Bishop Donald J. Hying of Madison, Wisc., needed to make a difficult decision, so he turned to one of his favorite saints for help: St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
“I prayed to Thérèse to intercede for me so that I could see what the Lord’s will was in this — and I prayed for a sign,” he told OSV News about the 19th-century French Carmelite nun (1873-1897) who promised to spend her heaven doing good on earth.
That same day, after doing a prayer service at a church where he knew no one, a woman approached him with a little triptych of St. Thérèse. A solution to his dilemma became clear.
“Things like that have happened many, many times in my life,” the bishop said of the intercession of St. Thérèse, whom he has had a devotion to since he was a teenager.
The bishop and other experts spoke with OSV News about St. Thérèse — a saint beloved worldwide for her “little way” of childlike trust and confidence in God’s merciful love — and her impact on the church ahead of the 100th anniversary of her canonization on May 17. Her path to sainthood is a remarkable one: At age 15, she entered the cloistered Carmelite community at Lisieux where she remained until she died of tuberculosis at 24. She was quickly canonized 27 years later, in 1925.
“St. Thérèse is for everyone,” Mary Therese Lambert, international development director of the Society of the Little Flower, said in emailed comments. “She teaches us that God doesn’t expect perfection, but love. That we don’t have to accomplish great things, but rather do small things with great love.”
“Her message is not one of pressure — it’s one of peace, surrender and hope,” Lambert added about St. Thérèse, also known as “The Little Flower.” “I believe she continues to whisper to people’s hearts: ‘You are loved. You matter. Keep trusting.'”
This message appears in the writings of St. Thérèse, who became well-known through her autobiography, “Story of a Soul,” read by millions. Today, she is one of four women named a doctor of the church for her significant contributions, and her words appear multiple times in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Several popes have expressed a devotion to her including, most recently, Pope Francis who canonized her parents and wrote an apostolic exhortation about her and her “timely witness” that “endures in all the grandeur of her little way.”
The late pontiff opens the 2023 letter, titled “C’est la confiance,” by quoting St. Thérèse: “C’est la confiance et rien que la confiance qui doit nous conduire à l’Amour” or “It is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to Love.”
These words, he says, “sum up the genius of her spirituality.”
When looking at her impact on the church and her doctrinal contributions, experts pointed first and foremost to St. Thérèse’s “little way.”
“Some people will say that it is simply ‘doing ordinary things with extraordinary love,” Discalced Carmelite Father Steven Payne, chair at the Center for Carmelite Studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington, said in emailed comments. “And that may be part of it, but only part. We would be misunderstanding the mature Thérèse if we started tallying up these ‘ordinary things’ (as she did in childhood), thinking they could somehow earn us heaven.”
“We might, therefore, say that Thérèse’s ‘little way’ really consists in abandoning ourselves with complete trust to God’s infinite merciful love, throwing ourselves into the arms of Jesus,” he added. “Then it will be out of gratitude for that completely unmerited merciful love (not to try to earn it) that we carry out those ‘ordinary things with extraordinary love.'”
With this “little way,” Lambert added that St. Thérèse “helped reframe holiness not as something reserved for mystics or martyrs, but as something we can live out in our daily lives.”
Looking at the last 100 years, Father Payne also recognized the saint’s influence in “the transformation of Catholic spirituality leading up to Vatican II’s emphasis on the ‘universal call to holiness'” for all.
“For a while in the immediate aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, there was a certain turning away from what seemed like an outdated and overly sentimental piety sometimes associated with devotion to the Little Flower,” he said. “But the publication of a ‘critical edition’ of her writings and more careful studies led to a deeper appreciation of her profound message, sometimes obscured for contemporary readers by her flowery language.”
He pointed to the many vocations to religious life that she inspired as well as the saints and important figures she influenced from St. Teresa of Kolkata and St. Faustina Kowalska to Servant of God Dorothy Day. She has not only inspired many active congregations or ecclesial movements but also surfaced as the subject of plays, operas, novels, films and more.
“How many Catholic parishes, how many Catholic homes, have a statue or image of St. Thérèse in some place of honor?” he asked. “She is certainly one of the best known and most loved saints in the church today.”
These experts anticipated that St. Thérèse’s impact will continue — and perhaps even increase — in the future.
“I just see her ‘little way’ as being a permanent part of the whole patrimony and legacy of the church until the end of time,” Bishop Hying said. “I think her star will only shine brighter with time as successive generations of people come to love her, pray to her, study her life.”
He encouraged people to befriend this beloved saint and ask for her intercession, adding that “she always has room and time for one more person to help.”
Lambert also saw an increased need for her message.
“As the world becomes faster, more complex and often more wounded, Thérèse’s message of simplicity and trust will only become more vital,” Lambert said. “She offers a spirituality of presence in a time of distraction, of gentleness in a world of noise.”
“I believe she will continue to guide the Church’s pastoral mission — especially in reaching the lonely, the disillusioned and those who feel far from God,” she added. “Her devotion to Divine Mercy, her understanding of spiritual dryness and her confidence in God’s love make her a bridge to those who are seeking healing.”
At the Society of the Little Flower, Lambert said that she witnesses St. Thérèse work miracles every day, not only through answered prayers but also through transformed hearts.
“Over the next century,” she said, “I believe St. Thérèse will continue to inspire a new generation of saints — ordinary people who discover, like her, that love is what matters most.”
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