By laying bare her soul and all its pains for us, the Little Flower has become the patron saint of practically every human difficulty.
By Dawn Beutner, Catholic World Report, October 1, 2023
Dawn Beutner is the author of The Leaven of the Saints: Bringing Christ into a Fallen World (Ignatius Press, 2023), and Saints: Becoming an Image of Christ Every Day of the Year also from Ignatius Press. She blogs at dawnbeutner.com.
Marie Françoise-Thérèse Martin, the Little Flower, Doctor of the Church—whatever you call her, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux is one of the most popular Catholic saints in the world. If a given Catholic church has any statues of saints at all, Saint Thérèse is probably depicted by one of those statues.
Because of Thérèse’s popularity, most Catholics know the basic outlines of her life story.
Thérèse was born in 1873 in Alençon, France, into a middle class, devout family. Her mother died of breast cancer when she was only four years old, but she was raised by her loving father and four older sisters. Thérèse recognized God’s call to religious life when she was still a teenager, and she entered the Carmelite monastery of Lisieux when she was only fifteen years old. She became a Carmelite nun and spent the rest of her short life in that monastery until her death from tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four. …
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