meant that she had to ask permission of the other full sisters and would never attain an office of any importance. She, however, was very happy to work with the novices, emphasising the importance of adhering to the rule. She seems to have been an excellent teacher, using images like a kaleidoscope with its three mirrors to describe the Trinity and the newly invented elevator to show how God’s grace raises us to heights we could not achieve on our own. Giving evidence at Therese’s beatification a troubled young nun praised her teacher and remarked how she always went out of her way to spend time with sisters that she found repellent.
In 1894 the process for the canonization of Joan of Arc began. Therese wrote two plays about Joan for the sisters to perform. One biographer felt that Therese identified with her martyred compatriot. She felt a growing mission to pray for priests and support them. She corresponded with several. It is clear from her writing that she would have liked to become a priest herself. She wrote to her sister Marie the following: “I feel in me the vocation of a priest! With what love, O Jesus, would I bear you in my hands, when at the sound of my words you came down from heaven!" Therese, of course, realised this could never happen, and so she embraced the vocation of love.
On Good Friday 1896 Therese discovered blood on her handkerchief and rejoiced that Our Lord had made his call to her on the day on which he himself had died. She had developed tuberculosis. For the next eighteen months she not only experienced intense physical suffering but also spiritual, in a loss of faith and a feeling of abandonment. She declared that she had never believed that it was possibly to suffer so much. There is a story that she had a dream which is summarised here. She saw Mother Anne, who brought the reformed Carmel to France. Therese asked if God would fetch her soon and Mother Anne replied that he would. She then asked if God was pleased with the little sacrifices she had made and Mother Anne replied that God was well content with her.
Therese died on 30 September 1897. She was 24 years of age. Her last words were, “My God, I love you.” She was buried in the Carmelite plot in the municipal cemetery in Lisieux, where her parents were also. In 1923, before her beatification, she was removed to Carmel in Lisieux.
Therese is one of the most popular saints in the Catholic church. People seem to be able to relate to the way she loved and the “little way’ which they can imitate in everyday living. Prompted by her sister Marie, Pauline (Mother Agnes) told Therese to write her memoirs. These became The Story of a Soul. The work is in three parts: memoirs of her childhood, a letter to her sister Marie outlining her doctrine and details of her life as a religious. It was initially heavily edited but was eventually published unedited in 1973 together with her letters, poems and the plays she wrote for the monastery. Therese’s sister Céline took 41 known photographs of the saint between 1894 and 1897. There were also a few earlier photographs. She also painted several portraits.
The process for Therese’s canonization began in 1914 and was hastened, the fifty-year rule being put aside. She was canonized in 1925, five years after Joan of Arc. In 1997, Pope John Paul II declared Therese a doctor of the church, one of only four women to be elevated to that status. Therese, like Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila, had not received a very extensive education but she knew the gospels almost by heart and she was familiar with some of the Old Testament, some of which had been copied for her by her sister, even though it was not so widely read as it is today. She drew on scripture in her writings.
As she lay dying St Therese could see roses blooming, flowers that she loved. She promised: “After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses. I will spend my Heaven doing good upon earth. I will raise up a mighty host of little saints. My mission is to make God loved.”
St Therese of Lisieux, pray for us.