On the many statues and great popularity of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

Why are there so many statues of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux in Catholic churches?

Obviously, crucifixes and other representations of Jesus Christ are the focus of attention in any Catholic church. It also makes sense to include statues of the Blessed Mother, Saint Joseph, and the titular saint of the church. Statues of Saint Michael the Archangel, Saint Francis of Assisi, and Saint Anthony of Padua are popular with Catholics for good reasons. After all, sooner or later, practically everyone becomes concerned about the presence of evil in the world, struggles with an inordinate attachment to money, and misplaces their car keys and needs the intercession of a saint known for having an excellent memory.

But how did a nineteenth-century Frenchwoman who died in obscurity become popular all over the world?

As most Catholics know, Thérèse Martin (1873-1897) was born the youngest child in a pious family in Alençon, France. Her mother died of breast cancer when she was only four years old, and she was raised by her father and four older sisters. Following in the footsteps of those sisters, she believed God was calling her to religious life. She begged for permission to enter the Carmelite order when she was only fifteen and eventually convinced the bishop. Several years later, the young Carmelite nun died of tuberculosis, unknown to almost everyone outside her family and her convent in Lisieux.

But her surviving sisters were convinced that their beloved baby sister had a message that should be shared with the world. Just one year after Thérèse’s death, her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, was first published.

Then and now, not every reader falls in love with Sister Thérèse. No one would claim that The Story of a Soul is a work of great literature, and early editions were heavily edited in a way which might strike some readers as too flowery. Even today, it can be difficult to explain what makes this autobiography so remarkable. Thérèse grew up in a somewhat ordinary middle-class family and seemed to have accomplished nothing of note by the time of her death.

But her autobiography is remarkable. After all, fifteen other holy men and women died the same year she did, but almost no one knows their names.¹ Thérèse, on the other hand, has churches named in her honor at locations as far apart as Poland and the Philippines, Bermuda and Brazil.

However, most readers find Thérèse and her autobiography enchanting. The fact that she grew up in an out-of-the-way town and talks about her childhood memories and daily family life makes it easy to relate to her experiences. Readers quickly recognize that she was a charming, friendly, intelligent, and insightful young woman. But the spiritual precocity and depth of her writing is astonishing.

Thérèse tells stories about seemingly trivial events in her life. For example, she overheard her father make a mild complaint about her behavior, and she had to deal with a cranky, elderly nun every day. Instead of crying or lashing out in those situations, as most of us would do, she responded with charity. Thérèse describes these incidents as little “victories” over her fallen human nature, but she doesn’t display any pride over her achievement. Instead, she attributes everything to God’s grace, not her own virtue. Through these stories, she inspires her readers and makes them want to follow in her (little) footsteps.

Since Thérèse’s death, millions of copies of The Story of the Soul have been published all over the world in dozens of languages. For many years, most versions of her autobiography, like this translation by John Beevers, used the edited document which was created by Thérèse’s sister, Mother Agnes of Jesus (Marie-Pauline Martin). That’s because Thérèse never really wrote a complete autobiography.

Instead, Mother Agnes asked Thérèse—well, ordered her under obedience, since she was Thérèse’s superior at the time—to write down some of her childhood memories. Later, Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart (another blood sister, Marie-Louise Martin) asked Thérèse to write down the spiritual doctrine she had developed during her short life. Finally, the subsequent prioress of the community, Mother Marie de Gonzague, ordered Thérèse to write more about her time in religious life because she knew that Thérèse was dying. Since these three documents were written at three different times for three different people, Mother Agnes edited Thérèse’s manuscripts after her death so that it would flow more smoothly and would not require readers to know much about Thérèse’s personal life.

But once The Story of a Soul became an international bestseller, readers were anxious to learn more about the young Frenchwoman. Today, newer translations like this one simply translate the original three manuscripts as written without trying to reconcile them to one another. They also provide background information about her childhood, family, and convent life.

Like any educated woman of nineteenth-century France, Thérèse wrote many letters, even after she became a Carmelite nun. The written correspondence between her and her family members has been published in two volumes, providing a deeper, more personal picture of her and her relationships. Her sisters also kept notes about the final conversations they had with Thérèse before her death, and these notes poignantly show Thérèse’s profound faith despite the physical and emotional suffering she endured as she slowly died from tuberculosis.

