When Louis Martin, a jeweler and watchmaker, married Marie-Azélie Guérin (usually called Zélie) owner of lacemaking business, they decided to to live as brother and sister in a perpetual continence (spiritual marriage/abstain from sex). Both of them were devout Catholics.
Louis had tried to become a canon regular, wanting to enter the Great St Bernard Hospice, but had been refused because he didn't know Latin. Zélie, possessed of a strong, active temperament, wished to serve the sick, and had also considered entering consecrated life, but the prioress of the canonesses regular of the Hôtel-Dieu in Alençon had discouraged her outright.
When a confessor told them that was not how God wanted a marriage to work, they changed their lifestyle and had nine children (they lost 3 infants and five-year-old daughter). All five of their surviving daughters became nuns.
Therese lost her mother 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. Eventually 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 wanted to enter the Carmelite convent to join Pauline and Marie when she was 14 years old. The superior of the Carmelite convent refused to take Therese because she was so young. She went to the bishop. When the bishop also said no, she decided to go over his head, as well. She even tried to speak to the Pope when her family took her on a pilgrimage to Rome.
Eventually at the age of 15 she entered the Carmelite convent at Lisieux. Although she suffered from depression, scruples—a causeless feeling of guilt—and, at the end, religious doubts, she kept the rule to perfection and maintained a smiling, pleasant, and unselfish manner.
Therese had her first evidence of tuberculosis, the illness that would eventually end her life, in April 1896. By the following April she was gravely ill. It became apparent in the summer of 1897 that Therese would not rally from her illness and she received Extreme Unction in July. "I am not dying, I am entering life", she wrote to her missionary spiritual brother. Therese passed at 7:20 PM on September 30, 1897 at age 24. Her final words were, “Oh, my God, I love you!”
Throughout her life St. Thérèse wanted to become a saint. Yet, in her eyes, her life wasn’t all that extraordinary. She compared herself to other saints and thought she could never reach the same heights of sanctity. “It is impossible for me to grow up, so I must bear with myself such as I am with all my imperfections. But 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.” Instead of being discouraged, St. Thérèse trusted in God and believed that it was in her “littleness” that she could become a saint. She surrendered her life to Christ with the hope that he would act through her.
This “Little Way,” consisted in performing “little virtues,” not seeking grandiose sacrifices to God, but little acts of holiness. "You must practice the little virtues. This is sometimes difficult, but God never refuses the first grace—courage for self-conquest; and if the soul correspond to that grace, she at once finds herself in God’s sunlight".
"Always keep lifting your foot to climb the ladder of holiness, and do not imagine that you can mount even the first step. All God asks of you is good will. From the top of the ladder He looks lovingly upon you, and soon, touched by your fruitless efforts, He will Himself come down, and, taking you in His Arms, will carry you to His Kingdom never again to leave Him. But should you cease to raise your foot, you will be left for long on the earth"
After she died Pauline put together Therese's writings and titled it called Histoire d’une âme (Story of a Soul) and sent 2000 copies to other convents. Therese's "little way" of trusting in Jesus to make her holy and relying on small daily sacrifices instead of great deeds appealed to the thousands of Catholics and others who were trying to find holiness in ordinary lives.
She never went on missions, never founded a religious order, never performed great works, didn’t become a martyr, and would have been lost to history if it weren’t for her autobiography She was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1925. In 1997, St. Therese was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II, making her the second Carmelite nun to receive that distinction after St. Teresa of Avila.
Her “Little Way” reminds us that anyone can become a saint, whether they are a garbage truck driver, a sales clerk at a retail store, or even a retired grandparent. All are called to holiness. What we must do is strive for holiness in our everyday lives and place our trust in God.
Thérèse has much to teach our age of the image, the appearance, the “self.” We have become a dangerously self-conscious people, painfully aware of the need to be fulfilled, yet knowing we are not. Thérèse, like so many saints, sought to serve others, to do something outside herself, to forget herself in quiet acts of love. She is one of the great examples of the gospel paradox that we gain our life by losing it, and that the seed that falls to the ground must die in order to live.
Preoccupation with self separates modern men and women from God, from their fellow human beings, and ultimately from themselves. We must re-learn to forget ourselves, to contemplate a God who draws us out of ourselves, and to serve others as the ultimate expression of selfhood. These are the insights of Saint Thérèse, and they are more valid today than ever.
PS: In 2015 Thérèse’s parents, Saints Louis Martin and Marie-Azélie Guérin, were canonized by Pope Francis I; they were the first spouses to be canonized together as a couple.
https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=105
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