I choose all!
When Thérèse was little, her big sister Léonie decided she was too old for dolls. She brought a basket full of doll’s dresses and pretty scraps of material for making more, with her doll lying on top, and offered it to Céline and Thérèse to choose from. Céline took a little bundle of braid.
Thérèse thought for a moment, then said: “I choose all!” and took the whole basket. When she grew up, she said that was the story of her life: she wanted to give God everything.
Source: St Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Manuscript A
The Christmas tears
Thérèse cried about everything. If she upset someone, she cried. And when she began to feel better, she cried about having cried! Then, at Christmas 1886, when she was nearly 14, she came home from Midnight Mass looking forward to finding presents in her shoes by the fireplace, as French children did.
Her tired father said, a bit grumpily: “Well, fortunately this will be the last year!” Thérèse heard it. Normally she would have burst into tears. Instead, she held them back, ran downstairs and opened her presents joyfully. She called it her Christmas conversion: Jesus had made her strong.
Source: St Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Manuscript A
Asking the Pope
Thérèse wanted to enter Carmel at 15, but everyone said she was too young. On a pilgrimage to Rome, the pilgrims were told not to speak when they met Pope Leo XIII. Thérèse knelt before him and begged anyway: “In honour of your Jubilee, allow me to enter Carmel at 15!”
The Pope said: “You will enter if God wills it.” Thérèse wouldn’t get up, and the guards had to lift her and carry her away. A few months later, she entered Carmel.
Source: St Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Manuscript A
The sister who annoyed her
In the convent there was a sister who got on Thérèse’s nerves in every way. Thérèse decided to treat her as if she were the person she loved most: she prayed for her, smiled at her and did her favours. One day the sister asked her what it was about her that Thérèse liked so much, because every time Thérèse looked at her, she smiled.
Another sister, near her at evening prayer, kept making a strange little noise, like two shells being rubbed together, that drove Thérèse mad. Instead of turning round to glare, Thérèse listened to it as if it were beautiful music, and offered it to Jesus.
Source: St Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Manuscript C
A lift to heaven
Thérèse felt far too small to climb the steep staircase to holiness. Then she thought of the lifts that rich people were putting in their houses. Jesus would be her lift! His arms would carry her up to God.
So she didn’t need to become big. She needed to stay little, and trust him.
Source: St Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Manuscript C
When it was hard
Thérèse was oversensitive and cried at almost anything. Her mother died when she was four, and when her big sister Pauline, her “second mother”, left to become a nun, Thérèse fell seriously ill a few months later.
In the last year and a half of her life, she was dying of tuberculosis, and heaven felt hidden behind a wall: thinking of it gave her no joy. She kept choosing to trust and to love. Her last words were: “My God, I love you!”
Source: St Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Manuscript A; St Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Manuscript C
My vocation is Love!
Try this
- Thérèse called small kindnesses her “flowers” for Jesus. Each day this week, do one small kindness that nobody knows about, and drop a paper flower or a bean into a jar each time.
- When someone annoys you, try Thérèse’s trick: give them your best smile.
A prayer
St Thérèse, Little Flower, teach us your little way: to do small things with great love, and to trust God like a child. Pray for us.
For grown-ups: more about St Thérèse of Lisieux
Thérèse Martin (1873 to 1897) entered the Carmel of Lisieux on 9 April 1888, taking the name Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face. At the request of her sisters and prioresses she wrote three manuscripts, published after her death as Story of a Soul (1898), which spread across the world within a few years. She died on 30 September 1897, aged 24.
She was canonised in 1925 and named patron of the missions in 1927, though she never left her convent. In 1997 St John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church, the third woman and the youngest person to receive the title. Her parents, Louis and Zélie Martin, are saints too.