St. Therese of the Child Jesus

St. Therese of Lisieux

Saint Therese 

the Little Saint

Marie-Francoise-Therese Martin (later known as St. Therese) was born in Alencon in France, Januray 2, 1873 to her parents Louis and Zelie Martin. She was baptized two days later on January 4th.  
"All my life, God surrounded me with love. My first memories are imprinted with the most tender smiles and caresses...Those were the sunny years of my childhood." Thus Therese, twenty-one years later, described her home life in Alencon, France. "My happy disposition," she added with characteristic candor, "contributed to making my life pleasing." 

While still a young girl, at age nine she sought the Prioress of the Carmelite community and asked for entrance, but was turned away to 'grow up first'... She was not yet fifteen when she approached the Carmelite authorities again for permission to enter.   The priest-director advised her to return when she was twenty-one. "Of course," he added, "you can always see the bishop. I am only his delegate." Bishop Hugonin of Bayeux  was then visited by Therese and her father, "You are not yet fifteen and you wish this?" the bishop questioned. "I wished it since the dawn of reason," young Therese declared.  He wanted time to consider it, and advised Therese and her father that he would write them regarding his decision.

St.Therese with older sister Pauline

Because of her great passion to join the Carmelite community as soon as possible, Therese took her cause to the Pope himself. The great day of the audience in with Pope Leo XIII came at the end of their week in Rome. On Sunday, November 20, 1887, "they told us on the Pope's behalf that it was forbidden to speak as this would prolong the audience too much. I turned toward my dear Celine for advice: 'Speak!' she said. A moment later I was at the Holy Father's feet....Lifting tear-filled eyes to his face I cried out: 'Most Holy Father, I have a great favor to ask you!....Holy Father, in honor of your jubilee, permit me to enter Carmel at the age of fifteen.'"  "Well, my child," the Holy Father replied, "do what the superiors tell you." Resting her hands on his knees Therese continued, " Oh, Holy Father, if you say yes, everybody will agree!' He gazed at me speaking these words and stressing each syllable: 'Go - go - you will enter if God wills it.'"

On New Year's day, 1888, the prioress of the Lisieux Carmel advised Therese she would be received into the monastery, but that she had to be patient and wait a little bit longer. On April 9, 1888, an emotional and tearful, but determined Therese Martin said good-bye to her home and her family.  She was finally granted her most ardent wish and was permitted to join the Carmelite monastery at Liseaux.  

Therese spent the last nine years of her life at the Lisieux Carmel. Her fellow Sisters recognized her as a good nun, nothing more. She was conscientious and capable. Sister Therese worked in the sacristy, cleaned the dining room, painted pictures, composed short pious plays for the Sisters, wrote poems, and lived the intense community prayer life of the cloister. Superiors appointed her to instruct the novices of the community. Externally, there was nothing remarkable about this Carmelite nun.

Therese was aware of her littleness. 

“You know, Mother, that I have always wanted to be become a saint. Unfortunately when I have compared myself with the saints, I have always found that there is the same difference between the saints and me as there is between a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds and a humble grain of sand trodden underfoot by passersby. 

Instead of being discouraged, I told myself: God would not make me wish for something impossible and so, in spite of my littleness, I can aim at being a saint. It is impossible for me to grow bigger, so I put up with myself as I am, with all my countless faults. But I will look for some means of going to heaven by a little way which is very short and very straight, a little way that is quite new[...] 

It is your arms, Jesus, which are the lift to carry me to heaven, And so there is no need for me to grow up. In fact, just the opposite: I must stay little and become less and less.” 

http://www.sttherese.webhero.com/Quotes-of-Saint-Therese-of-Lisieux.htm

She lived her life as a Carmelite nun with humility, simplicity and trust in God.  Her example of doing these virtues in 'her little way' has been an inspiration to many people throughout the world.  

She offered her life for the salvation of souls and the growth of the Church, she died a very painful death from tuberculosis on September 30, 1897.

Saint Thérèse de Lisieux (known as “the Little Flower”) was said to have produced a strong scent of roses at her death, which was detectable for days afterward.

