Why ‘Little Flower’?

When St. Thérèse of Lisieux was a child, one holy card captivated her so deeply that she later credited it with inspiring the title by which the world now knows her: “Little Flower.” The card, titled La Petit Fleur du Divin Prisonnier (“The Little Flower of the Divine Prisoner”), depicts Christ crowned with thorns behind prison bars, reaching toward a small flower blooming outside the cell. Intended as a meditation of Christ’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament, the image remained fixed in the mind of St. Therese for years. “ Most people couldn’t afford books back then, and that’s why the holy cards were made.” In Chapter Four of Story of a Soul, Thérèse reflected on the impact sacred images had on her as a child after one of her sisters introduced her to devotional pictures and holy cards: ”So far I have not said anything about my love for pictures and books, and yet I owe some of the happiest and strongest impressions which have encouraged me in the practice of virtue to the beautiful pictures Pauline used to show me. Everything was forgotten while looking at them.”Of La Petit Fleur du Divin Prisonnier, Thérèse later recalled that the image “suggested so many thoughts that I would remain gazing at it in a kind of ecstasy.” Eventually, she came to identify herself as that flower. “I offered myself to Our Lord to be His Little Flower,” she wrote. “I longed to console Him, to draw as near as possible to the Tabernacle, to be looked on, cared for, and gathered by Him.”