Thérèse of Lisieux

Thérèse of Lisieux dressed as Joan of Arc. Lisieux, France, 1894.

Zélie and Joseph Martin were a pious couple; both had applied to, but been rejected by, religious orders. They married at relatively late ages (he thirty-five, she twenty-six) with the intention of having a "white marriage", that is, one with no sexual intercourse. Nevertheless, a year later Zélie was pregnant with the first of their nine children, of whom five daughters survived early childhood. If Zélie was to have children she was determined they should give their lives to religion, and all five became nuns.

Zélie ran a small business making point d'Alençon lace; Louis sold his clock-making shop and went into semi-retirement. They had inherited some money and were comfortably well-off.

In 1872, their youngest child, Marie-Françoise-Thérèse, was born. By this time Zélie had breast cancer, and the doctor advised her that her milk would poison the baby; so Thérèse was given to a wet-nurse in the country. She returned to the Martin home when she was fifteen months old.

When Thérèse was four and a half years old, her mother died.

"I saw a lot they wanted to hide from me. I saw the lid of the coffin and stood looking at it for a long time. I knew what it was, although I hadn't seen one before. I was so small that, although Mommy was short, I had to lift my head to see it all. It seemed huge and grim."

Thérèse's older sister Pauline, then seventeen, took on the role of mother, dressing her, hearing her prayers, and teaching her reading and catechism.

"For the rest of the day I played in the garden with Daddy, for I wasn't interested in dolls. I got most fun out of soaking seeds and bits of bark in water and then offering the liquid to Daddy in a pretty little cup. He'd take it and smile and pretend to drink it."

When Thérèse was nine she learned that Pauline was going to leave her, to enter the Carmelite Convent at Lisieux.

"How can I express the agony I suffered? In a flash I understood what life was. Until then I had not seen it as too sad a business, but now I saw it as it really was -- a thing of suffering and continual partings."

"You explained what life in Carmel was like and it seemed wonderful. When I was thinking about what you had told me, I felt that Carmel was the desert where God wanted me to hide myself too. This feeling was so strong that I had not the least doubt about it."

Sure enough, Thérèse followed Pauline into Carmel seven years later, aged sixteen. In a way she hadn't really left home. Eventually, four Martin sisters and one cousin would belong to this convent of only twenty-five nuns. "I found that a nun's life was just what I imagined it would be."

"Our Lord allowed the prioress to treat me with great severity, though she didn't always realise it. I never met her without being reprimanded for something." This prioress was Mother Marie de Gonzague, who would alternate with Pauline in that office throughout Thérèse's short life. Her treatment of Thérèse was harsh to the point of cruelty.

Although Thérèse lived in a shrunken, constricted world, she longed for greatness. She wrote a verse play about the Venerable Joan of Arc, and took the title role herself. "I want to offer my neck to the sword of the executioner and, like Joan of Arc, murmur the name of Jesus at the stake." She even dreamed of being a priest: "How lovingly I'd carry you in my hands when you came down from heaven at my call; how lovingly I'd bestow you upon men's souls."

In the end she learned to play the meager hand that life had dealt her. "I was delighted when a pretty little jug in my cell was replaced by a big chipped one. I also tried hard not to make excuses ... Above all, I tried to do my small good deeds in secret. I loved folding up the mantles forgotten by the sisters and seized every possible oppurtunity of helping them." Thus Thérèse developed her "Little Way" of holiness, using the limited means at her disposal.

"I was made to understand that the glory I was to win would never be seen during my lifetime. My glory would consist in becoming a great saint!"

In 1894, Pauline, in her capacity as Prioress, ordered Thérèse to write the story of her life. After her death this would be published as L'Histoire d'une Ame ("The Story of a Soul.")

But Mother Marie de Gonzague was prioress in the spring of 1896:

"I went to my cell at midnight ... I had scarcely put my head on the pillow when a warm gush of something filled my mouth. I thought I was dying and my heart almost burst with joy. But as I had just put out my lamp, I restrained my curiosity until morning and went peacefully to sleep. When the bell for getting up rang at five o'clock, I remembered at once that I had some good news to check. I went to the window and saw the good news was true -- my handkerchief was sodden with blood. What hope I had, Mother!"

This was the tuberculosis which caused her death at the age of twenty-four. The medical treatment Thérèse received was inadequate even by the standards of the time; this was the responsibility of Mother Marie de Gonzague, who allowed Thérèse to continue the exhausting round of her duties far too long.

"But you must not believe, Mother, that your child wishes to leave you, Mother, because she considers it a greater grace to die in the morning of life rather than at the close of day."

Thérèse died on Sept. 30, 1898. A year later the convent published L'Histoire d'une Ame, which became a runaway bestseller. In Portugal bishops granted indulgences to readers of the book. French soldiers carried her picture into the trenches of World War I. Her immense popularity caused her to be canonised immediately, only twenty-seven years after her death.