Prayers to St. Thérèse of Lisieux

Catholics do not pray to saints instead of God. They ask saints to pray with them and for them, the way you would ask a friend. St. Thérèse is one of the most asked, because she said she wanted to be asked: the Catechism quotes her, “I want to spend my heaven in doing good on earth” (CCC 956). This prayer asks her to do what she said.

St. Thérèse is called the Little Flower because she called herself one. On the manuscript of the first part of her autobiography she set the title “The Story of the Springtime of a little white Flower,” and in it she writes that God’s garden needs the violet and the daisy as much as the rose and the lily: the little wild flowers are loved by him as they are, and she counted herself among them. The name stuck, and prayers to “the Little Flower” are prayers to her.

Her “little way” is not a devotion to add to the day. It is a way of living the day: doing ordinary things with love, accepting small humiliations quietly, and trusting God like a child trusts a parent instead of trying to earn his love. Pope St. John Paul II called it “the Gospel way of holiness for all.” A daily prayer asks her help to live it:

The Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes St. Thérèse more than most of the saints, and the passages it chose are themselves prayers. They are the best way to pray with her, rather than only to her.

• On what prayer is. The Catechism opens its whole teaching on prayer with her definition: “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” (CCC 2558).
• On praying with the Gospel. “But above all it’s the gospels that occupy my mind when I’m at prayer; my poor soul has so many needs, and yet this is the one thing needful. I’m always finding fresh lights there” (CCC 127).
• On her vocation. Searching for her place in the Church, she found it in love. The Church must have a heart, she wrote, “and I realized that this love alone was the true motive force which enabled the other members of the Church to act” (CCC 826).
• On coming before God with empty hands. From her Act of Oblation to Merciful Love: “In the evening of this life, I shall appear before you with empty hands, for I do not ask you, Lord, to count my works” (CCC 2011).
• On heaven. “I want to spend my heaven in doing good on earth” (CCC 956).
• On death. “I am not dying; I am entering life” (CCC 1011), which she wrote in a letter to Fr. Bellière, one of her spiritual brothers.

On June 9, 1895, the feast of the Holy Trinity, St. Thérèse offered herself to God’s merciful love in a prayer now called her Act of Oblation. The line the Catechism quotes (CCC 2011) goes on: “I wish, then, to be clothed in your own justice and to receive from your love the eternal possession of yourself.” It is the heart of her spirituality: not to arrive before God with a list of achievements, but with open hands, trusting him to fill them. A prayer in that spirit:

St. Thérèse knew illness. On the night between Holy Thursday and Good Friday, 1896, she noticed the first signs of the tuberculosis that killed her eighteen months later, on September 30, 1897, at twenty-four. At the same time, as Pope St. John Paul II wrote, she underwent “a trial of faith which will last until her death”: she went on praying through it. Her last words were “My God, I love you.” Many people who are ill, and many whose faith has gone dark, ask her prayers for exactly that reason.

Though she never left her convent after entering it at fifteen, on April 9, 1888, Pope Pius XI named her patron of the missions, together with St. Francis Xavier, on December 14, 1927, at the request of many missionary bishops. She prayed for missionaries and priests all her life, and wrote to young priests she regarded as her spiritual brothers, among them Fr. Bellière.

Many people who pray to St. Thérèse ask her to send a rose as a sign that she has heard them. It is a warm, century-old popular custom, not Church teaching, and it grew up with the Novena of the Twenty-four Glory Bes after 1925. The St. Thérèse novena page tells where it comes from and what she actually said about roses. The Society of the Little Flower in the United States, which prints a rose prayer on its own prayer card, puts it plainly: “One does not pray for roses.” A rose, if one comes, is a consolation; no rose means nothing about whether you were heard.

You will also find prayers to her described as a “miracle prayer” or one that “never fails.” No prayer to any saint is guaranteed to obtain what it asks. The Catechism calls it superstition to attribute the effect of a prayer to its mere external performance (CCC 2111). St. Thérèse, who met every disappointment of her life with trust, would be the last saint to want to be treated as a guarantee. Pray to her with confidence, and leave the answer to God.

Thérèse Martin was born at Alençon, in Normandy, on January 2, 1873. She entered the Carmelite convent at Lisieux on April 9, 1888, at fifteen, and died there on September 30, 1897, at twenty-four. Her autobiography, published a year after her death as Story of a Soul, went around the world. Pope Pius XI beatified her in 1923 and canonized her on May 17, 1925. On October 19, 1997, Pope St. John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church. Her feast is October 1. Her life, the little way and the history of the devotion to her are told more fully on the St. Thérèse novena page.