For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a

simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry

of recognition and of love, embracing both
trial and joy.” – St. Therese of of Lisieux
Sometimes words are not full enough to describe someone.
Therese, for me, is a melody.
A melody of grace lofting lyrically around our hearts in prayer;
a sound which invokes joy and sorrow, smiles and tears,
trust, hope and…love.
I’m not a musician, but I know a beautiful song when I hear it.
Her melody is one you wish never would end,
with Therese, “you hear the song”.

Bruce and I had a chance to speak with Brother Joseph

Schmidt about St. Therese. He wrote about her in “Everything
is Grace”.
Podcast (morning-show): Play in new
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This is my VERY favorite book about St. Therese…it’s wonderful

MY ONLY OCCUPATION IS LOVE

“I do not desire either suffering or death, although both are

appealing to me;
it is love alone which really attracts me…
I can ask for nothing with any enthusiasm
except the perfect accomplishment of the Divine Will in my
soul,
unhindered by any intrusion of created things.
I can say, with the words of our father, St. John of the Cross,
in his Spiritual Canticle,
‘I drank in the inner cellar of my Beloved, and when I went
forth into the meadow
I forgot everything and lost the flock which I used to drive.
My soul has employed all its resources in His service;
now I guard no flock, nor do I have any other duties.
Now my only occupation is love.’
Or again: ‘I know love is so powerful that it can turn
whatever is good or bad in me into profit,
and it can transform my soul into Himself.”
~ St. Thérèse

A MORNING PRAYER WRITTEN BY ST. THERESE

O my God! I offer Thee all my actions of this day for the

intentions and for the glory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I
desire to sanctify every beat of my heart, my every thought,
my simplest works, by uniting them to Its infinite merits; and I
wish to make reparation for my sins by casting them into the
furnace of Its Merciful Love.

O my God! I ask of Thee for myself and for those whom I hold
dear, the grace to fulfill perfectly Thy Holy Will, to accept for
love of Thee the joys and sorrows of this passing life, so that
we may one day be united together in heaven for all Eternity.

Amen.

PRAYER TO ST. THERESE

 O little St. Theresa of the Child
Jesus, who during your short life on earth became a mirror of
angelic purity, of love strong as death, and of wholehearted
abandonment to God, now that you rejoice in the reward of
your virtues, cast a glance of pity on me as I leave all things in
your hands. Make my troubles your own – speak a word for
me to our Lady Immaculate, whose flower of special love you
were – to that Queen of heaven “who smiled on you at the
dawn of life.” Beg her as the Queen of the heart of Jesus to
obtain for me by her powerful intercession, the grace I yearn
for so ardently at this moment, and that she join with it a
blessing that may strengthen me during life. Defend me at the
hour of death, and lead me straight on to a happy eternity.

Amen

St. Therese of Lisieux and the Little Way

VATICAN CITY, 6 APR 2011 (VIS) – In his general audience
in St. Peter’s Square today, attended by more than 10,000
people, Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis to St. Therese
of Lisieux, or St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy
Face, “who lived in this world for only twenty-four years at the
end of the nineteenth century, leading a very simple and hidden
life, but who, after her death and the publication of her writings,
became one of the best-known and loved saints”.

“Little Therese“, the Pope continued, “never

failed to help the most simple souls, the little ones,
the poor and the suffering who prayed to her, but
also illuminated all the Church with her profound
spiritual doctrine, to the point that the Venerable
John Paul II, in 1997, granted her the title of
Doctor of the Church … and described her as an
‘expert in scientia amoris’. Therese expressed this
science, in which all the truth of the faith is
revealed in love, in her autobiography ‘The Story
of a Soul’, published a year after her death”.
Therese was born in 1873 in Alencon, France. She was the
youngest of the nine children of Louis and Zelie Martin, and
was beatified in 2008. Her mother died when she was four
years old, and Therese later suffered from a serious nervous
disorder from which she recovered in 1886 thanks to what she
later described as “the smile of the Virgin”. In 1887 she made
a pilgrimage to Rome with her father and sister, where she
asked Leo XIII for permission to enter Carmel of Lisieux, at
just fifteen years of age. Her wish was granted a year later;
however, at the same time her father began to suffer from a
serious mental illness, which led Therese to the contemplation
of the Holy Face of Christ in his Passion. In 1890 she took her
vows. 1896 marked the beginning of a period of

great physical and spiritual suffering,

which accompanied her until her death.

In those moments, “she lived the faith at its most heroic, as the
light in the shadows that invade the soul” the Pope said. In this
context of suffering, living the greatest love in the littlest things
of daily life, the Saint realised her vocation of becoming the love
at the heart of the Church”.
She died in the afternoon of 30 September, 1897, uttering the
simple words, “My Lord, I love You!”. “These last words are
the key to all her doctrine, to her interpretation of the Gospel”,
the Pope emphasised. “The act of love, expressed in her final
breath, was like the continued breathing of the soul … The
words ‘Jesus, I love You’ are at the centre of all her writings”.

St. Therese is “one of the ‘little ones’ of the Gospel who allow
themselves to be guided by God, in the depth of His mystery. A
guide for all, especially for… theologians. With humility and
faith, Therese continually entered the heart of the Scriptures
which contain the Mystery of Christ. This reading of the Bible,
enriched by the science of love, does not oppose academic
science. The ‘science of the saints’, to which she refers on the
final page of ‘The Story of a Soul’, is the highest form of
science”.

“In the Gospel, Therese discovers above all

the Mercy of Jesus … and ‘Trust and Love’
are therefore the end point of her account of
her life, two words that, like beacons,
illuminated her saintly path, in order to guide
others along the same ‘little way of trust and
love’, of spiritual childhood. Her trust is like
that of a child, entrusting herself to the hands
of God, and inseparable from her strong,
radical commitment to the true love that is
the full giving of oneself”, the Holy Father
concluded.