REC Batch '04

Saint Peter's College of Ormoc

Saint Peter's College Of Ormoc, Attended 2003 - 2004, Class of 2004, Other

Year IV Saint Therese, Religion Extension Class, WESTY

Libra

Saint Therese of the Child Jesus
The Story of a Soul



Thérèse Martin was born in France in 1873 to a very devout Catholic family. She was the youngest of five sisters, all of whom became nuns! Their mother died when Thérèse was only four years old. She was very unhappy for a long time after her mother's death. She became very sensitive and described herself as an awful crybaby! But when she was thirteen all this changed. Coming home from Midnight Mass, Thérèse was looking forward to opening her presents. But her father was tired out with the long service. "Well, thank goodness, this is the last year!" he said. Ordinarily, this would have made Thérèse burst into tears. But this time was different. She prayed to the Child Jesus. She realized that if she was brave she could choose not to make a big fuss. And she did! She wrote: "Forcing back my tears, I descended the stairs rapidly; controlling the poundings of my heart, I had the happy appearance of a queen!" Thérèse's cheerfulness made her father happy, too.

From this day, she felt "the need to forget myself to please others." She wanted to dedicate her life to God in a special way and hoped to enter the convent exactly a year from the day of her great Christmas conversion. She went to visit the bishop and even asked the Pope for special permission to enter the convent at 15 years of age. In April of 1888, she got her wish.

Thérèse was a very simple saint. She didn't perform miracles or build hospitals or travel around the world. She realized that God didn't expect miracles of her. She described it this way:

I want to seek out a means of going to heaven by a little way, a way that is very straight, very short, and totally new. We are living now in an age of inventions, and we no longer have to take the trouble of climbing stairs, for an elevator has replaced these very successfully. I wanted to find an elevator which would raise me to Jesus, for I am too small to climb the rough stairway of perfection. I searched in the Scriptures for some sign of this elevator, and I read these words: "Whoever is a little one, let him come to me." I felt I had found what I was looking for. The elevator which must raise me to heaven is Your arms, O Jesus! And for this I had no need to grow up, but rather I had to remain little and become this more and more.

She wrote her autobiography, Story of a Soul, not long before she died. When it was published in 1898, it became a runaway bestseller! People everywhere loved her and found her teachings easy to understand and to follow. She was canonized (made a saint) only twenty-five years after her death--a record at that time!

Story of a Soul is a fascinating book. In addition to her teachings about the life of faith, Thérèse tells funny stories about her childhood. Here's one that no other Doctor of the Church ever told! Therese was playing at dolls with her sister Céline:

To console me once, she took one of her dolls and said: "My dear, embrace your Aunt!" The doll was in such a rush to embrace me tenderly that her two little arms went up my nose. Céline, who hadn't done it on purpose, looked at me stupefied; the doll was dangling from my nose. Aunt, of course, was not long in warding off the excessively tender embraces of her niece, and began laughing heartily at such a strange incident.

Here's a very easy prayer to remember. This was Archbishop Murphy's favorite prayer to St. Thérèse. He would use it whenever he felt need of special patience or charity--the things Thérèse is always able to help with:

Little Flower, Show your Power!