Therese of Lisieux
Therese of Lisieux
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, or Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, O.C.D., was a Roman Catholic French Discalced Carmelite nun widely venerated in modern times. She is popularly known as "The Little Flower of Jesus" or simply "The Little Flower"...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionSaint
Date of Birth2 January 1873
CountryFrance
god jesus children
Do not fear to tell Jesus that you love Him even without feeling it. That is the way to force Jesus to help you, to carry you like a little child too feeble to walk.
beautiful children white
At last there dawned the most beautiful day of all the days of my life. How perfectly I remember even the smallest details of those sacred hours! The joyful awakening, the reverent and tender embraces of my mistresses and older companions, the room filled with white frocks, like so many snowflakes, where each child was dressed in turn.
children blessed dirty
At the time of Holy Communion I sometimes picture my soul under the figure of a little child of three or four years, who at play has got its hair tossed and its clothes soiled. These misfortunes have befallen me in battling with souls. But very soon the Blessed Virgin hastens to my aid: quickly, she takes off my dirty little pinafore, smoothes my hair and adorns it with a pretty ribbon or simply with a little flower... and this suffices to render me pleasing and enables me to sit at the Banquet of Angels without blushing.
beautiful prayer children
I have not the courage to search through books for beautiful prayers. . . Unable either to say them all or choose between them, I do as a child would do who cannot read-I say just what I want to say to God, quite simply, and he never fails to understand.
clouds compared difference found grain saints sand summit whose
I have always wanted to become a saint. Unfortunately, when I have compared myself with the saints, I have always found that there is the same difference between the saints and me as there is between a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds and a humble grain of sand trodden underfoot by passers-by.
burning love understood
I understood that the Church had a Heart, and that this Heart was burning with love.
desired grown martyrdom mystical vocation
I feel in me the vocation of the Priest. I have the vocation of the Apostle. Martyrdom was the dream of my youth, and this dream has grown with me. Considering the mystical body of the Church, I desired to see myself in them all.
inspire desire unattainable
The good God would not inspire unattainable desires.
prayer father two
It has a supernatural grandeur which expands the soul and unites it with God. I say an Our Father or a Hail Mary when I feel so spiritually barren that I cannot summon up a single worth while thought. These two prayers fill me with rapture and feed and satisfy my soul.
heaven wish done
In Heaven the good God will do all I wish, because I have never done my own will upon earth.
jesus spring flower
I had wondered for a long time why God had preferences and why all souls did not receive an equal amount of grace [...] Jesus saw fit to enlighten me about this mystery. He set the book of nature before me and I saw that all the flowers He has created are lovely. The splendor of the rose and whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. I realized that if every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness and there would be no wild flowers to make the meadows gay.
god sorry book
(Whispered to a novice while standing in front of the convent library) Oh! I would have been sorry to have read all those books...If I had read them, I would have broken my head, and I would have wasted precious time that I could have employed very simply in loving God.
age three
Since the age of three I have refused God nothing.
holy communion remedy
Go often to Holy Communion. Go very often! This is your one remedy.