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The saints

St. Thérèse of Lisieux

She never left her convent and died at twenty-four. She is a Doctor of the Church.

Feast: 1 October · 1873 to 1897 · The modern era · Lisieux, France

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The chapel of the Carmel of Lisieux: a statue of St. Thérèse lies in a shrine surrounded by flowers and candles.

Chatsam, 2014. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Home / The saints / St. Thérèse of Lisieux

The Carmel of Lisieux, Normandy, 1890s

In the last years of her short life, a young Carmelite nun writes three manuscripts about her soul.1

A year after her death they are published as Story of a Soul, and the world begins to read them.1

She called her path the “little way”. It turned out to be big enough for millions of people.

Patron of the missions1

01St. Thérèse of Lisieux

The little way

St. John Paul II wrote that her “little way” is nothing other than the Gospel way of holiness for all.1

In 1997 he proclaimed her a Doctor of the Universal Church.1

02St. Thérèse of Lisieux

Patron of the missions

In 1927, in response to the petition of many missionary bishops, Pope Pius XI proclaimed her patron of the missions along with St. Francis Xavier.1

The chapel of the Carmel of Lisieux: a statue of St. Thérèse lies in a shrine surrounded by flowers and candles.
The chapel of the Carmel of Lisieux, where St. Thérèse lived and is venerated. Chatsam, 2014. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

She did small things with great love. That is all. That is everything.

Live it this week

Smile at your least favorite person

Thérèse’s little way meant doing small things with great love, like being warm to the sister who got on her nerves. This week, pick the person who annoys you most and be deliberately kind to them three times, without telling anyone.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Pope St. John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Divini Amoris Scientia, 19 October 1997. Holy See, official English text. vatican.va

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.