Lisieux

Basilica of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus

The little way has an address. A Norman Carmelite who promised a shower of roses, a basilica on a hill, the relics of a Doctor of the Church who died at twenty-four. People still come to ask her for ordinary holiness, which is the hardest kind.

Lisieux, NormandyFeast 1 October

The pilgrimage

Why this road exists

To pray at the tomb of St. Thérèse, and at Les Buissonnets, the house where a child learned to love.

Because her little way is not a slogan

Because her little way is not a slogan. It is a program: small duties, great love, trust that looks like abandonment.

The Church that keeps the place

The Carmel chapel holds her. The basilica holds the crowds. Both are the point.

The signs of this place

The apparition, the Gospel sign, the body, the image — whatever this place is known for, told as a file of its own.

SaintChurch-approved

St. Thérèse of Lisieux

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.

All pilgrimages