Here is my friend Yuri's painting of St. Therese of Lisieux whose feast day is today. And here's a little paragraph from my boyhood missal telling us who Therese is:
Mary Frances Teresa Martin was born at Alencon in France on January 2, 1873. She was brought up in a model Christian home, and educated in the Benedictine convent at Lisieux. While still a child she felt the attraction of the cloister, and at fifteen had by persistent entreaties obtained permission to enter the Carmel of Lisieux. She wanted to offer herself in sacrifice for priests and missionaries and the whole Church. She heard God's call to little ones to come to Him and surrendered herself forever with childlike confidence to God's "merciful love". She died on September 30, 1897, at the age of 24, and was canonized in 1925.
Perhaps the best way to become familiar with Therese, especially the Little Way of living the Gospel, is to read her autobiography, The Story of a Soul. The Ronald Knox translation (French to English) is especially beautiful.
Therese had an exuberant love for Jesus, often expressed in her writings by the use of the little word "Ah" and repeated exclamation points which one teacher-colleague of mine called surprise marks. Here is perhaps the most lovely and spiritually awake paragraph taken from Therese's journal.
Then in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: "O Jesus, my Love, at last I have found my vocation, my vocation is Love!... Yes, I have found my place in the Church, and it is you, O my God, who have given me this place... in the heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be Love!... Thus I shall be all things: thus my dream shall be realized!!!"
