December 28, 2024

The November issue of Thérèse de Lisieux magazine is available! Find the rector's editorial and subscribe.

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I can therefore, despite my smallness, aspire to holiness.

Saint Therese – Ms C, 2v
Becoming a saint

One of the first written echoes of Thérèse's desire to be a saint is found in her first communion retreat (she was 11 years old): "I am preparing myself well, I hope to go to heaven". Just before entering Carmel, in a letter to Sister Agnès: "I want to be a saint..." (LT 45).

A few months later in a letter to her father: "I will try to make you glorious by becoming a great saint." (LT 52) To this end, Thérèse will commit herself body and soul. "When perfection appeared to me, I understood that to become a saint it was necessary to suffer a lot, to always seek the most perfect and to forget oneself; I understood that there were many degrees of perfection and that each soul was free to respond to the advances of Our Lord, to do little or a lot for Him [...]. I cried out: "My God [...] I do not want to be a half-saint, I am not afraid to suffer for you, I fear only one thing, to keep my will, take it, because "I choose everything" that you want!..." (Ms A 10).

But later she would write: “You know, my Mother, I have always wanted to be a saint. […] The Good Lord cannot inspire unrealizable desires, so I can aspire to holiness despite my smallness […] I am too small to climb the steep staircase of perfection. So I looked to the holy drunkards for directions to the elevator. […] The elevator that must lift me up to Heaven is your arms, O Jesus! For that I do not need to grow up, on the contrary I must remain small, and become more and more so.” (Ms C 2v-3r)

Father Emmanuel Schwab, Rector of the Sanctuary

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