Thérèse Martin was born in Alençon, France on Thursday, January 2 1873. She was one of nine children--of which only five daughters survived. Her father, Louis, was a watchmaker and jeweler and her mother, Zelie, a lacemaker. Both had planned to enter the religious life before they were married.

Therese lost her beloved mother in 1877 to breast cancer and, by her own account, grew into a strong-willed and somewhat spoiled child. When she was nine years old, in 1882, her "second Mama"--her older sister Pauline--joined the Carmel of Lisieux, leaving Thérèse  bereft once more. Always sickly and fragile, Thérèse was cured from a life-threatening illness when she was ten years old through a vision of the smile of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1886, Thérèse 's sister Marie entered the Carmel of Lisieux (her sister Léonie was to join the Poor Clares). Thérèse  began to feel the call herself and the following year was given permission by her father to enter Carmel.

Before she could enter Carmel, however, she had to overcome more obstacles. The superior of the Carmelite convent refused to accept Thérèse into the order because she was so young. Thérèse took the matter to the local bishop, who likewise refused to allow it. Finally, Thérèse, her sister Céline, and her father went on a pilgrimage to Rome, where Thérèse managed to obtain an audience with Pope Leo XIII and begged him to allow her to joint the Carmelites. The Pope was impressed with her courage and spirit, but would not intervene, referring to Thérèse to the superior of the convent of Lisieux. Therese entered Lisieux Carmel on April 9, 1888 at the age of fifteen.

A few years after her entrance, Thérèse's father suffered a series of strokes that destroyed his mental and physical health and, in 1892, Louis Martin returned from Caen an invalid in the care of his late wife's family (He was to die in July 1894.) Thérèse, who had made profession of final vows in September 1890, was allowed to remain in the novitiate in 1893 and wrote her first dramatic piece (on Joan of Arc) in January 1894. In September her sister Celine entered Lisieux Carmel, followed a year later by her cousin Marie Guerin. During this period, Thérèse began writing the manuscripts that were to become her autobiography, which was called Story of a Soul.

In April 1896 she spat up blood for the first time and fell seriously ill at the same time a year later. She was transferred to the monastery infirmary on July 8, 1897. She died on Thursday, September 30 and was buried in the Lisieux cemetery.

A year after her death, two thousand copies of Story of a Soul were printed and the book became immediately popular. Therese was beatified by Pius XI in 1923 and canonized two years later. In 1980, John Paul II made a pilgrimage to Lisieux and later declared Therese a Doctor of the Church.

Introduction

This tiny book is a taste of the spiritual wisdom St. Thérèse of Lisieux and how it resonates with the parables of Jesus and their relationship to the spiritual journey. It was written in honor of Thérèse's becoming the third woman Doctor of the Church and as a token of my immense gratitude for her inspiration in starting and sustaining me on the path of Christian contemplation. I rely heavily on the scholarship of Bernard Brandon Scott and his book, Here Then the Parable (Fortress Press, 1989), on which I base these reflections. 

St. Thérèse in my view is the key figure in the recovery of the contemplative dimension of the Gospel in our time--a process that is desperately needed in the Christian community and is only just beginning to take root. Thérèse manifests an extraordinary penetration into the heart of Jesus' teaching about the kingdom of God, as well as a precise program for bringing it into daily life. She understood and participated profoundly in Jesus' experience of the Ultimate Reality as Abba, a tender and loving word for Father.

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Excerpted from St. Thérèse of Lisieux by Fr. Thomas Keating

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