Most importantly, the fact that Thérèse’s spiritual insights are profound does not mean that they can only be understood by those with advanced degrees in theology. Instead, her “Little Way,” a path to holiness that is available to anyone at any age or state of life, is also comprehensible to practically anyone. Thérèse’s Little Way has been praised by popes such as Benedict XV, Pius XII,² and Benedict XVI,³ and priests have written books about her spirituality to make it easier for the laity to put her ideas into practice, such as Fr. Jean C. J. d’Elbée’s I Believe in Love, Fr. Marc Foley’s The Context of Holiness, and Fr. Jacques Philippe’s The Way of Trust and Love. In The Hidden Face, the Austrian writer Ida Friederike Goerres carefully analyzed Thérèse’s life and character in an attempt to remove the “sugar coating” that sometimes obscures the humanity hidden behind her picture-perfect statues.

When Pope John Paul II declared Thérèse to be a Doctor of the Church, it might have seemed laughable. How could you grant the same title to a woman who never attended college as that given to learned theologians like Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas? But Thérèse’s brilliance is not rooted in the breadth of her philosophical and theological training. Instead, it is based on her ability to understand and explain deep truths about God, truths which came not from books but from her personal intimacy with Him in prayer. In that way, she was much like her namesake, Saint Teresa of Ávila. That famous reformer of the Carmelite order often annoyed the Spanish theologians of her day. They could not understand how Teresa could possess such a profound grasp of theology but not be able to speak in Latin.

Despite Saint Thérèse’s personal holiness, she apparently worked no miracles during her lifetime. Instead, the miracles came after her death, in the “shower of roses” that she promised to drop down on her loved ones after she had died. Even incorruption—a phenomenon observed in the bodies of some saints after death—might have seemed a logical miracle for God to permit to such a pure, young virgin. But no, our Lord had other plans for the remains of the “Little Flower.” Precisely because her body did decay, her relics have been preserved in multiple reliquaries and have traveled all over the world,⁴ a fitting reward for a woman who longed to be a missionary but who was only able to leave her native country once.

However impressive Thérèse’s accomplishments may appear in terms of spirituality, theology, and miracles, there is an important lesson from her life story that is pertinent to every Catholic parent: the degree to which her family members helped her to become a saint.

Thérèse’s family was not ordinary. Both of her parents had seriously considered entering religious life but chose to marry instead. Together, that devout couple somehow managed to create a family life that was warm, loving, and full of affection. They had pet names for one another. At the same time, they were uncompromising in prioritizing God above all else and in facing personal tragedies, such as the early deaths of four other children, without losing their trust in God’s providential care. The more one reads about Thérèse, the more one is convinced that it was her devout parents who created the fertile spiritual ground that bore fruit in the religious vocations of their five daughters. Her parents and her four devout sisters truly helped Thérèse, by God’s grace, to become a saint.

Sister Geneviève of the Holy Face, Thérèse’s sister Céline Martin, outlived all the other sisters, and she wrote about her memories of her father Louis (now a canonized saint), her mother Azélie (also a canonized saint), and her famous younger sister.⁵ Her reflections later led other writers to examine the holiness of the entire Martin family, her sister Léonie (currently declared a Servant of God), and Céline herself.

But Céline’s creative gifts were not limited to writing. She was also a gifted painter and enjoyed the new and developing medium of photography. For example, she took many photographs of the sisters in her convent, and those photographs included Thérèse.

It was Céline’s painting of her sister that eventually inspired practically every statue of Saint Thérèse that has ever been made. If those statues seem a bit too perfect, well, that’s how her loving sister saw her. If the rest of us could only learn to love our family members with the Christlike love of the Little Flower, we too could become saints and lead our families into heaven.

Endnotes:

¹ The following holy Catholics also died in 1897: Saint Teresa of Jesus Journet Ibars, Blessed Giuseppe Antonio Tovini, Blessed Victor Emilio Moscoso Cárdenas, Blessed Marie-Celine de la Presentation Castang, Blessed Luigi Caburlotto, Venerable Andrea Beltrami, Venerable Augustus Tolton, Venerable Eladio Mozas Samtamera, Venerable Gabriele of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Nicolini, Venerable Petar Barbarić, Servant of God Auguste Etchecopar, Servant of God Bonifacio Pavletić, Servant of God Giuseppe Guarino, Servant of God Louis-Etienne Rabussier, Servant of God Paolo Angelo Ballerini.

² John Clarke, OCD, Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996), xii.

³ Pope Benedict XVI, Holy Men and Women of the Middle Ages and Beyond (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 232-237.

⁴ Thomas J. Craughwell, Saints Preserved: An Encyclopedia of Relics (New York: Image Books, 2011), 278-279.

⁵ These three works are now sadly out of print.