St. Thérèse of Lisieux: “The Little Flower of Jesus”

by Ilse Eskelsen

The future Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, “the little flower of Jesus,” was born on January 2, 1873, in Alençon, France, to a family of devout Catholics–so devout, in fact, that her mother had nearly joined a convent, her father had nearly joined a monastery, and each of her four sisters who survived to adulthood would eventually become nuns, three of them joining a group called the Carmelites. 1 Coming from that background, it may not be so notable that Thérèse, too (or Marie Françoise Thérèse, as she was born), entered into the Carmelite Order. What is notable, however, is how she petitioned the Pope to be admitted to the convent six years early, her doctrine of spiritual childhood, and her legacy as one of the most influential Catholic saints in the modern age. 2

Before all of that, when Thérèse was a young child, there was a day when her sister Léonie brought her and another sister, Céline, a basket of childhood things she’d grown out of. Léonie told the girls to take what they wanted. Céline, whose turn came first, chose a single ball. Thérèse examined the clothes, the dolls, the toys, then said, “I choose everything” and carried away the entire basket. 3

In her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, Thérèse writes that this choice foreshadowed her religious life. She would later pray, “My God, I choose everything, I will not be a Saint by halves, I am not afraid of suffering for Thee, I only fear one thing, and that is to do my own will. Accept the offering of my will, for I choose all that Thou willest.” 4

Thérèse chose God’s will in her life as a nun, a calling she received at age nine. Once she understood her much-idolized older sister Pauline’s decision to join the Carmelites, Thérèse knew that her path would lead to the same convent “with the certainty of a Divine Call.” She was filled with peace at the thought, but she was also impatient. 5

The Reverend Mother told Thérèse she could join at age sixteen. 6 When she was fifteen, however, the Superior of the Carmelites said she had to wait until she was twenty-one. 7 After exhausting her options of local authority figures to appeal to, it came down to a family pilgrimage to Rome. 8 The highlight of the trip was an audience with Pope Leo XIII—an audience at which it was made clear that no one was permitted to address the Pope directly. Thérèse addressed him anyway. 

She kissed his foot and, as she began to cry, asked if he would permit her to take her vows early. He told her to follow the Superiors’ decision. She asked again. He said, “‘You will enter if it is God’s Will.’” Then he blessed her. 9 Soon after her return home, the local Bishop authorized her entry into the Carmel. 10

Thérèse joined the convent on April 9, 1888. She loved the convent and the peace it brought her, though her Mother Superior treated her harshly and she faced “other and more bitter trials.” 11 As Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus, her new name once she took her vows, 12 she could live out the theology she had been developing from infancy, in which she saw herself as a “Little Flower,” 13 something small and delicate but striving towards the light. “I am but a weak and helpless child,” she wrote, “yet it is my very weakness which makes me dare to offer myself, O Jesus, as victim to Thy Love.” 14 Thérèse, says writer and contemplative Heather King, 

discovered a way of being with Christ that we’d never quite seen before. She wanted to marry him, to be consumed by the fire of his love, to die for him. Like most of us, however, she knew herself to be too small, too little, too unworthy, too unremarkable, too bereft of talent and glitter for so great a task. So she opened a whole new door by daring to believe that Christ would meet us where we are and lift us up to him. 15

Later in her time as a Carmelite, Thérèse expanded on this childlike way to God to a novice who asked if she feared hell.

“I am too small,” Thérèse replied. “Little children are not damned.” 16

When the novice asked her to explain what she meant when she talked about remaining like a little child, Thérèse spoke of knowing she was nothing, of waiting on God’s gifts, of accepting her own failures and spiritual inadequacy. 17 Though she longed to be a saint, she felt far from the stories of saints she knew and incapable of their famed perfection. 18 So she would become a saint by staying a child, by relying on God’s love and mercy towards his little ones. She would, she wrote, in a section of her book that reads like a prayer, “fly unto Thee with thine own wings.” 19

Her part, however, in coming to God, was sacrificing all that she could and following him in every decision. She craved suffering, even found great joy in it—performing penances she found physically challenging, eating foods that made her sick without complaint—“‘because Love lives only by sacrifice… and the more we would surrender ourselves to Love, the more we must surrender ourselves to suffering.” 20 To her, self-abnegation demonstrated her love for God. One of Thérèse’s followers, Sister Teresa Margaret, argues that suffering eradicates the evil of self-love, represents joy in God’s will rather than our own, and, for Thérèse, at least, “unite[d] her with Christ” when she felt that she was “suffer[ing] for Jesus,” doing his will instead of her own. 21

With this total devotion God, Thérèse was not disappointed to die young. She was overjoyed, in fact, to discover she’d coughed up blood into her handkerchief in the middle of the night; as a nun symbolically married to Jesus, it was time to join her Spouse in the world beyond. Soon after her illness became apparent, however, she became overwhelmed with doubts about the reality of heaven and its comforts. For her, this period of faith crisis was an opportunity to turn to God, to express the hope that was no longer sure. 22 “When I sing of the happiness of Heaven,” she wrote, “...I sing only of what I wish to believe.” 23 But this kind of spiritual suffering was still suffering she valued. Addressing God again, she wrote, “For what joy can be greater than to suffer for Thy Love? The more the suffering is and the less it appears before men, the more is it to Thy Honour and Glory. Even if—but I know it to be impossible—Thou shouldst not deign to heed my sufferings, I should still be happy to bear them, in the hope that by my tears I might perhaps prevent or atone for one sin against Faith.” 24

She still loved God. She was grateful he had sent this burden at a time when she was strong enough to bear it. She ended her autobiography with an appeal to Jesus for other “little souls” like her, “little victims of Thy Love.” 25 She died on September 30, 1897, at the age of 24. 26 Her last words were “Oh! … I love him!... My God, I… love… Thee!” 27

When The Story of a Soul was published, the unknown Carmelite became an international icon, so much so that she was canonized less than thirty years after her death. 28 By the late 20th century, she had collected nine hundred biographies, become Mother Teresa’s namesake, and, through her writing, posthumously converted both noted activist Dorothy Day and a murderer named Jacques Fesch. 29 Despite her self-proclaimed smallness, “the little flower of Jesus” became a powerful example for people of faith around the world.

---

Footnotes

1 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux with Additional Writings and Sayings of St. Thérèse, ed. and trans. Thomas N. Taylor (self-pub., CreateSpace, 2014), 4-5, 7; “Leurs Filles,” Sanctuaire Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, accessed August 7, 2024, https://www.therese-de-lisieux.catholique.fr/lhistoire/la-famille-de-louis-et-zelie/leurs-filles/.

2 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 57, 132; Patrick Ahern, Maurice & Thérèse: The Story of a Love (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 7.

3 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 15.

4 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 15-16.

5 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 26-27.

6 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 27.

7 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 48.

8 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 50-51.

9 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 57.

10  Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 60.

11 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 63.

12 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 32.

13 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 16.

14 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 108.

15 Heather King, Shirt of Flame: A Year with Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (Brewster: Paraclete Press, 2011), xiv.

16 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 131.

17 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 132.

18 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 79.

19 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 110-111.

20 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 115, 112.

21 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 22-23.

22 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 81-82.

23 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 83.

24 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 83.

25 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 111.

26  Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 127.

27  Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 127-128.

28  King, Shirt of Flame, xii.

29  Ahern, Maurice & Thérèse, 6-7.