October 1 brings the feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. She has entered several of our series, and I have never given her one of her own. Today I want to stop and listen to her.
Her name in religion is worth saying whole: Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face. She was already signing both titles on the day she received the habit, January 10, 1889. Pope Benedict XVI put the matter cleanly. That name “expresses the programme of her whole life in communion with the central Mysteries of the Incarnation and the Redemption.”1 The Child at Bethlehem and the suffering Face belong to the same Lord. This is the Jesus she loved.
Earlier this year, in the series on the Holy Face, we looked at what she did with that love inside the Carmel of Lisieux. Her final conversations bring us close to the devotion that sustained her.
On the eve of the Transfiguration, August 5, 1897, her sisters hung the picture of the Holy Face beside her bed. Looking at the picture, she said, “Oh! how much good that Holy Face has done me in my life!” The foundation of the devotion, she told them, was Isaiah: no beauty in him, no comeliness, despised, a man of sorrows, his look as it were hidden. “I, too, have desired to be without beauty, alone in treading the winepress, unknown to everyone.” The next morning, having hoped to die during the night, she told Mother Agnes that she had continued looking at the Holy Face and had made many acts of faith.2 Our earlier reflection is worth reopening in light of those words.3
The ordinary substance of a day can seem meager. There is work to finish, someone to care for, an interruption that was not invited. Fatigue arrives. A good intention gives way to impatience before the hour is out.
In September 1896 she had already named what such a day is for. In the manuscript written for her sister Marie, she addressed Jesus and asked how love is proved when great deeds are forbidden. “I have no other means of proving my love for you other than that of strewing flowers, that is, not allowing one little sacrifice to escape, not one look, one word, profiting by all the smallest things and doing them through love.”4 The flowers are not a mood. They are the task finished with care, the answer given without hurry, the prayer said for the person whose conduct has troubled us. They are already close at hand.
She knew the cost. In the last manuscript, written for Mother Marie de Gonzague while the tuberculosis advanced, she said that Jesus had allowed a pitch-black darkness to sweep over her soul, and that the thought of heaven, sweet to her since childhood, had become a torment. The trial ran for months. She asked to remain at the table of sinners until He gave the sign.5 On September 30, 1897, she died looking at her crucifix. The words her sisters set down are plain: “I love Him. My God, I love You.”6
The familiar image, the young Carmelite with roses and a cross, is not the whole of her. The roses recall her little sacrifices. The cross recalls the suffering in which she continued to love. On July 17, 1897, she told Mother Agnes, “I will spend my heaven doing good upon earth.”7 She wanted to make God loved and to teach souls her Little Way. We wait, often enough, for the pressure to ease before we imagine we can give ourselves more fully to God. Thérèse did not have that leisure. The day in front of us is the one we can give, and one concrete act of love, placed in Christ’s hands, is enough to begin. We may not see what He does with it. We can ask her help in offering it.
Closing Prayer
St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face, pray for us. Help us to trust Our Lord’s mercy, to love Him in the duties before us, and to pray faithfully for the salvation of souls. Amen.8
Karen Early
October 1, 2026
For the earlier reflection and audio, see The Holy Face of Christ and the Work of Reparation, Episode VI.
Notes
1 Thérèse of Lisieux, Letter 80 to Sister Marthe of Jesus, January 10, 1889; Benedict XVI, General Audience, April 6, 2011.
2 Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux, Yellow Notebook (Cahier Jaune), August 5, entries 7–9, and August 6, entry 1, 1897; cf. Isaiah 53:2–3 and 63:3. See also St. Thérèse of Lisieux: Her Last Conversations, trans. John Clarke, O.C.D. (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1977).
3 Karen Early, “The Holy Face of Christ and the Work of Reparation,” Episode VI, May 21, 2026, https://fidesetratio.us/the-holy-face-of-christ-and-the-work-of-reparation-episode-vi/.
4 Thérèse of Lisieux, Manuscript B, 4r, September 1896, in Story of a Soul, trans. John Clarke, O.C.D. (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996). Written for Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart; the quoted passage is addressed to Jesus.
5 Thérèse of Lisieux, Manuscript C, June–July 1897, in Story of a Soul, trans. Clarke.
6 Her Last Conversations, September 30, 1897, trans. Clarke.
7 Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux, Yellow Notebook, July 17, 1897; Her Last Conversations, trans. Clarke.
8 Closing prayer composed for this post, inspired by the life and witness of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. It is not attributed to St. Thérèse.