September 26
“The value of life does not depend upon the place we occupy. It depends upon the way we occupy that place.”
-St. Therese of Lisieux
September 26
“The value of life does not depend upon the place we occupy. It depends upon the way we occupy that place.”
-St. Therese of Lisieux
June 26
“How often have I thought that I may owe all the graces I’ve received to the prayers of a person who begged them from God for me, and whom I shall know only in heaven.”
-St. Therese of Lisieux
St. Teresa of Avila shows us it is never too late to get serious about our prayer life. Born Dona Teresa Sanchez Cepeda Davila y Ahumada, Teresa was an active child with a big imagination and great sensitivity of heart. Little Teresa and her brother Roderigo were intrigued by the lives of the saints and the martyrs, and often sought to imitate their holy example.
From the earliest times, the history of the Church is studded with appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary. One such apparition happened when Our Lady appeared to three shepherd children in the small hamlet of Cova da Iria in Fatima, Portugal.
Hidden behind the walls of the Carmelite convent she entered at age fifteen, St. Therese was struck down by tuberculosis in her early twenties. There was nothing remarkable about the young nun, nothing to suggest that she would become one of the most beloved of all the saints. And yet, her “little way,” characterized by the twin virtues of obedience and simplicity, touched so many people that Rome opened her cause for canonization only seventeen years after her death. She was canonized in 1925, proclaimed the universal patron of missions in 1927, and Doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II in 1997.