She is also known by the names -- St. Therese of the Holy Face, St. Therese of the Child Jesus, St. Therese the Little Flower

"Only the bones covered with bits of cloth remained. But the palm branch that had been placed inside when she was buried was still fresh and green, as it is today. Was this God's way of confirming that God had granted Therese's desire to win "the palm of martyrdom?"  

"that thus I may become 

a martyr of Your love, O my God!"

  "I will spend my heaven

 Doing good on earth."

Some excerpts taken from http://www.littleflower.org/abouttherese/learn/lisieuxCarmel.asp

St. Therese as Intercessor... http://www.mysticsofthechurch.com/2010/08/intercession-of-st-therese-in-lives-of.html

Edith Stein -- St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

EDITH STEIN – 

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Jewish  convert to Catholicism

Edith Stein was born on October 12, 1891, Yom Kippur, of Orthodox Jewish parents.   A brilliant Jewish girl, but at age 14 she suddenly stopped praying and dropped out of school, angry because an anti-Semitic teacher consistently refused to put her at the head of the class even though the entire class thought she had earned it.   However, eager for education, she received private tutoring and was admitted to the University of Breslau, one of the very first women admitted to full matriculation at a major university, where she majored in psychology.

 The Philosophy Years

In the summer of 1913, when she was nearly 22 years old, Edith was an atheist on the surface but a Jew deep in her heart.   This is fairly common among young Jews when their faith is presented to them simply as ethical idealism.  They see it as a philosophy rather than a faith, and find it appropriate to probe its defects.   Edith took a neutral position on God and refused all religious practice.   Instead, she began to look for intellectual principles more deeply rooted in truth than those of Judaism.

Edith Stein did not find these higher principles in psychology, so she switched to the University of Göttingen to study philosophy under Edmund Husserl.   His “phenomenology” sought to make philosophy a hard science by resolving the conflict between empiricism (observation) and rationalism (reason and theory).   Phenomenology highlights the origin of all philosophical and scientific systems and theoretical constructs in the experiential life.   Soon Edith became Husserl’s most gifted student; and when she had brilliantly completed her studies with a doctorate summa cum laude, he took her on as his assistant and collaborator.

 The Old Damascus Road

Christ calls to us in ways that fill our needs.   Phenomenology led Edith Stein into a state of Voraussetzungslosigkeit, total impartiality, without which she would have been incapable of opening herself to thinking of God in terms of objective analysis.   She set out to understand what should be her relationship with God.   She began to weigh the three alternatives within her environment: Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic.

She tried to return to the Judaism of her parents, especially by reading the Old Testament prophets. After deep exploration, Edith decided that Judaism did not fill the need in her heart.   But she never tried to refute it, as some Jews who have become complete in Christ do.   She was always respectful.   Her exploration of Protestant religion fit in with her preference for Bach’s Christian music.   More important, the Christian response to grief for the atrocities of World War I and the strength of Christian hope born of the Cross of Christ deeply impressed her.

Edith had tried to reach Christ on a rational level, but He reached her heart.   She had become close to Adolf and Anna Reinach, both Jewish converts to the Evangelical Church.   Adolf enlisted early in World War I and was killed in 1917. Edith went to his home to help Anna arrange his scholarly papers.   She had also come to console Anna.   Anna, however, was serene; her deep Christian faith led her to see the Cross in Adolf’s death.   Anna’s deep faith made a deep impression on Edith, and prepared her for what was to come.   Relating this experience many years later to Father Hirschaum, a Jesuit, Edith told him, “This was my first meeting with the Cross, with the divine strength it brings to those who bear it.  I saw for the first time within my reach the Church, born of the Redeemer’s sufferings in his victory over the sting of death.   It was at that moment that my incredulity was shattered and the light of Christ shone forth, Christ in the mystery of the Cross.” However, this was preparation.   Many Jews who find Christ, myself included, experience something like what Saul of Tarsus experienced on the road to Damascus, which breaks our attachment to our old way of thinking and prepares us for the conversion itself.

