You may never have heard of it. Or know why it’s famous. But it’s a story worth sharing.
Once upon a time, in the late 19th century, there was a young girl named Marie Françoise-Thérèse Martin. She went by Thérèse, and grew up in the little French town of Lisieux. She decided to enter the Carmelite convent at age fifteen in 1888, following the path of her two older sisters. There she served the quiet, dedicated life of personal and collective prayer of the Carmelite order. After nine years of working, reading, and praying, she endured an eighteen-month battle with tuberculosis, from which she died. And she would have passed unnoticed into the hereafter. Except she also wrote, and her writings held great signifcance.
Thérèse had always felt a call to be holy, but as she learned more about her Catholic faith and the lives of the Saints who went before her, she felt discouraged. She was not called to lead armies like Jeanne d’Arc, or to counsel Popes like Catherine of Siena. She simply followed the rules set down by Saint Theresa when she reformed the order, and prayed, and prayed, and prayed. But she pondered her situation mightily, and wrote down those thoughts she developed. She called it her “little way” and described it thusly:
“I will seek out a means of getting to Heaven by a little way – very short and very straight little way that is wholly new. We live in an age of inventions; nowadays the rich need not trouble to climb the stairs, they have lifts instead. Well, I mean to try and find a lift by which I may be raised unto God, for I am too tiny to climb the steep stairway of perfection. […] Thine Arms, then, O Jesus, are the lift which must raise me up even unto Heaven. To get there I need not grow. On the contrary, I must remain little, I must become still less.”
St. Thérèse
She committed to doing everything she did so as to show love to others. No great deeds, no miracles, no deeply-developed theology. Just her little way. She lived by this creed, and wrote about it in a journal which was published posthumously as The Story of a Soul. Her final months were agonizing but she embraced the suffering with the same joy she embraced her life.
After her death, her “little way” became an international sensation. She was canonized (recognized as a Saint) only twenty-eight years after her death. The meaningful way she relates the call to holiness to everyday life has found welcome reception among the faithful on every continent. Then-Pope John Paul II named her a Doctor of the Church (one of the four women so honored out of thirty-three total doctors), a title given to those Saints whose development of theology or doctrine has special authority.
The little girl from Lisieux has a profound worlwide following, and a great basilica in her honor. She answered the question “what has prayer ever done?” by changing millions of lives with hers. She also proved that while being great may be good, being good is always great.
The Little Flower. It is the name of my first church in Washington, DC. Where I had my First Communion.
She was & is a special saint to me.
Pat: thanks for your post. The basilica honoring St. Therese is awesome. My sister Patricia–two years younger–was an Immaculate Heart of Mary nun for 30 years. She loved to laugh, was down to earth, doted on her nieces and nephews, and eventually was the order’s theologian. She quietly practiced “little steps” and sometimes bigger ones. With a masters from Fordham, she taught Catholic social justice at the major seminary for budding priests in Winwood Pa until she was removed by the Archbishop of Philly because “we don’t teach those things here.” A woman ahead of her time. She died unexpectedly at age 51 in 1999. Her funeral at Immaculata was packed, and mass was celebrated by two bishops and 12 priests. I got through her eulogy. Her brothers and sister still miss her every day.
What a great story! Thanks for sharing it!