Saint Therese of Lisieux - popular Catholic Saint

Saint Therese of Lisieux

“If God grants my desires, my Heaven will be spent on earth until the end of time. Yes, I will spend my Heaven doing good on earth....I will return! I will come down!”

Saint Therese of Lisieux is one of the most powerful Saints of the Twentieth Century. We have never prayed for the intercession of another Saint who lived so close to our time. She died in 1897 at the age of twenty four, and was canonized in 1925. When she died, she was virtually unknown, even in her own Community.

Within two years of her death, the power of her intercession began to be felt all over Europe. Prayers and novenas were made to her for favors, which were answered in abundance, usually preceded by the reception of a flower. Therese of Lisieux called herself the Little Flower of Jesus, a name which has remained with her until today. The swiftness of time in which devotion to this Saint grew, would be called in secular terms, a phenomena. We call it a Miracle.

Therese of Lisieux  - Greatest Saint of 20th Century

On March 15, 1907, Pope St. Pius X, in a private conversation, called Therese of Lisieux  “The greatest Saint of modern times”. This statement, made ten years after her death, from a man who would himself be raised to the Communion of Saints, is a great tribute to the little Carmelite that no one had known at the time of her death.

A year later in the Vatican, the Prefect of the Congregation of Rites, Cardinal Vico, stated, “We must lose no time in crowning the little Saint with glory, if we do not want the voice of the people to anticipate us.” He was about eight years too late. People began calling Therese of Lisieux  Saint as early as two years after her death.

The power of intercession given to Therese was undeniable. Truly, her prophecy made towards the end of her life, “God will have to do my will in Heaven, because I have never done my own will on earth,” was coming about. Within a short twenty eight years after her death, in 1925, the little cloistered Carmelite was proclaimed St. Therese.

Penny and I didn’t know very much about Therese of Lisieux  in 1976. We were sort of roped into devotion to this coquettish Saint. Penny was born a few years after the canonization of Therese of Lisieux ; although she was christened Pauline and not Therese, her mother, who had been caught up in the growing devotion to the new Saint, gave St. Therese to Penny as a patron Saint. We still have a statue of the Saint in our home, which was given to Penny as a child.

In 1976, I finally convinced Penny to go to Europe. I had been trying to get her to go for years, but she never wanted to leave the United States. Finally, she agreed to go on a Pilgrimage. We had just come back to the Church the year before, and were hungry for anything that had to do with Church. So, we went off to Europe and the Holy Land; visiting Rome, Lourdes, Fatima, Assisi and all the Shrines in the Holy Land. I had planned three days in Paris at the end of the pilgrimage. I had been stationed in France with the Army in the mid-fifties, and wanted to share the romance of Paris with my darling. I never visited any Shrines while I was in France during my younger years, even though I had been stationed less than a hundred miles from Lourdes. Lisieux, which was way out to the northwest in Normandy, never entered my mind, though I had to pass there by train on one excursion I made to London by boat train.

I had our time in Paris pretty well set. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and where I wanted to bring Penny. We would go to the Eiffel Tower, the Arch of Triumph, the Champs Elysees and on and on. However, since we had fallen deeply in love with Church and all the Saints, I fully intended to include the Cathedral of Notre Dame and the Basilica of Sacre Coeur. But Penny had a different agenda. We had learned in Lourdes that the incorrupt body of St. Bernadette, the Visionary of Lourdes, was in Nevers, about three hours out of Paris by train. Penny insisted we visit the Shrine of St. Bernadette, and see her beautiful body. That was one of our days in Paris shot. I had loved little Bernadette for many years and I really wanted to go, but I didn’t want to give up our days in Paris. In the end, Bernadette and Penny won out. We decided to go to Nevers.

Then, Penny remembered about Therese of Lisieux . We found out that Lisieux is also about three hours out of Paris by train; only it was in a different direction. St. Therese was her patron Saint. We had to go to Lisieux! That would leave only one day for Paris. You can imagine how upset I was. Bernadette was one thing, but I knew nothing about this Little Flower of Lisieux. However, this was Church and Penny was insistent; so we had to include St. Therese in the itinerary. Looking back now, I really believe that those two French Saints Bernadette and Therese had made a decision in Heaven to keep us away from Paris, as much as possible. And naturally, being who they are, they got their way!

The train trip to Nevers was boring, three hours there and three hours back. The time we spent at the Shrine of St. Bernadette, in the little Convent of St. Gildard, made it well worth the trip. But I wasn’t looking forward to doing the same thing the next day to go to Lisieux. Finally, Penny could see my long face; as we arrived back at the train station in Paris, she weakened. She said we didn’t have to go to Lisieux the next day. I rushed to cash in our tickets. In that way, it was firm. We were not going.

The next day in Paris turned out to be the very worst day we had ever spent at any time of our life. Everything went wrong! We had given the hotel the wrong dates as to how long we were staying there; they wanted to throw us out. We even tried to go home, but were not able to change our plane reservations. We knew that either we had made a mistake, or Therese of Lisieux  was getting even with us for not going to Lisieux. Before we even left Paris, we made a vow to visit St. Therese the very next time we went on pilgrimage, even though we had no idea when that might be.

The day after we returned to Los Angeles from our pilgrimage, we had business appointments in San Diego. We stayed there two days, and went to the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Old Town. Something that we had never seen before, but must have been there, was a life-sized statue of St.Therese in the back of the Church. We decided, after Mass we would go to her and apologize for not having visited Lisieux.

