Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

Thérèse Martin was born in Alençon, France, on January 2, 1873, the youngest of nine children of Louis Martin and Zélie Guérin, both beatified by the Church. Her mother's death when Thérèse was four deeply marked her sensibility.

From childhood she longed to enter Carmel but faced resistance because of her age. After a pilgrimage to Rome, she personally asked Pope Leo XIII for permission to enter early. She joined the Lisieux Carmel at fifteen.

She lived nine years of religious life almost entirely in the cloister, devoted to prayer, manual work, and fraternal charity. She discovered what she called the 'little way': not doing great things, but everything with great love, trusting the heavenly Father like a child.

She endured tuberculosis with exemplary patience. On her deathbed she said: 'After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses.' She died on September 30, 1897, at twenty-four, saying: 'My God, I love you!'

She left autobiographical manuscripts — published as Story of a Soul — that revealed her spirituality to the world. She was canonized in 1925 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1997, one of the few women to receive that title.

Her liturgical feast is October 1. She is patroness of missions with St. Francis Xavier, of florists, and of all who seek to trust God in life's small trials.