A later Saint of the carmelite order was the french Thérèse of the child Jesus of Lisieux. She was born Marie Frančois Thérèse Martin reportedly of devout parents who visited the sick. Thought to be one of nine siblings. Many didn’t survive. As a baby her survival was uncertain. She was sent to the country to live with a wet nurse and returned at fifteen months of age. Her mother Zèlie made lace. According to her mother, on her return, each morning whilst climbing downstairs she would stop at every step and call, ‘mama’ only continuing when her mother answered. She was four and a half when her mother died of a tumour, and became withdrawn.
Thérèse who was bullied at school was traumatised when her older sister, Pauline a second mother to her, joined the carmelite nuns. In the absence of jobs for many women, the convent was somewhere to go. According to Thérèse she began to recover when a statue of Jesus’ mother Mary smiled at her. She was unable to be sure about this for more than four years. Another sister, Marie also joined the carmelite nuns in Lisieux leaving only Céline and her father. Another period of grief followed. She is thought to have suffered from extreme anxiety for a year and a half before developing a calm. Two books made an impression on her. ‘The Imitation of Christ’ and ‘The End of the World and the Mysteries of the World to Come’.
When Thérèse told her father she was joining the carmelite nuns he picked her a flower. To Thérèse the flower seemed like herself, destined to live in another soil. She was an innocent in the area of conversion, praying for the conversion of a man who murdered two women and a child. In November 1887 she met pope Louis XIII and refused to leave his side. She asked to be a carmelite nun and he replied it was the superiors decision. In 1888 she made an official request.
Reportedly the convent was austere, food sparse and heating in only one room. There were twenty six nuns including her sisters. Marie taught her the prayers. Convent life was one of silence and solitude but also work and relaxation. Father Pichon, a Jesuit was chosen as her spiritual director. That year her father went missing for days, turning up at the post office at Le Havre. He died in 1894. Reportedly, during the 1890’s Thérèse’s poems and prayers spread devotion to the holy face. She died at the age of twenty seven in 1897 of tb. Approved by pope Pius XII the feast of the holy face is shrove Tuesday.