During the next three or four years Edith, again like many Jews attracted to Christ, entered a period of intense reflection.   She read numerous books on Catholic spirituality.  One day she bought a book on the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius.   She began by getting involved in the Exercises at a purely psychological level, but after a few pages she found this impossible.   She ended up doing the Spiritual Exercises as an atheist thirsting for God.   The Exercises were Christ’s preparation for what was to follow. That came in June 1921.  She went to Bergzabern, to the home of a friend, Hedwig Konrad Martius, a regular meeting place of Husserl former students.   Edith discovered in the library The Book of the Life, the autobiography of the great Spanish mystic, St Teresa of Avila, who originated the Carmelite Reform that restored and emphasized the austerity and contemplative character of primitive Carmelite life. Edith, astonishingly, finished the entire book in a single night.  Closing it, she exclaimed, “This is the truth!" Her Damascus transformation was complete; all became light for her.

The Path to Carmel

Edith was baptised on January 1st 1922 and at once began to consider becoming a Carmelite nun.   She had always sought the most complete path; Carmel seemed the only way to satisfy her desire for totality.   Thirty years old, full of energy and enthusiasm, her faith became an integral part of her life.

Mt. Carmel is in some mysterious way associated with Jews who become Catholic.   The prophet Elijah had spent most of his life on Mt. Carmel.   Elijah, the rabbis taught, would return to herald the arrival of the Messiah.   Jesus told us Mt 11:14 “[John the Baptist] is Elijah who is to come.”   Rev. Elias Friedman, a Jew who became a Catholic priest and founded the Association of Hebrew Catholics, was a Carmelite friar.   Edith Stein, when she was baptized, received a vocation to Carmel.

Twelve years passed, however, before she entered the Carmel of Cologne.   During that time she taught at the Institute for Scientific Pedagogy in Munster, gave lecture tours, studied, and above all matured interiorly.   Here again, Christ’s ways are above ours.   Edith may well have continued her brilliant academic career for the rest of her life, but the rising tide of anti-Semitic measures made it impossible for her to continue teaching.   Edith became a Carmelite nun, taking the name of Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.   

Taking the name “Teresa Benedicta of the Cross”  as a symbol of her acceptance of suffering.

“I felt,” she wrote, “that those who understood the Cross of Christ should take upon themselves on everybody's behalf.”   She saw it as her vocation “to intercede with God for everyone,” but she prayed especially for the Jews of Germany whose tragic fate was becoming clear.

“I ask the Lord to accept my life and my death,” she wrote in 1939, “so that the Lord will be accepted by his people and that his kingdom may come in glory, for the salvation of Germany and the peace of the world.”

The Germans discovered her Jewish origins.   She was no longer safe behind monastery walls in Germany, so in the wee hours of New Year’s Day 1939 she was taken to Holland, to the Carmel of Echt. It seemed tranquil, but Edith sensed that she would not escape the destiny of her people.

Auschwitz Concentration Camp WWII

The Final Journey

On Sunday July 26, 1942, a protest by the Catholic Bishops of Holland against the Nazi deportation of Dutch Jews was read at every Mass in all churches.   It said, “In this we are following the path indicated by our Holy Father, the Pope.”   Gestapo General-Commissar Schmidt announced, “We are compelled to regard the Catholic Jews as our worst enemies and consequently see to their deportation to the East with all possible speed.”   One week later, the Gestapo arrested, deported, and sent to Auschwitz all Dutch Catholics of Jewish origin.   At the Carmel of Echt, while she was writing her book on the doctrine of St John of the Cross, titled The Science of the Cross, two officials of the German occupation forces came to the monastery.   She had to go with them, together with her sister Rose, also a convert, who had joined her in Echt.   Edith and Rose Stein were deported to Auschwitz.   

On August 9th, 1942, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, in a white house filled with Zyklon-B gas, went to heaven.  She is remembered on August 9th as her feast day in the Church.

Pope John Paul II beatified Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross on May 1, 1987 and canonized her on Oct. 11, 1998.

St. Teresa Benedicta, pray for us!

Auschwitz Crematorium and Gas Chamber WWII

Article taken from  --- The Carmelite’s website 

http://ocarm.org/en/content/liturgy/st-teresa-benedicta-cross-ocd-virgin-and-martyr-feast