November 8, 2006, - - - Confirmation Essay on Patron Saint       

 

Marie Frances Therese was born to Zelie and Louis Martin in Alencon,  France on January 2, 1873. Therese was the youngest of nine children—but only five of them had survived. Therese had always wanted to be a hero of the Church on the battlefield, like St. Joan of Arc, but Therese realized that she was meant to serve God in a different way.
   

Zelie Martin, her mother, died when Therese was only four years old. The Martin family then moved to Lisieux, where Therese was sent to school. Therese was a smart student and she was put into a higher grade. Therese was the youngest in her class and was often teased by the older girls. Therese prayed for them for she knew that they must go to heaven too.
   

Therese was very lonely during her schooling because Celine, her sister, was too busy to play with her. It was during this time that Therese became closer to God than she ever had before. She loved to pretend that she was the Infant Jesus’s ball and that Jesus would play with his little ball. She offered many small sacrifices for the love of the infant Jesus. Therese noticed little flowers one day and saw how they relied completely on God to live. She wanted to be like those flowers who were completely innocent and relied on God.  She gave herself to Him and did things that she didn’t like to do with care and with love and made many small sacrifices to Him. This is why she is called the “Little Flower”.

 

Therese entered the Carmelite convent at the young age of fifteen. She had been waiting to enter for six years and finally was allowed to enter. Therese practiced her “ Little Way” of doing things in the convent. There were nuns that she especially disliked but offered up the annoyances and replaced them with love. Therese took her final vows on September 8, 1890.  While Therese was in Carmel, her father was dying from having had a series of strokes. It was in 1894 when Louis Martin left the earth. Therese bore this sorrow heroically.

 

When twenty-three years old, Therese was ordered by the prioress to write an autobiography of her life. She became occupied with writing until the end of her life.
Therese died at the young age of twenty-four. She died from tuberculosis on September 30, 1897. Her last words were “My God… I love Thee!” Pope Pius XI canonized Therese twenty-eight years after her death. St. Therese is a Doctor of the Church, and is the Patroness of Missionaries.

 

I chose St. Therese because she is one of my favorite saints and she is the saint I can look up to. She set an example for the world because she did things with love and offered them up to God by using her Little Way.  Most people are not called to be great saints of the battlefield but are called to set an example by making small sacrifices. I want to be like St. Therese and follow the example she set.