Feast 1 October
The little way. A Carmelite who died at twenty-four and then would not stay small. Patron of missionaries who never left the cloister, and of anyone in a dark night.
Sacred art
The portrait kept with St. Thérèse of Lisieux is the image this library has of Thérèse. The honour goes to the person, and through the person to God. It is not a machine, and it is not a substitute for the life written below.
She promised a shower of roses. What she actually left was a method: do the next small thing with love when God feels absent. Her story sits next to despair on purpose.
Pray with Thérèse
If it belongs to Thérèse, it is here, with a door back into the story.
Basilica of Bom Jesus, Old GoaDied 1552; body in Goa
The Jesuit missionary dies on Shangchuan Island. Lime is poured in the coffin to speed decay for a later transfer. Months later the body is found fresh. It has lain in Goa for centuries, reduced by relic-taking, still exposed on feast days.
Lisieux, Normandydied 1897; canonized 1925
A Carmelite who died at twenty-four, promised a shower of roses, and was named a Doctor of the Church for a little way of trust that has sent more people to holiness — and to Lisieux — than any treatise.
