One hundred years ago, a young nun died of tuberculosis in an obscure Carmelite monastery in Lisieux, France. Her birth name was Marie-Francoise-Therese Martin, but the world has come to know her as St. Therese, the Little Flower of Jesus, because of her love of flowers.
On Saturday, nearly 1,000 people are expected to come to the National Shrine of St. Therese to participate in a symposium honoring, giving thanks to and reflecting upon the remarkable young woman whose simplicity appeals to many people.
The shrine, created in Chicago in 1932, moved to Darien in 1987 to join the Carmelite Spiritual Center and be across the street from the Society of the Little Flower, named for Therese. All three centers are frequented by thousands of visitors each year.
The centenary celebration planned for Saturday will offer three seminars on various aspects of the life and work of St. Therese. In addition, there will be an 11 a.m. mass celebrated by, among others, Archbishop Francis George.
It will be a busy day in Darien, but it won’t be the first time people have come from all over the country to visit the shrine. It is a year-round destination for people from places as near as Lombard and as far away as Mexico and the Philippines.
Some come out of simple curiosity to see the relics and mementos of the life of St. Therese, who proclaimed that her work would begin at her death. Others come to worship in the chapel, one wall of which contains a 27-foot-wide, 12-foot-tall wooden sculpture. Hand-carved in Ortesi, Italy, it was designed particularly for the shrine and contains scenes of the short life of St. Therese.
Some come to worship or to give thanks for answered prayers. Others come with sorrow in their hearts and turn to her for guidance, comfort and hope.
How does she answer their prayers?
With roses.
As a young child, Therese loved to sprinkle flower petals at religious processions. As she lay dying in a back room of the convent that looked out over a garden of roses, Therese proclaimed, “I will spend my heaven doing good on earth. I will let fall a shower of roses.”
According to Colaresi, St. Therese has fulfilled that proclamation. When he started his post as national director of the Society of the Little Flower in 1991, Colaresi regarded the promise of roses with moderate skepticism, but he has seen so many fulfillments of this promise in the last six years that he no longer doubts.
The Society of the Little Flower receives hundreds of letters a day from individuals whose lives have been touched by St. Therese. In nearly all of these letters, there is a mention of roses.
Sometimes there is the scent of roses; sometimes there are rose petals or a bouquet of roses delivered to a hospital room. Other times a person may open a book to a page of roses or find himself walking or driving past a garden with rose bushes.
One person who recently visited the center had never heard of St. Therese’s promise of roses. The next day, a visitor to her home brought a present: three fully bloomed roses molded from potter’s clay and heavily painted in gold.
Skeptics and cynics may challenge these testimonials, but those whose lives have been touched by St. Therese accept the gift of roses in the spirit of simplicity that characterized the life of this saint.
“Somehow roses appear,” Colaresi said. “The beauty of St. Therese is in her simplicity. She never lost the simplicity of the child’s heart, despite having suffered numerous abandonments, not the least among them the death of her mother when she was only 5.”
Described by one scholar as “a child prodigy of spirituality,” St. Therese was, for all her simplicity, a bold young girl.
At age 10, Therese is said to have thought of herself as the new Joan of Arc, dedicated not just to the rescue of France but to the whole world. Years earlier, on a walk with her father, Therese pointed her hand up toward the heavens saying, “Look, Papa, my name is written in the heavens.”
Seeking to enter the convent at the age of 9, she was told to come back and ask again after she had grown up. Almost six years later, Therese appealed to the local religious authority, who dismissed her request. She then appealed directly to Bishop Hugonin of Bayeux.
After hearing her request, the bishop responded saying, “You are not yet 15 and you wish this?”
“I have wished it since the dawn of reason,” said the young girl, who entered the convent shortly thereafter.
Therese was canonized as a saint by Pope Pius XI in 1925, just 28 years after her death. Next month, Pope John Paul II will proclaim her a Doctor of the Church, an honor shared by only two other women, St. Theresa of Avila and St. Catherine of Sienna.
According to Colaresi, St. Therese continues to inspire people around the world with her simple message of faith in the constancy of God’s presence in our lives. At a time when the prevalent authorities of her day promulgated the image of a stern and judgmental God, he said, Therese’s image of God was nurtured by her perpetual ability to see God and the world through the innocent and ever-hopeful eyes of a child.
Colaresi believes St. Therese’s message is even more relevant for today’s hectic world: “I think there is a growing, gnawing hunger for spirituality that Therese can help us with today.”