What should we find at the foot of the statue, but a plastic bag with a small rosary called a chaplet, instructions on how to say a novena to St. Therese and a testimony from the lady who made up this kit, as to how devotion to Therese of Lisieux  had saved her life.

We were praying for a teenager in our parish who had cancer of the bone marrow in the kneecaps. He couldn’t do anything other teenagers could do. He was an altar boy, but couldn’t kneel. He couldn’t run along the sand at the beach, or take part in sports. His bones would chip whenever he tried to do this. So we decided to pray to St. Therese for a healing for this young man, David Hawkins. We were not too happy about being dependent on receiving a flower as an answer to our prayer. Actually, I don’t think we trusted. We were afraid we wouldn’t get a flower. But we were going to pray to St. Therese, anyway. So, we began the novena. Keep in mind, that at this time, we knew virtually nothing about the power Our Lord Jesus had given this Saint.

Therese of Lisieux - Answered Prayers

The next day, we returned to Los Angeles. We had an appointment with one of the manufacturers we represented, a Jewish man who imported little gift items from Japan. Penny and I became deeply engrossed in our business meeting with the man. I noticed, however, that he had something wrapped in a cone-shaped piece of green waxed paper. Towards the end of the meeting, he reached for this object. He said to Penny, “I have something brand new here. It’s never been sold in this country. Don’t get excited. I’m not even sure how many of them I can get. I just want your opinion on it.”

He opened the waxed paper, and handed her the most beautiful rose we had ever seen. The sweet fragrance filled the room. The man explained that the rose was made out of very thin wood shavings, and was perfumed. Penny excitedly began to talk about how many we could sell. I immediately thought of our novena to Therese of Lisieux ! I stopped Penny in the middle of her conversation with our manufacturer. “Penny, don’t you see what that is?”

She looked at me strangely. “Of course, it’s a rose, well not a real rose, but it looks and feels and smells like a real rose.”

“It’s a rose, Penny, a rose! Remember our novena to St. Therese of Lisieux ?”

Her mouth dropped open. We hugged one another, crying. The manufacturer thought we had lost our minds. Our prayer had been answered in one day! Penny was determined to tell the boy’s mother the next day at daily Mass. I warned her not to. Suppose this was not an answer from St. Therese? After all, it was an artificial rose. We decided it was best not say anything to the mother, just yet.

The next morning after Mass, as if I had said, “Find Ann Hawkins; run up to her, and tell her David is healed,” that’s exactly what Penny did. The mother looked kindly at us, and told us that there was no hope for David. As a matter of fact, she and her son had an appointment with his doctor that afternoon to talk about amputating his one leg. The pain had become excruciating the last few days. She asked us to pray for them at 2:45 in the afternoon, when they had the appointment.

We promised to pray for them, but at 2:45 that afternoon, we were deep into the building of fixtures for our semi-annual trade show to be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center. We had completely forgotten about David and his mother when, at about 5 pm, their car pulled up to our driveway. They both got out, and ran up the driveway in tears, crying out “It’s a miracle! It’s a miracle!” David was holding something behind his back.The doctor had told them that David’s cancer not only had not spread, but was actually in remission. He couldn’t give them an explanation; but they didn’t need one. David took a cone-shaped piece of waxed paper from behind his back, and handed it to Penny. It was a rose, a live rose! St. Therese of Lisieux  had gotten us hooked.

A Post Script to that story is that we kept that rose on the prayer table in our living room, where it lived for four years without one petal dropping, with about two inches of water in the bottom of the vase, which never evaporated. It never smelled bad; the water never became stagnant. In 1980, our daughter Clare and our grandson Rob came to live with us. They brought their cat, Suki, who loved to eat plants. We were afraid the cat would eat the rose of St. Therese, so we put it away in a breakfront. It was not closed-in. There were open cane doors on the breakfront. Air could get through. Nevertheless, within three days, the rose died; the water dried up. Jesus and Therese had kept the rose alive, the water in the vase for four years. We did not have enough faith that they would protect the rose from a cat!

But we had gained a new friend in Therese of Lisieux . Since that time, we have prayed for her help in thousands of situations; she’s never let us down. We vowed that her Shrine would be the first one we would visit if we ever went on pilgrimage again. As it turned out, the following year, 1977, we went back to Europe in search of the Shrines of the Saints, and Lisieux was on top of the list. We had fallen hopelessly in love with St. Therese. She and her peaceful little town have become a part of our pilgrimage itinerary until this day.

Therese of Lisieux - Protecting

There is another interesting thing we’d like to share about Therese and the power Our Lord Jesus has given her. Lisieux is located in Normandy, right smack in the middle of the path of the fierce fighting that took place in France during the Normandy invasion in 1944. While the town took a beating from the ground warfare and the bombing overhead, the Basilica of St. Therese of Lisieux , Les Buissonnets, where she grew up; and the Carmel, where she lived her life as a Nun were not touched. Praise the Lord!

This statement, made ten years after her death, from a man who would himself be raised to the Communion of Saints, is a great tribute to the little Carmelite that no one had known at the time of her death.

A year later in the Vatican, the Prefect of the Congregation of Rites, Cardinal Vico, stated, "We must lose no time in crowning the little Saint with glory, if we do not want the voice of the people to anticipate us." He was about eight years too late. People began calling Therese a Saint as early as two years after her death.

The power of intercession given to Therese  was undeniable. Truly, her prophecy made towards the end of her life, "God will have to do my will in Heaven, because I have never done my own will on earth,"was coming about. Within a short twenty eight years after her death, in 1925, the little cloistered Carmelite was proclaimed St. Therese.

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