30/09/2026
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Thรฉrรจse Franรงoise Marie Martin Alenรงon was born on January 2, 1873 to a couple of jewelers and watchmakers. She was the last of eight children, three of whom died in childhood. Orphaned of her mother at the age of four, she relived the drama of abandonment as each of her four sisters in turn entered Carmelite life, though in return she received the particular affection of her father, who called her โLittle Queen of France and Navarreโ.
She entered the Carmel of Lisieux at the age of 15, by special permission of Pope Leo XIII, whom Thรฉrรจse himself had begged in Rome. โIf God wills, you will enter,โ was the Pope's response. At the suggestion of her superiors, she immediately began to keep a diary, in which he noted the stages of her inner life. She wrote in 1895, โOn June 9, the feast of the Most Holy Trinity, I have the grace to understand more than ever that Jesus wants to be loved.โ
In France at the end of the nineteenth century, Positivist thinking was spreading, encouraged by the multiplication of great inventions and supported by anti-clerical and atheistic tendencies. For this reason, Thรฉrรจse elaborated a highly original and powerful spirituality, called the "theology of the little way" or โspiritual childhoodโ, which bases the practice of love for God not on great actions, but on everyday - seemingly insignificant - acts.
Not understood by the sisters of the Carmel, Thรฉrรจse says she received โmore thorns than rosesโ but accepts with patience the injustices and persecutions, as well as the pain and fatigue of illness, offering everything โfor the needs of the Church,โ in order, โto cast roses on all, the just and sinners.โ
After nine years of religious life, Thรฉrรจse died of tuberculosis at the age of only 24, on September 30, 1897. In 1923 she was beatified by Pope Pius XI, who considered her the โstar of his pontificateโ and then canonized in 1925.
Reference: Vatican News
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/saints/10/01/st--therese-of-the-child-jesus--carmelite---virgin-doctor-of-the.html
