Thérèse of Lisieux

Thérèse Martin entered the Carmel of Lisieux at fifteen and died of tuberculosis at twenty-four, having never left her convent. Yet her little memoir, The Story of a Soul, made her one of the most beloved saints of the modern age and a Doctor of the Church.

Knowing herself too small to climb the steep stairs of heroic virtue, she found instead a “little way”: to be lifted, like a child, in the arms of God — to do small, hidden things with great love, and to trust completely.

“My vocation is love,” she wrote. Her holiness is hidden and ordinary, and so it is within reach of anyone: a smile, a patience, a kindness, offered to God like a flower thrown for love.