Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

Yet from within those narrow walls a road opened for millions of souls around the world: the “little way of spiritual childhood”. People who feel weak, who know they will never do anything earth-shaking, who are always afraid they are not good enough to come close to God, have found in Thérèse a path that is gentle and yet deeply courageous: to love God through the smallest things placed in our hands each day.

But when Thérèse was only four and a half, her gentle mother died of breast cancer. The loss left the little girl oversensitive and with a lasting fear of being parted from those she loved. The family moved to Lisieux, to a house called Les Buissonnets: a red-brick, middle-class French villa of the nineteenth century, its front trimmed with carved woodwork, with a small belvedere upstairs where her father liked to sit and read in silence, a little flowerbed in front, and behind it a shady garden, a yard and a vegetable patch. In that peaceful home her father and sisters surrounded her with love, and Thérèse chose her second sister, Pauline, to be her second mother.

On May 8, 1884, Thérèse made her First Communion. The Host came into her soul like a kiss of love. Yet she was still very fragile and easily hurt; the slightest harsh word would bring floods of tears.

As always when she was little, after coming home from Midnight Mass, Thérèse ran upstairs, eager to come back down and find the presents her father had put in the shoes by the fireplace. Just then her father, Louis Martin, tired after a long day, let slip a complaint to her sister Marie:

“Well, fortunately this is the last year, she is far too old for such childish things!”

Thérèse called it “the night of my complete conversion”. In one brief moment she stepped out of her touchy, fragile self and began to think of the happiness of others.

Her heart opened wide to the call of mission. In the summer of 1887 she heard that Henri Pranzini, sentenced to the guillotine for a brutal murder, still refused to repent. Thérèse fasted, made sacrifices and had Masses offered for him. Just before he went to the guillotine, the condemned man suddenly turned, seized the crucifix the priest was holding and kissed it three times.

But the girl had an iron will. On a pilgrimage to Rome in November 1887, during a crowded audience, Thérèse dared to fall on her knees at the feet of Pope Leo XIII and plead:

“Most Holy Father, if you allow it, I will be able to enter the Carmel at fifteen!”

The Pope looked at the young girl and said kindly: “Obey your superiors... You will enter if it is God’s will.”

Religious life was no romantic dream. Behind the convent door lay hard reality: strict silence, the bitter winters of northern France, long hours of prayer, and above all, living with some very difficult personalities. She made her solemn profession on September 8, 1890, taking the religious name: Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face.

The two titles sum up her whole spirituality: “the Child Jesus” speaks of childlike trust in the loving arms of the Father, and “the Holy Face” draws her into the mystery of the suffering face of Christ, mocked and spat upon in His Passion.

In community life, Thérèse’s “little way” took very concrete forms:

• smiling and being patient with a difficult sister who was always grumbling beside her;
• patiently putting up with a sister whose habit of clicking her rosary beads distracted her during prayer;
• willingly accepting chipped bowls or the dirtiest cleaning jobs without a word of complaint.

On June 9, 1895, the feast of the Holy Trinity, Thérèse offered her whole life as a “holocaust to the Merciful Love of God”. At her superior’s request she began writing down her childhood memories and the story of her vocation, which became the book now known around the world: Story of a Soul.

She carried the work of those two spiritual brothers into every load of laundry and every weary step along the convent corridors. She understood that each small sacrifice offered to God could bring grace to some soul far away whom she would never meet.

This is a great comfort to ordinary people. Someone sick in bed, or a busy mother at home with her children, can still share fully in the Church’s mission, if they offer their hardships with love.

Along with her bodily pain, Thérèse entered a terrifying night of faith. All the sweetness she had once felt in prayer vanished. It was as if a thick wall of fog had blotted out the sky, and temptations whispered that there was nothing beyond death.

Thérèse was beatified in 1923 and canonized on May 17, 1925. On December 14, 1927, Pope Pius XI named her Patroness of the Missions throughout the world, alongside the great Saint Francis Xavier. People were astonished that a nun who had never left her convent should be honored beside the saint who had carried the Gospel all over Asia. On October 19, 1997, Pope John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church. The Church celebrates her on October 1 each year.

In the hearts of Vietnamese Catholics, Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, affectionately called “Little Saint Thérèse” or “Saint Thérèse of the roses”, is present in almost every home and church.