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StSt ThérèseThérèse ofof LisieuxLisieux Feast day 1st October

St Thérèse of

St Thérèse of Lisieux

“Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.” St Thérèse of Lisieux

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux was born in 1873 in Alençon, , the daughter of a lacemaker and a watchmaker/jeweller. Her mother died when Thérèse was only four and a half, so Thérèse was brought up by her elder sisters. After being taught at home by them, when aged eight, Thérèse went to a school run by Benedictine nuns. She did well with her lessons, but was bullied for getting such good marks at a young age. The bullying made her sad, and she didn’t enjoy boisterous games, preferring to tell stories to younger children. At Christmas in 1886, Thérèse had a conversion experience and came closer to God. This helped her to recover from the sadness of her mother’s death. She said: “God worked a little miracle to make me grow up in an instant. I felt, in a word, charity enter my heart, the need to forget myself to make others happy.” Thérèse felt an early call to religious life and became a nun when she was only fifteen, joining two of her sisters in an enclosed Carmelite convent in Lisieux, France. Sadly, after just nine years as a Carmelite nun, Thérèse died of aged only twenty four. When dying, Thérèse said “I only love simplicity. I have a horror of pretence.” Thérèse is one of the most popular because of her simple and practical approach to living a spiritual life. Thérèse is also known as ‘The Little Flower of Jesus’, or simply ‘The Little Flower’. She lived a ‘hidden’ life, but became well known after her death, when people began to read her writings about her life: ‘The Story of a Soul’. In this book, Thérèse wrote: “I will seek out a means of getting to Heaven by a little way—very short and very straight, a little way that is wholly new. We live in an age of inventions; nowadays the rich need not trouble to climb the stairs, they have lifts instead. Well, I mean to try and find a lift by which I may be raised unto God, for I am too tiny to climb the steep stairway of perfection. To get to Heaven I need not grow; on the contrary, I must remain little, I must become still less.” Thérèse said that her ‘Way’ (to live a spiritual life) was ‘all confidence and love’. She was beatified in 1923 and canonised (becoming a ) in 1925. She is a (a saint who is known for their explanation of the truths of the Catholic Faith), and co- of France (with ). She is a popular saint in many countries and the Basilica of Lisieux (where she was a nun) is second only to Lourdes as most popular site in France.