When was st therese of lisieux born

The two had gotten married but determined they would be celibate until a priest told them that was not how God wanted a marriage to work! They must have followed his advice very well because they had nine children. The five children who lived were all daughters who were close all their lives.

Tragedy and loss came quickly to Therese when her mother died of breast cancer when she was four and a half years old. Her sixteen year old sister Pauline became her second mother -- which made the second loss even worse when Pauline entered the Carmelite convent five years later. A few months later, Therese became so ill with a fever that people thought she was dying.

The worst part of it for Therese was all the people sitting around her bed staring at her like, she said, "a string of onions. She saw Mary smile at her and suddenly she was cured. She tried to keep the grace of the cure secret but people found out and badgered her with questions about what Mary was wearing, what she looked like.

When she refused to give in to their curiosity, they passed the story that she had made the whole thing up. Without realizing it, by the time she was eleven years old she had developed the habit of mental prayer. She would find a place between her bed and the wall and in that solitude think about God, life, eternity.

When her other sisters, Marie and Leonie, left to join religious orders the Carmelites and Poor Clares, respectively , Therese was left alone with her last sister Celine and her father. Therese tells us that she wanted to be good but that she had an odd way of going about.

This spoiled little Queen of her father's wouldn't do housework. She thought if she made the beds she was doing a great favor! Every time Therese even imagined that someone was criticizing her or didn't appreciate her, she burst into tears.

Then she would cry because she had cried! Any inner wall she built to contain her wild emotions crumpled immediately before the tiniest comment.

Therese wanted to enter the Carmelite convent to join Pauline and Marie but how could she convince others that she could handle the rigors of Carmelite life, if she couldn't handle her own emotional outbursts? She had prayed that Jesus would help her but there was no sign of an answer.

On Christmas day in , the fourteen-year-old hurried home from church. In France, young children left their shoes by the hearth at Christmas, and then parents would fill them with gifts. By fourteen, most children outgrew this custom. But her sister Celine didn't want Therese to grow up. So they continued to leave presents in "baby" Therese's shoes. As she and Celine climbed the stairs to take off their hats, their father's voice rose up from the parlor below.

Standing over the shoes, he sighed, "Thank goodness that's the last time we shall have this kind of thing! Therese froze, and her sister looked at her helplessly. Celine knew that in a few minutes Therese would be in tears over what her father had said. But the tantrum never came. Something incredible had happened to Therese. Jesus had come into her heart and done what she could not do herself.

He had made her more sensitive to her father's feelings than her own. She swallowed her tears, walked slowly down the stairs, and exclaimed over the gifts in the shoes, as if she had never heard a word her father said. The following year she entered the convent. In her autobiography she referred to this Christmas as her "conversion. Therese be known as the Little Flower but she had a will of steel. When the superior of the Carmelite convent refused to take Therese because she was so young, the formerly shy little girl went to the bishop.

When the bishop also said no, she decided to go over his head, as well. Her father and sister took her on a pilgrimage to Rome to try to get her mind off this crazy idea.

Therese loved it. It was the one time when being little worked to her advantage! Because she was young and small she could run everywhere, touch relics and tombs without being yelled at. Finally they went for an audience with the Pope. They had been forbidden to speak to him but that didn't stop Therese. As soon as she got near him, she begged that he let her enter the Carmelite convent. She had to be carried out by two of the guards!

But the Vicar General who had seen her courage was impressed and soon Therese was admitted to the Carmelite convent that her sisters Pauline and Marie had already joined. Her romantic ideas of convent life and suffering soon met up with reality in a way she had never expected. She understood that her glory would be hidden from the eyes of others until God wished to reveal it.

She was intelligent enough to realize she could not accomplish them without suffering. What was hidden from her eyes was just how much she would have to endure to win her glory. Her eucharistic hunger made her long for daily communion. Shortly thereafter though, the young Martin girl experienced a peculiarly vicious attack of scruples. This lasted seventeen months. She lived in constant fear of sinning; the most abhorrent and absurd thoughts disturbed her peace. She wept often. Her father finally removed her from the Abbey school and provided private tutoring for her.

During this time her sister, Marie, became very close with Therese, and helped her to overcome these fears. But Marie in turn, also entered the Lisieux Carmel on October 15, After midnight Mass, Christmas, , the shadow of self-doubt, depression and uncertainty suddenly lifted from Therese, leaving her in possession of a new calm and inner conviction.

Grace had intervened to change her life as she was going up the stairs at her home. Something her father said provoked a sudden inner change. The strong character she had at the age of four and a half was suddenly restored to her. A ten year struggle had ended. Her tears had dried up. The third and last period of her life was about to begin.

