On Sunday, October 15, Pope Francis published his Apostolic Exhortation about Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. In his letter, the Holy Father pays tribute to the “little greatness” of the 19th-century Carmelite. He writes that St. Thérèse’s “genius consists in leading us to what is central, essential, and indispensable.”
The Pope explains that this young saint, whose life and writings focused on love and following a “little way” of holiness, “shows that, while it is true that all the Church’s teachings and rules have their importance, their value, their clarity, some are more urgent and more foundational for the Christian life.”
In the letter, Pope Francis goes on to say: “From heaven to earth, the timely witness of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face endures in all the grandeur of her little way.”
The Pope’s exhortation takes its title, “C’est la Confiance,” or “It is Trust,” from a quotation in one of Thérèse’s letters: “It is trust and nothing but trust that must lead us to Love.”
St. Thérèse of Lisieux, also called St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, or “The Little Flower,” was a French Carmelite nun who died in 1897 from tuberculosis at the age of 24. In 1997, she was proclaimed a doctor of the Church. In her autobiography Story of a Soul, St. Thérèse recounted her “little way” of holiness and her desire to spend heaven “doing good on earth.” She is a patron saint of missionaries, and her liturgical feast is October 1.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of her birth and the 100th anniversary of her beatification.
In June, Pope Francis in his general audience had already shown his closeness to the saint when he prayed before a relic of St. Therese of Lisieux during a general audience in Rome before undergoing abdominal surgery the same day.
(Adapted by Jacob Stein)
