HAPPY FEAST DAY TO MY FAVORITE SAINT ST.THERESE

Today is the feast day of my favorite Saint, St.Therese of Lisieux.  I could so relate to her when my mom was dying.  She lost her mom at age 4 1/2 and her father like mine suffered with mental illness during the end of his life.  She all so suffered with a lot of depression.  I can appreciate that she didn't hide her struggles but willingly shared them in her auto biography, A Story of a Soul.

She realized she could not to the great things other Saints did but instead could love God in her ordinary life by doing all with great love.  She accepted the humiliation's she experienced in the  Convent and offered it up to the Lord.  She embraced those nuns who were hard to embrace.  She basically died to herself and her selfishness so that Christ could live in her.  We are all called as St.Therese to die to self so Christ may live through us.

She also had mercy for herself and others.......she wrote:  "charity consists in bearing with the faults of others in not being surprised at their weakness, in being edified by the smallest acts of virtue we see them practice".

She realized  that her true vocation was Love and wrote: My vocation is Love! Yes, I have found my place in the Church and it is you, O my God, who have given me this place in the Church and it is you, O my God, who have given me this place--in the heart of the Church, my mother, I shall be LOVE. Thus I shall be everything-- the thus my dream will be fulfilled!

Thank you for your faithfulness St.Therese it has brought countless people to know Jesus in a more personal way!  If you want to know more about St. Therese one of my all time favorite books is,
Everything is Grace..........The Life and Way of Therese of Lisieux.

May you find a friend in her like I have!  A little more history of her:

St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face is one of the Church’s most popular saints. Thérèse was born in 1873 to Louis Martin, a watchmaker, and Zelie Guerin, a lace-maker. She was one of nine children, four of whom died very young. Thérèse suffered greatly in her early life due to the death of her mother, and she endured years of very difficult mental anguish. Thérèse’s faith was strong, and she became a Carmelite nun at the early age of fifteen, after requesting the special permission of her bishop and the pope. She lived in the Carmelite convent of Lisieux, France, joining two of her sisters there. Her other two sisters also became nuns.

Her nine years there seemed uneventful and ordinary, yet were very heroic. Thérèse realized that sanctity could be achieved in and through the simple routines and daily work of life. Instead of ambitiously seeking to do great things, she contented herself with following her “little way” – simple trust in and love for God, and the attempt to glorify Him in everything she did, no matter how insignificant. She considered herself the “little flower,” more ordinary than a rose, unseen by the world, yet beautiful and cherished by God nonetheless.

She once said, “I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.” Thérèse suffered from poor health all her life, but, in spite of her frailty, she spent many hours of hard work in the convent laundry and refectory.

During her last year of life, she contracted tuberculosis and suffered greatly before dying at the very young age of twenty-four. (The day of her death she murmured, “I would not suffer less.”) Her Autobiography, written in obedience to her superiors, was later published under the title The Story of a Soul. As she died, she clutched a crucifix, and repeated, “Oh, how I love Him!”

She was canonized a saint, and in 1997 was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II.