Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

Thérèse Martin was born in Alençon on January 2, 1873, the last of nine children, four of whom died young. Her parents, Louis and Zélie, are both saints: they are the only married couple canonized together. Her mother died when she was four. At fifteen she entered the Carmel of Lisieux, where two of her sisters already were. To be accepted so young, she went as far as asking the pope in person, during an audience in Rome, breaking the silence that had been imposed on the pilgrims. She lived in the cloister for nine years and died of tuberculosis at twenty-four, on September 30, 1897, after terrible months in which an inner trial was added to the pain — one she described as a wall reaching up to heaven. She had done nothing extraordinary. Out of obedience to her prioress, she had written some notebooks of memories, published the year after her death under the title *Story of a Soul*. It was an earthquake: the book went around the world, and letters began arriving at the Carmel of Lisieux by the thousands. Her idea is what she called the little way: not heroic feats, but the smallest things done with love, within anyone’s reach — “the elevator” instead of the staircase. Pius XI declared her a saint in 1925, just twenty-eight years after her death. She is the patron of missionaries — she who never left the convent — and since 1997 she has been a doctor of the Church. If your name is Teresa, today is your name day.