St Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower: her life and her “little way”

Thérèse Martin was born in Alençon, Normandy, on 2 January 1873, the youngest of the nine children of Louis and Zélie Martin, of whom five daughters survived. Her mother died when she was four, and the family moved to Lisieux. Four of her sisters became nuns; Thérèse, after asking the bishop and even Pope Leo XIII in person, was allowed to enter the Carmel of Lisieux at fifteen, in 1888.

She lived there nine years, without any outward distinction, and died of tuberculosis on 30 September 1897, aged twenty-four. Her last words were: “My God, I love You.” Her parents were canonised together in 2015, the first married couple to be canonised together.

At the request of her superiors, Thérèse wrote an account of her life, published after her death as Story of a Soul. It went round the world. In it she describes her “little way”: holiness not through great deeds but through doing small things with great love, and through the complete trust of a child in its father. She called herself a little flower of Jesus.

She had longed to be a missionary, and offered her prayers and sufferings for priests and missionaries. Pope Pius XI, who canonised her on 17 May 1925, named her patron of the missions alongside St Francis Xavier in 1927. Pope St John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church in 1997. Her feast is 1 October.

Shortly before she died, Thérèse said that she would spend her heaven doing good upon earth, and that she would let fall a shower of roses. That is why she is shown with roses, and why people who pray to her often speak of receiving a rose — a flower given unexpectedly, a rose in a card — as a sign that she has heard them.

Ireland has always loved her. When her relics toured the country in 2001, very large crowds came out to pray before them across the country.

St Ignatius Statues opened on 1 October 2026, the feast of St Thérèse, and the shop is entrusted to her. The statue in the photograph above is one of ours: a St Thérèse from St Ignatius Statues, in Galway Cathedral. You can read the rest of that story on our story page.

Because she is the saint of small things done with love, St Thérèse belongs in ordinary places: a bedroom, a kitchen windowsill, a student’s desk, the room of someone who is ill. Many people keep fresh roses at her feet, or a single rose on 1 October. In a convent or a parish she is often found near the side altar of Our Lady, or in a chapel dedicated to the missions.

As a gift, she suits Confirmation, a young woman entering religious life, a nurse or carer, or anyone going through a hard time who needs a reminder that trust is enough. A painted statue shows the brown and cream of the Carmelite habit and the red of the roses; a marble Thérèse is quieter and stands well in a garden or a memorial. See religious gifts for more ideas.