St. Theresa

Theresa has, for over a century been revered and admired by everyone who has heard of her witness and uncomplaining suffering with a terrible illness that was to take her life at the tragically young age of 24. Born in 1873, at Alencon Theresa was brought up in an atmosphere of traditional piety that was characteristic of the inward-looking, middle-class French Catholicism prevalent at that time. She was the youngest daughter of Louis Martin, a watchmaker and his wife. In 1877 after the death of her mother Theresa and her family moved to Lisieux where the four sisters were looked after by an aunt. Like so many other girls of the time Theresa attended a school run by Benedictine nuns. The influence of their education greatly affected Louis Martin' s daughters for they all joined the local Carmelite convent, Theresa being the third to do so.

She soon buckled down to the austere regime of the Carmelite order and performed all elements of the nuns life extraordinarily well. Theresa was never a healthy person which stopped her going to Hanoi, in Vietnam as a missionary, a vocation she wished to follow. Although this was a great disappointment to her she settled into life at Lisieux at peace with what she felt was God's will. Ill health prevented her holding any important position in the convent but for a time she was assistant to the novice-mistress. In 1894, after three years of near-insanity her father died, allowing Celine, the fourth sister to join the convent. But a year before her father's death Theresa had a haemorrhage which foreshadowed her own death of tuberculosis. She heroically suffered this dreadful illness in silence not wishing to trouble the other sisters with her pains. In June 1897, despite her protests Theresa was moved to the convent infirmary where she died on the 30th of September, of that year.

Theresa might well have slipped into obscurity if she had not written, under obedience, a short spiritual autobiography, "L'Histoire d'une Ame", edited, with some alterations by one of her sisters, it was soon translated into most European languages and several Asian tongues, this together with a number of miraculous cures and an even greater number of intercessions believed to have come through her, caused her cult to spread at a sensational rate. Beatified in 1923, she was canonised in 1925 and in 1927 she was declared patroness of Missions, she was made a patron saint of France in 1947.

It was probably her totally artless simplicity that struck a chord with an increasingly hectic world and it is clear that her message is very close to that of the Gospels which she loved to quote and indeed carried through to its logical conclusion, of courage and self-sacrifice, that gave Theresa such a special appeal. She is usually depicted, in art as a Carmelite nun holding a bunch of roses as she promised to "let fall a shower of roses, of miracles and other blessings".

On a personal note, some years ago, Elaine and Peter Green and myself spent a day at Lisieux and were somewhat over-awed by the vast basilica built to honour this young nun, perhaps needed to remind us of her holiness but totally out of keeping with the simple message of love and courage she has left us.

John Hayward.