I forgot myself to please others and, in doing so, became happy myself. Now, she could fulfill her dream of entering the Carmel as soon as possible to love Jesus and pray for sinners. Grace received at Mass in the summer of left her with a vision of standing at the foot of the Cross, collecting the blood of Jesus and giving it to souls. Convinced that her prayers and sufferings could bring people to Christ, she boldly asked Jesus to give her some sign that she was right.

He did. In the early summer of , a criminal, Henri Pranzini, was convicted of the murder of two women and a child.

He was sentenced to the guillotine. The convicted man, according to police reports, showed no inclination to repent. She prayed for weeks and had Mass offered for him.

There was still no change in the attitude of the condemned man. Therese hoped that many others would follow once she was in the Carmel. Marie Martin, the oldest daughter of the family, joined her sister Pauline at the Lisieux Carmel in Leonie Martin entered the Visitation Convent at Caen the following year.

Therese then sought permission from her father to join Marie and Pauline at the Lisieux Convent. Louis was probably expecting the request, but it saddened him nevertheless. Three of his girls had already entered religious life. Therese was not yet fifteen when she approached the Carmelite authorities again for permission to enter. Again she was refused. The priest-director advised her to return when she was twenty-one.

I am only his delegate. To his dying day, Bishop Hugonin of Bayeux never forgot her. She came to his office with her father one rainy day and put her surprising request before him. His Excellency had never seen this type of support before. Just before the interview, Therese had put up her hair, thinking this would make her look older. This amused the bishop, and he never spoke about Therese in later years without recounting her ploy. He wanted time to consider it, and advised Therese and her father that he would write them regarding his decision.

Therese had planned that, should the Bayeux trip fail, she would go to the Pope himself. In her autobiography, Therese sketched a charming picture of her travels through Southern Europe. In Rome she was enamored of the Coliseum. Its history of Christian martyrdom stirred the very roots of her being.

Once inside the Coliseum, the two sisters ignored regulations prohibiting visitors from descending through the ruined structure to the arena floor, sneaked away from the tour group, climbed across barriers and down the ruins to kneel and pray on the Coliseum floor. Gathering up a few stones as relics, they slipped back to the tour. No one, except their father, noted their absence. Father Reverony, the leader of the French pilgrimage, stared stonily at this bold little girl, in surprise and displeasure.

The superiors are considering the matter at the moment. Her old nurse, Victoire, probably could have told the Pope he should not have been surprised. Victoire had seen Therese in some rare displays of determination.

On April 9, , an emotional and tearful, but determined Therese Martin said good-bye to her home and her family. The only cloud on her horizon was the worsening condition of her father, Louis, who had developed cerebral arteriosclerosis. Celine remained at home to care for their father during his long and final illness.

The good father was growing senile. Once in June of , he wandered from his home at Lisieux and was lost for three days, eventually turning up at Le Havre. In August, after a series of strokes, Louis became paralyzed. Many years earlier, when Therese was a little girl, she would peer out of an attic window. Therese loved reveling in the glory of the day. One day however, while her father was in Alencon on business, she suddenly saw in the garden below the stooped and twisted figure of a man.

She froze in terror. The figure in the garden disappeared. Marie assured her it was nothing and told her to forget everything that had happened.

Shortly thereafter, on February 12th, Louis was taken to the hospital after an attack of dementia. He died peacefully two years later, in , with Celine at his side. Celine then joined her three sisters at Carmel in September of Therese spent the last nine years of her life at the Lisieux Carmel. Her fellow Sisters recognized her as a good nun, nothing more. She was conscientious and capable.

Sister Therese worked in the sacristy, cleaned the dining room, painted pictures, composed short pious plays for the Sisters, wrote poems, and lived the intense community prayer life of the cloister. Superiors appointed her to instruct the novices of the community.

Externally, there was nothing remarkable about this Carmelite nun. Therese was affected by the spiritual atmosphere in the community, which was still tainted by Jansenism and the vision of an avenging God. Some of the sisters feared divine justice and suffered badly from scruples.

Even after her general confession in May to Father Pichon, her Jesuit spiritual director, Therese was still uneasy. Some weeks later, on June 14th of the same year, she received the Sacrament of Confirmation.

She wished to embrace the contemplative life, as her sisters Pauline and Marie had done in the Carmel of Lisieux. However, she was prevented from doing this because she was too young.

On April 9, , she entered the Carmel of Lisieux. She received the habit on January 10th of the following year, and made her religious profession on September 8, on the Feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In Carmel she embraced the way of perfection outlined by the Foundress, Saint Teresa of Jesus, fulfilling with genuine fervour and fidelity the various community responsibilities entrusted to her.

In her autobiographical manuscripts she left us not only her recollections of childhood and adolescence but also a portrait of her soul, the description of her most intimate experiences.

She discovered the little way of spiritual childhood and taught it to the novices entrusted to her care. She penetrated ever more deeply into the mystery of the Church and became increasingly aware of her apostolic and missionary vocation to draw everyone in her path.