Saint Thérèse of Lisieux was a French Catholic born on January 2, 1873, in Alençon to pious parents, Louis Martin and Zélie Guérin who were canonized by Pope Francis on October 18, 2015. They were the first spouses to be canonized together as a couple.
Thérèse was the youngest of nine children. All four of her elder sisters became nuns. She became a Carmelite nun at an early age entering the Carmelite Monastery at Lisieux at the young age of 15, in 1888, after having obtained permission from Pope Leo XIII. She was given the religious name ‘of the Child Jesus’ and received permission to adopt a second name too, ‘of the Holy Face.’
Saint Thérèse suffered intensely from tuberculosis and died at the age of 24 on September 30, 1897. She died believing that her life was really just beginning for God, promising to spend her heaven doing good on earth. Her final words were, “Oh, my God, I love you!”
From an early age, it was Thérèse’s ambition and desire to be a saint. She also had the ambition to become a missionary and travel to Africa or China. However, ill-health curtailed these plans, and she was forced to stay in the convent. But Pope Pius XI, on December 14th 1927, decide to proclaim Saint Therese of the Child Jesus the Patron Saint of the Missions alongside Saint Francis Xavier. Because saving souls was her life’s motive. A missionary is a person whose heart burns with love for Christ and zeal for souls. Toward the end of her life, she added that she wanted to “save souls even after my death”.
Towards the end of her life, when she was increasingly bed-ridden, St Thérèse was encouraged by the elder nuns to write down her way of spiritual practice. She wrote three books that explained her ‘little way’ and included her personal spiritual autobiography ‘Story of a Soul’. Thérèse defined her doctrine of the Little Way as “the way of spiritual childhood, the way of trust and absolute surrender.”
She was canonized on May 17, 1925, declared co-patron of France in 1944, and named the thirty-third Doctor of the Church by Pope Saint John Paul II in 1997. She is only the third woman to be so proclaimed, after Saint Catherine of Siena and Saint Teresa of Avila. Pope John Paul II stated while declaring her doctor of the church: Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face is the youngest of all the ‘Doctors of the Church’, but her ardent spiritual journey shows such maturity, and the insights of faith expressed in her writings are so vast and profound that they deserve a place among the great spiritual masters.
Saint Thérèse’s feast day is fixed on October 1. Her burial site at Lisieux became a place of pilgrimage and a basilica bearing her name was built there.