Wednesday, October 1, 2025

It is the 1^st of October 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I'm your guest host, Sam Leanza Ortiz.

 

On today’s show, we remember one of the modern era’s most popular saints, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, on her feast day.

Thérèse of Lisieux was born Marie Francoise-Therese Martin on the second of January 1873 to devout Catholic parents, Louis and Zelie, in Alençon, France.

As a child, she was physically weak but was able to participate in the rigors of her family’s devotional life – including daily mass, charitable works, and prayer.

At the age of four, her mother, Zelie, died of breast cancer, leaving Thérèse’s father, Louis, and her four older sisters without a devoted wife and mother. Though she was so young, Therese described this period as transformational, in that her once happy disposition had left her, and instead, she carried on, diffident and oversensitive.

The effects of their mother’s death seemed to affect all these sisters deeply, such that they would all go on to become religious sisters.

To cope with this loss, Louis moved the family to Lisieux to be near his late wife’s family. There, the girls would attend a school run by Benedictine nuns. Thérèse seemed to hate school, craving the protection that hiding would provide, even going so far as to play “anchorite” with her cousin, Marie.

In 1888, at age 15, she entered a Carmelite convent in Lisieux. Though she had been refused a year earlier, once a part of the community, she reportedly kept the rules obsessively, struggling under the weights of guilt, doubt, and depression.

Her struggles in the convent, conveyed in letters, were published posthumously in the book Story of a Soul, which details her “doctrine of the Little Way.” Thérèse advocated for a life that followed “the way of spiritual childhood, the way of trust and absolute surrender.”

Shortly into her time as a novitiate, her father began experiencing a mental decline that would have him disappear for days at a time, wandering aimlessly. In response to this suffering and the trials of the order, she turned to the works of the Carmelite saint, John of the Cross, who described the journey of the soul as one from the “dark night” to the “night of sense” followed by the “night of the spirit,” which sees the saint traverse the arid deserts to the end of oneself, only to find true comfort in God.

Thérèse’s novitiate brought her to the end of herself, as it lasted an unusually long time of twenty months rather than the standard year. She made her final commitment to her religious vocation in September 1890, and she would devote her remaining years to prayer and service.

She felt particularly called to pray for priests and missionaries. Knowing that her position as a cloistered nun with a weak constitution would keep her from the typical works that bring one to sainthood, Thérèse felt that Jesus called her to pursue a downward path of humility and devotion.

As a novice, Thérèse requested never to be promoted within the convent. While she desired sainthood, she wrote that “Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers, and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love.” In her writings, she extended this metaphor to referring to herself as the “little flower of Jesus.”

She wrote that even after her death, she “would continue to do good in heaven and would show this by letting fall ‘a shower of roses’ on earth.” That reality for Thérèse would come sooner rather than later as her body weakened in the 1890s. By 1896, she contracted tuberculosis, but despite her sickness, she continued in her work of encouraging those who served the Church, continuously corresponding with missionaries as far as French Indochina.

Tuberculosis wreaked havoc on her body, and she passed from this life at the age of 24 on September 30, 1897. Her saintliness was quickly recognized, as she was beatified in 1923 and canonized in 1925, and within a decade of her canonization, Lisieux became a site of pilgrimage.

While she was recognized as a saint very quickly, other members of her family would join her as canonized saints. Her parents were canonized together in 2015, becoming the first spouses to be canonized as a couple, and her older sister Leonie is currently under consideration for sainthood.

Since her canonization one hundred years ago, her feast day has moved around. Initially, it was set to the third of October, simply because it was the closest open date to the anniversary of her death. Following the Second Vatican Council, the liturgical calendar was revised, and her feast was moved to October 1, celebrating her entry into heaven on the day following her death. The celebration of her life and work did not stop there, for in 1997, Pope John Paul II named her a doctor of the church, making her one of four women to receive this honorific.

And so we remember this doctor of the church, the patron saint of missionaries, florists, pilots, and priests, the “little flower of Jesus” St. Thérèse of Lisieux on her feast day, the first of October.

 

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary, from Matthew 19:

¹⁶ Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”

¹⁷ “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”

¹⁸ “Which ones?” he inquired.

Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, ¹⁹ honor your father and mother,’^[a] and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’^[b]”

²⁰ “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”

²¹ Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

²² When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 1^st of October 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

This show has been produced by Christopher Gillespie.

This show has been written and read by Sam Leanza Ortiz, filling in for Dan van Voorhis, who was disappointed to learn that Carmelites have nothing to do with making hard candies.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.