85 Facts About St Therese

St Therese is popularly known in English as the Little Flower of Jesus, or simply the Little Flower, and in French as.

St Therese has been a highly influential model of sanctity for Catholics and for others because of the simplicity and practicality of her approach to the spiritual life.

St Therese is one of the most popular saints in the history of the church.

St Therese felt an early call to religious life and, after overcoming various obstacles, in 1888, at the early age of 15, she became a nun and joined two of her older sisters in the cloistered Carmelite community of Lisieux, Normandy.

St Therese is well known throughout the world, with the Basilica of Lisieux being the second most popular place of pilgrimage in France after Lourdes.

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St Therese was born on Rue Saint-Blaise, in Alencon, France on January 2,1873, and was the daughter of Marie-Azelie Guerin, and Louis Martin who was a jeweler and watchmaker.

St Therese excelled in it and set up her own business on Rue Saint-Blaise at age 22.

St Therese's funeral was conducted in the Basilica of Notre-Dame d'Alencon.

St Therese took this role seriously, and Therese grew especially close to her, and to Celine, the sister closest to her in age.

St Therese was taught at home until she was eight and a half, and then entered the school kept by the Benedictine nuns of the Abbey of Notre Dame du Pre in Lisieux.

St Therese, taught well and carefully by Marie and Pauline, found herself at the top of the class, except for writing and arithmetic.

St Therese suffered very much as a result of her sensitivity, and she cried in silence.

St Therese preferred to tell stories or look after the little ones in the infants class.

St Therese understood that Pauline was cloistered and that she would never come back.

St Therese wanted to join the Carmelites, but was told she was too young.

Yet St Therese so impressed Mother Marie Gonzague, the prioress at the time of Pauline's entry to the community that she wrote to comfort her, calling St Therese "my future little daughter".

In 1882, Dr Gayral diagnosed that St Therese "reacts to an emotional frustration with a neurotic attack".

St Therese reported on 13 May 1883 that she had seen the Virgin smile at her.

St Therese suffered from scruples, a condition experienced by other saints such as Alphonsus Liguori, a Doctor of the Church, and Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits.

St Therese wrote: "One would have to pass through this martyrdom to understand it well, and for me to express what I experienced for a year and a half would be impossible".

St Therese ran down the stairs, knelt by the fireplace and unwrapped her surprises as jubilantly as ever.

Some authors suggest that St Therese had a strongly neurotic aspect to her personality for most of her life.

In May 1887, St Therese approached her 63-year-old father Louis, who was recovering from a small stroke, while he sat in the garden one Sunday afternoon and told him that she wanted to celebrate the anniversary of "her conversion" by entering Carmel before Christmas.

Louis and St Therese both broke down and cried, but Louis got up, gently picked a little white flower, root intact, and gave it to her, explaining the care with which God brought it into being and preserved it until that day.

St Therese later wrote: "while I listened I believed I was hearing my own story".

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St Therese renewed her attempts to join the Carmel, but the priest-superior of the monastery would not allow it on account of her youth.

In July and August 1887 St Therese prayed hard for the conversion of Pranzini, so his soul could be saved, yet Pranzini showed no remorse.

St Therese was ecstatic and believed that her prayers had saved him.

St Therese refused to leave his feet, and the Noble Guard had to carry her out of the room.

St Therese had understood that she had to pray and give her life for sinners like Pranzini.

Convent St Therese entered was an old-established house with a long tradition.

When St Therese entered the convent Mother Marie was 54, a woman of changeable humour, jealous of her authority, used sometimes in a capricious manner; this had for effect, a certain laxity in the observance of established rules.

From her childhood, St Therese had dreamed of the desert to which God would some day lead her.

St Therese adhered strictly to the rule which forbade all superfluous talk during work.

St Therese saw her sisters together only in the hours of common recreation after meals.

St Therese absorbed the work of John of the Cross, spiritual reading uncommon at the time, especially for such a young nun.

Yet when she received the veil, St Therese herself asked Mother Marie de Gonzague to confer upon her the second name of the Holy Face.

St Therese meditated on certain passages from the prophet Isaiah.

Sister St Therese hoped to make her final commitment on or after 11 January 1890 but, considered still too young for a final commitment, her profession was postponed.

St Therese would spend eight months longer than the standard year as an unprofessed novice.

St Therese prayed without great sensitive emotions, she increased the small acts of charity and care for others, doing small services.

St Therese accepted criticism in silence, even unjust criticisms, and smiled at the sisters who were unpleasant to her.

