Saint Thérèse of Lisieux - feast day, the 1st of October

Here's one of those wonderful, modern Saints, smiling at us out of black and white photographs: the young, French Carmelite, Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus. She died at only twenty-four at the very end of the nineteenth century, in 1897, having led the cloistered life of the discalced Carmelites since she was fifteen. She is immensely popular, and in England is only a little less frequently represented in churches than the Franciscan wonder-worker, Saint Anthony. The Holy Father John Paul II named Thérèse a Doctor of the Church in 1997, long after her writings had been published and become well-known. The Holy Father Pius XI had already named her Patroness of the Missions in 1939, because of her ongoing service of prayer for the Catholic Missions around the world. Thérèse was born at Alençon, in Normandy, and the family moved to Lisieux after the death of her mother. From the moment of her first Holy Communion, she dedicated her life to Christ. The Holy Father spoke of her 'spiritual motherhood,' by which, even at age fourteen, she found herself interceding in prayer for an impenitent criminal on death row. At fifteen, she went with her father and sister to Rome, and requested the Holy Father Leo XIII personally to allow her to enter the Carmel at Lisieux at once, long before the age permitted by the order. This was granted a year later. Thérèse was professed in the community in September, 1890, and asked Christ at once for the gift of his infinite Love, that she could be the smallest and that all who died on that day be saved. That profound love is the story of the rest of her life, her constant intercession for sinners, her devotion to the Gospel and the Blessed Sacrament and the Divine Mercy. Thérèse leaves behind for us her autobiography, the Story of a soul, which was published soon after she died - a story of the complete gift of self to the Love of God, for service to all others.