The Autobiography of Saint Therese: The Story of a Soul

This book is a wonderful read, and no amount of explaining can give it the credit it deserves. Everyone should read this book-- period.


A spiritually illuminatig confession of unbridled devotion.   May 31, 2002
Christian Engler (Woburn, Massachusetts)
To have a veritably sacred and loving bond with God is a wonderful and unexplainable sensation, an ecstasy that no degree of hyperbole can befittingly describe, for, it is an experience that is transcendent above all things earthly. When one searches to have a holy unification with the Lord, when they utter, "I love God," they are seized by the ethereal clasp of the Divine. And it is good. Sometimes that celestial grip is so wonderfully strong, what emanates from the soul into the sanctified cup is overflowing, leaving copious amounts of blessed spillage. But 'spillage' is often deemed as a mess, the useless and unwanted remnants of our material gains, the wastes of humanity, the 'useless eaters' of society whom the public (myself included) at large, without flinching, tenaciously, soullessly, ignore. But in the case of Saint Therese of Lisieux, her spillage, quite simply, are her very words, loving pledges and unnterances that resound with unadulterated esoteric wisdom that is normally relegated to those who have lived well beyond their years. And even in old age-through a conscientious process of living and observing-it is very doubtful that one could possibly have attained, achieved the indefinate caliber of grace, purity and intelligence that she was obviously endowed with. Her words remind one and all that in the ugly there is beauty, in the hopelessness, there is hope, in the gravity, there is grace, in the challanged (mentally, physically), there is profound depth and courage, but it all derives from a glowing source: God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit. Her words teach, for she herself says on page 124: "...any small good deed I do can be mistaken for a fault, the mistake of calling a fault a virtue can be made just as easily." When something moral is made to appear immoral and something immoral is made to appear moral, a blunt mental crash may easily occur, destroying that which was once soild and good: the innocence of youth a prime example, the weapon, one of many: social politics. Her autobiography, written with some reticence, brings forth (not fully) the story of how she came to be a Carmelite nun, but the stark affect God had over her: "One Sunday when I was looking at a picture of Our Lord on the Cross, I saw the blood coming from one of his hands, and I felt terribly sad to think that it was falling to the earth and that no one was rushing forward to catch it. I determined to stay continually at the foot of the cross and receive it. I knew that I should then have to spread it among other souls. The cry of Jesus on the cross--'I am thirsty'-- rang continually in my heart and set me burning with a new, intense longing. I wanted to quench the thirst of my Well Beloved and I myself was consumed with a thirst for souls. I was concerned not with the souls of priests but with those of great sinners which I wanted to snatch from the flames of hell." P. X. In time, Saint Therese also worked for the souls of priests. It's a shame she's not here now. Her simple little book is not, true, a literary magnum opus, but its direct simplicity offers something of far better value; it is a work that led to her canonization by Pius XI in 1925, led to her being declared the principal patron (along with St. Francis Xavier) of all missionaries and missions and later, declared the secondary patron of France (with St. Joan of Arc). The book-like the Bible-has an inarguable power to move and clense: "I am only a weak and helpless child, yet it is in my very weakness which has made me daring enough to offer myself to You, Jesus, as the victim of your love. Long ago only pure and spotless victims were accepted by the almighty God. The divine justice could be satisfied only by immaculate victims, but the law of love has replaced that of fear, and love has chosen me as a victim-feeble and imperfect creature that I am. Is the choice of me worthy of love? Yes, it is, because in order for love to be fully satisfied it must descend to nothingness and transform that nothingness to living fire. I know, Lord, that 'love is repaid by love alone.' And so I have sought and I have found the way to ease my heart-by giving You love for love." P. 162. If that is not what we're here for, the human race will never survive.