Having come incognito to Little Thérèse to recharge my batteries, as at every major stage of my life, I found myself caught up in this call that I had received in Lisieux and this need to return there each time. In 2004, I didn't know how to direct my life. I had decided to spend a month in Lisieux as a volunteer serving the sanctuaries. During this month with Thérèse, I entrusted my future to the Lord. My last day in Lisieux, in an innocuous way, I bumped into a friend. We speak. I tell her to greet a religious friend we know well. A few days later, I received a call from Sister Laetitia who asked me to perform songs with her inspired by Thérèse's poems. The success was immediate, and we performed around sixty concerts together. Twenty years later, I realize that this moment was significant for my life and that I received a calling there.

The first time I met Thérèse, I was 14 years old and I lived in Ariège with my family who were not very religious. It was on the occasion of the first pilgrimage of his relics to prepare for the Centenary of his death. The relics traveled to Paris, Lyon, Marseille… Mgr de Monléon had asked that they stop in Ariège. In the church where they were exhibited, I experienced the joy of being at the heart of an incredible celebration around Thérèse's visit. I discovered a very simple message which spoke of Trust and Abandonment, to the point that I suddenly became passionate about the saints of Carmel.

Since 1995, I have been singing Thérèse's work. This is important to me, because Thérèse touches me with her simplicity and the easy access to her texts. She talks to the little ones. For me, it was his poems that were the gateway to a living faith. This journey with Thérèse led me in 1998, at the age of 18, to try out Carmelite life. I have very good memories of it and a deepening of my spirituality, as well as the discovery of prayer. This heart-to-heart prayer is so well explained by Thérèse. She is for me a true master of spiritual life.

What strikes me is that we know his life, his spiritual intuitions, but it is by experiencing Carmelite life that his teaching takes on meaning. Let us discover the channel of grace through which she discovered the great thing about God: prayer. Pope Francis chose to publish his exhortation: It's confidence on the feast day of Saint Teresa of Avila in order, he says, “to present Saint Teresa of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face as a ripe fruit of the reform of Carmel and of the spirituality of the great Spanish saint. » For me, understanding little Thérèse's message and living it every day means integrating Thérèse's writings through the Carmelite rule and the life of prayer. It is one of the great challenges for those who like to make Thérèse known, to discover this grace of prayer of heart to heart prayer with God and of meditation in a world where it is so difficult to find an inner life. I want to sing his texts which touch me deeply to share this gateway to the inner life. Pope Francis recalls that Thérèse is a missionary because she considers that her strong love for God will attract souls to God. "The last pages ofStory of a soul are a missionary testament. They express his way of conceiving evangelization by attraction and not by pressure or proselytism. It’s interesting to read how she sums it up: “ attract me » (…) This simple word, “ attract me ”, is enough. Lord, I understand, when a soul has allowed itself to be captivated by the intoxicating smell of your perfumes, it cannot run alone, all the souls it loves are drawn along in its wake; it happens without constraint, without effort, it is a natural consequence of his attraction towards you.”

Gregory Turpin