St Therese always prayed for priests, and in particular for Father Hyacinthe Loyson, a famous preacher who had been a Sulpician and a Dominican novice before becoming a Carmelite and provincial of his order, but who had left the Catholic Church in 1869.

St Therese offered her last communion, 19 August 1897, for Father Loyson.

St Therese launched me full sail on the waves of confidence and love which held such an attraction for me, but upon which I had not dared to venture.

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The piety of her time was fed more on commentaries, but St Therese had asked Celine to get the Gospels and the Epistles of St Paul bound into a single small volume which she could carry on her heart.

Over time St Therese realised that she felt no attraction to the exalted heights of "great souls".

St Therese looked directly for the word of Jesus, which shed light on her prayers and on her daily life.

St Therese appointed the former prioress as novice mistress and made Therese her assistant.

In September 1893, St Therese, having been a temporarily professed for the standard three years, asked not to be promoted but to continue a novice indefinitely.

St Therese wrote two plays in honour of her childhood heroine, the first about Joan's response to the heavenly voices calling her to battle, the second about her resulting martyrdom.

St Therese used Henri Wallon's history of Joan of Arc – a book her uncle Isidore had given to the Carmel – to help her write two plays, "pious recreations", "small theatrical pieces performed by a few nuns for the rest of the community, on the occasion of certain feast days".

St Therese entered the Carmel of Lisieux with the determination to become a saint.

St Therese remained small and very far off from the unfailing love that she would wish to practice.

St Therese is said to have understood then that it was from insignificance that she had to learn to ask God's help.

On 9 June 1895, during a Mass celebrating the feast of the Holy Trinity, St Therese had a sudden inspiration that she must offer herself as a sacrificial victim to merciful love.

At age 14, St Therese understood her vocation was to pray for priests, to be "an apostle to apostles".

St Therese answered "I came to save souls, and especially to pray for priests".

St Therese never met Father Belliere but ten letters passed between them.

Tuberculosis was the key element of St Therese's final suffering, but she saw that as part of her spiritual journey.

St Therese corresponded with a Carmelite mission in what was then French Indochina and was invited to join them, but, because of her sickness, could not travel.

St Therese was buried on 4 October 1897, in the Carmelite plot, in the municipal cemetery at Lisieux, where her parents had been buried.

St Therese's body was exhumed in September 1910 and the remains placed in a lead coffin and transferred to another tomb.

St Therese is approachable, due in part to her historical proximity.

St Therese was a highly influential model of sanctity for Catholics in the first half of the twentieth century because of the simplicity and practicality of her approach to the spiritual life.

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St Therese was devoted to Eucharistic adoration and on 26 February 1895, shortly before she died wrote from memory and without a rough draft her poetic masterpiece "To Live by Love" which she had composed during Eucharistic adoration.

St Therese lived a hidden life and "wanted to be unknown", yet became popular after her death through her spiritual autobiography.

St Therese left letters, poems, religious plays, prayers, and her last conversations were recorded by her sisters.

St Therese wanted to go to heaven by an entirely new little way.

St Therese pinned the prayer in a small container over her heart.

St Therese wrote many prayers to express her devotion to the Holy Face.

St Therese emphasised God's mercy in both the birth and the passion narratives in the Gospel.

In June 1897, Mother Agnes asked Mother Marie de Gonzague, who had succeeded her as prioress, to allow St Therese to write another memoir with more details of her religious life.

St Therese authorized Pauline to make any changes deemed necessary.

St Therese was canonized on 17 May 1925 by Pope Pius XI, only 28 years after her death.

St Therese was declared a saint five years and a day after Joan of Arc.

St Therese rapidly became one of the most popular saints of the twentieth century.

St Therese is considered by Catholics to be the patron saint of Russia, although the Russian Orthodox Church does not recognize either her canonization or her patronage.

St Therese's older sister, Leonie Martin, the only one of the five sisters who did not become a Carmelite nun, is a candidate for sainthood.

St Therese took the name Sister Francoise-Therese and was a fervent disciple of Therese's way.

St Therese died in 1941 in Caen, where her tomb in the crypt of the Visitation Monastery may be visited by the public.

Relics of Saint St Therese have been on an international pilgrimage since 1994.

On 27 June 2010, relics of Saint St Therese went on their first visit to South Africa in conjunction with the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Writing-desk St Therese used at Carmel toured the United States in September and October 2013, sponsored by the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States.

In 2022, St Therese was officially added to the Episcopal Church liturgical calendar with a feast day on 1 October.

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