Dimensions
132 x 198 x 24mm
A remarkable retelling of the 19th century saint who was the fastest to be beatified in the Roman Catholic Church.
The spread of devotion to St Therese of Lisieux is one of the impressive religious manifestations of our time. During her few years on earth this young French Carmelite was scarcely to be distinguished from many another devoted nun, but her death brought an almost immediate awareness of her unique gifts.
Through her letters, the word-of-mouth tradition originating with her fellow-nuns, and especially through the publication of 'The Little Flower', she soon came to mean a great deal to numberless people. Therese had shown them the way of perfection in the small things of every day. Miracles and graces were being attributed to her intercession, and within 28 years after death, this simple young nun had been canonized.
In 1936 a basilica in her honour at Lisieux was opened and blessed by Cardinal Pacelli; and it was he who, in 1944, as Pope, declared her the secondary patroness of France.
Born to a devout Catholic bourgeois family, Therese and her four surviving sisters all became nuns. Therese had long assumed she would die young and looked forward to it as her reunion with God and her lost loved ones (her father died when she was 21).
When her health began to fail in 1894 (she was 20 years old and the tuberculosis that was diagnosed would end her life aged 24) she suffered her first pulmonary haemorrage on a Good Friday and rejoiced in the fact that God had announced her imminent death to her on the anniversary of his own crucifixion. Her sainthood and the continuing attraction of her life and belief stems from self-sacrifice.
