Biographer Stéphane-Joseph Piat, OFM begins with Thérèse’s praise for her parents, Louis and Zélie Martin, then traces how their faith and family life prepared her for the way of spiritual childhood. He sees her teaching as God’s gift, nourished in the home of two saints. Reading time: 2 minutes Read more →

As Saint Thérèse lay dying on 30 September 1897, she asked to be prepared to die well and spoke of suffering without consolation. Mother Agnès of Jesus, her sister, testified to those final hours, Thérèse’s last words before the crucifix, and the community’s return to her bedside. Reading time: 3 minutes Read more →

Thérèse Martin was born at Alençon in 1873. At the age of fifteen, she entered the Carmel at Lisieux. She practiced heroic humility, evangelical simplicity, and trust in God, and taught the novices these virtues by word and example. She offered her life for the salvation of souls and the growth of the Church. She died on September 30, 1897. Canonized in 1925, she was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1997. Read more →

At a Miami detention center, Bishop Silvio José Báez, OCD, tells men separated from their families that God keeps coming to seek them, even when the world seems to have left them behind. He calls them to care for one another and trust that their lives can begin again. Read more →

On 29 September 1897, Saint Thérèse struggled for breath as her community gathered around her bed to recite the prayers for the dying. After the sisters left, she asked Mother Marie de Gonzague if this was her agony and confessed, “I will never know how to die!”

Rain poured through the roof of a newly prepared chapel in Salamanca, leaving Saint Teresa of Avila distressed before the Blessed Sacrament was reserved there. On St. Michael’s feast, as the sun began to shine, she saw how much better another had trusted in God. Reading time: 2 minutes Read more →

Bishop Silvio José Báez, OCD, insists that no failure defines our future. God looks upon us with love and hope, seeing not only who we are but what we can become. Conversion begins when we reflect, learn from our mistakes, and allow God to make all things new.

In the last days of September 1897, Sister Aimée gently lifted the dying Thérèse without a jolt. On 26 September, Thérèse compared her fragile life to a dead leaf hanging by a tiny thread. Reading time: 1 minute Read more →

Blessed Josefa Naval Girbés taught young people in her family home and cared for the dying during a cholera epidemic. In his beatification homily, Saint John Paul II praised a woman who remained in the world and made her ordinary surroundings a place of Christian formation and charity. Reading time: 2 minutes Read more →

As the Carmelites of Compiègne approached the guillotine, they sang hymns and renewed their vow of obedience. Recalling their witness in his final Angelus address, Blessed John Paul I answered the violence of his own day with a startling claim: love can do everything. Reading time: 2 minutes Read more →

Saint Teresa of Jesus of the Andes wrote to her cousin, who hoped to enter the Society of the Sacred Heart. From Carmel, Teresa suggested that her cousin could live like a Carmelite within her own vocation. Her letter shows what that would ask of her each day. Reading time: 2 minutes Read more →

Join us for a powerful novena to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux that she may help us love Jesus as she did. Each day pairs Scripture with Thérèse’s words to her sister Marie in Letter 197, inviting us to follow her little way of trust and surrender.

Jessica Powers moves from familiar forms of prayer to its deepest purpose: seeking God’s presence and will. Whether words come from a breviary or arise in the mind, true prayer perseveres through helplessness and distraction, trusting that God receives the soul that has nowhere else to go. Reading time: 2 minutes Read more →