Real photo of St Therese, the 'Little Flower' (1873-1897) |
Generations of Catholics have admired this young saint,
called her the "Little Flower", and found in her short life more
inspiration for their own lives than in volumes by theologians.
Yet Therese died when she was 24, after having lived as
cloistered Carmelite for less than ten years. She never went on missions, never
founded a religious order, never performed great works. The only book of hers,
published after her death, was a brief edited version of her journal called
"Story of a Soul." But within 28 years of her death, the public
demand was so great that she was canonized.
Therese was born in France in 1873, the pampered daughter
of a mother who had wanted to be a saint and a father who had wanted to be
monk. The two had gotten married but determined they would be celibate until a
priest told them that was not how God wanted a marriage to work! They must have
followed his advice very well because they had nine children. The five children
who lived were all daughters.
Tragedy and loss came quickly to Therese when her mother
died of breast cancer when she was four and a half years old. Her sixteen year
old sister Pauline became her second mother ‑‑ which made the second loss even
worse when Pauline entered the Carmelite convent five years later. Therese’s
parents were eventually beatified in October 2008 and canonized in October 2015.
When her other sisters, Marie and Leonie, left to join
religious orders (the Carmelites and Poor Clares, respectively), Therese was
left alone with her last sister Celine and her father. She wanted to enter the
Carmelite convent to join Pauline and Marie but how could she convince others
that she could handle the rigors of Carmelite life. When the superior of the
Carmelite convent refused to take Therese because she was so young, the
formerly shy little girl went to the bishop. When the bishop also said no, she
decided to go over his head.
Another authentic photo of St Therese |
But the Vicar General who had seen her courage was
impressed and soon Therese was admitted to the Carmelite convent that her
sisters Pauline and Marie had already joined.
Her romantic ideas of convent life and suffering soon met
up with reality in a way she had never expected. Her father suffered a series
of strokes that left him affected not only physically but mentally. As a
cloistered nun she couldn't even visit her father before he died.
She knew as a Carmelite nun she would never be able to
perform great deeds. Therese took every chance to sacrifice, no matter how
small it would seem. She smiled at the sisters she didn't like. She ate
everything she was given without complaining ‑‑ often given the worst
leftovers.
When Pauline was elected prioress, she asked Therese for
the ultimate sacrifice. Because of politics in the convent, many of the sisters
feared that the family Martin would take over the convent. Therefore Pauline
asked Therese to remain a novice, in order to allay the fears of the others
that the three sisters would push everyone else around. This meant she would
never be a fully professed nun. Upon their father’s death, now Celine also
entered the convent. Four of the sisters were now together again. In this small
convent they now made up one‑fifth of the population. Despite this and the fact
that Therese was a permanent novice they put her in charge of the other
novices.
Then in 1896, she coughed up blood. She kept working
without telling anyone until she became so sick a year later everyone knew it.
She died on September 30, 1897 at the age of 24 years old. After she died,
Pauline put together Therese's memoirs and sent 2000 copies to other convents.
Within two years, the Martin family had to move because her notoriety was so
great and by 1925 she had been canonized.
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