The Work
Story of a Soul (Histoire d'une âme) was composed in three separate manuscripts written under obedience between 1895 and 1897. Manuscript A (completed 1896), addressed to her prioress Mother Agnes (her biological sister Pauline), covers her childhood and early years in Carmel. Manuscript B (1896), a letter to her sister Marie, contains the famous passage on the 'little way' and the lifting up of the soul to God as a small child in an elevator. Manuscript C (1897), addressed to the current prioress, was written during her final illness from tuberculosis and deals with her last years in Carmel.
After Thérèse's death on September 30, 1897, the manuscripts were edited by Mother Agnes into a single narrative and published by the Carmelite press in Lisieux in 1898 as Histoire d'une âme. The edited version was not a simple compilation; Mother Agnes made significant cuts, additions, and revisions. The original manuscripts were not published in unedited form until 1956. The difference between the original and edited texts has been the subject of scholarly attention, though the essential spiritual vision is consistent across both.
The book has been translated into dozens of languages and has sold tens of millions of copies. Thérèse was beatified in 1923, canonized in 1925, proclaimed co-patron of France (with Joan of Arc) in 1944, proclaimed co-patron of the missions in 1927, and declared a Doctor of the Church on October 19, 1997 - one of only four women to be so honored.
Biblical Engagement
Matthew 18:3 - 'Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven' - is the foundational text for Thérèse's 'little way.' She writes in Manuscript B: 'I have always wanted to be a saint. Alas! I have always noticed that when I compared myself to the saints, there is between them and me the same difference that exists between a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds and the obscure grain of sand trampled underfoot by passers-by. Instead of becoming discouraged, I said to myself: God cannot inspire unrealizable desires. I can, then, in spite of my littleness, aspire to holiness. It is impossible for me to grow up, and so I must bear with myself just as I am with all my imperfections. But I want to seek out a means of going to heaven by a little way, a way that is very straight, very short, and totally new.'
The 'little way' is the way of spiritual childhood: trusting God as a child trusts a parent, not through heroic asceticism or extraordinary virtue but through complete dependence. Matthew 18:3 establishes this as Jesus's own reversal of human assumptions about spiritual achievement - it is the child's trust rather than the adult's accomplishment that is the model for entering the kingdom.
Isaiah 66:13 - 'As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you' - is central to Thérèse's sense of God as a mother-figure of tender comfort. She developed from Isaiah 66 and the associated feminine imagery in the prophets a sense of divine tenderness that counteracted the Jansenist emphasis on divine severity that had dominated French Catholic piety. Her God is not primarily a judge to be appeased but a parent whose delight is in the child's complete trust.
Luke 18:17 - 'Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein' - reinforces Matthew 18:3. Thérèse's repeated emphasis on receiving rather than achieving is grounded in these synoptic teachings: the kingdom is a gift received by those who acknowledge their need, not a reward earned by those who have accumulated virtue.
Psalm 131:2 - 'Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child' - provides Thérèse with a direct Psalmic statement of the posture she is describing: the soul weaned from its own projects and satisfactions, resting simply in the divine presence without grasping.
Author and Context
Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin was born on January 2, 1873, in Alençon, Normandy, the youngest of nine children (of whom five survived to adulthood). Her family was bourgeois, devout, and saturated with Catholic practice; her father, Louis Martin, was a watchmaker, and her mother, Zélie, was a lacemaker. Her mother died of breast cancer in 1877, when Thérèse was four, leaving a grief that marked her deeply.
The family moved to Lisieux, where Thérèse grew up in an atmosphere of intense Catholic piety. Five of the nine Martin children entered religious life; all five sisters became Carmelites (four of them at the Carmel of Lisieux). Thérèse's desire to enter Carmel at fourteen was initially refused; she traveled to Rome to petition Pope Leo XIII in person during his jubilee pilgrimage (1887), a request he acknowledged without granting. She entered Carmel in April 1888, at fifteen, after special permission from the bishop.
Thérèse was diagnosed with tuberculosis in April 1896 and died on September 30, 1897, at twenty-four. Her dying words were: 'My God, I love you.' Her last eighteen months - during which she endured both the physical suffering of tuberculosis and a severe spiritual crisis involving profound doubts about eternal life - are narrated in Manuscript C and represent the 'dark night of the soul' dimension of her experience that is often less emphasized in popular devotion.
The Little Way
The 'little way' (la petite voie) is Thérèse's most distinctive spiritual contribution. It is a path of spiritual childhood - absolute trust in God's merciful love, combined with the offering of every small act of daily life as a form of love. It is emphatically not a path of spiritual mediocrity or a spirituality of low ambition; Thérèse explicitly says she wants to be a great saint and that the 'little way' is the way to that sanctity.
The elevator image is the most famous expression: 'I wanted to find an elevator which would raise me to Jesus, for I am too small to climb the rough stairway of perfection. I searched, then, in the Scriptures for some sign of this elevator, the object of my desires, and I read these words coming from the mouth of Eternal Wisdom: 'Whoever is a little one, let him come to me.' And so I succeeded. I felt that I had found what I was looking for.' The elevator is divine love itself - God raising the soul that acknowledges its smallness, rather than the soul achieving elevation through its own efforts.
The 'little way' had a revolutionary impact on Catholic spirituality: it democratized mysticism. Before Thérèse, mystical union with God was generally regarded as the province of monastics who had undergone years of ascetic training. Thérèse demonstrated that the same intimacy with God was available to every believer who practiced complete trust - including the ignorant, the spiritually struggling, and the ordinary.
Critical Reception
The initial edited version was received with enormous popular enthusiasm across France and quickly spread internationally. The unedited versions, published in 1956 and subsequent years, allowed scholars to see Thérèse's original voice and to appreciate the extent of Mother Agnes's revisions - which had tended to smooth over Thérèse's personality and her spiritual crisis.
Hans Urs von Balthasar's Thérèse of Lisieux: The Story of a Mission (1950) is the most important theological appreciation, arguing that Thérèse's 'little way' is a genuinely original theological contribution - a recovery of Pauline grace against the Jansenist moralism that had dominated French Catholicism.
Dorothy Day, Gabriel Marcel, and Pope John Paul II all acknowledged her decisive influence. Feminist scholars have been ambivalent: Thérèse's language of smallness and dependence can be read as an internalization of cultural values that relegated women to subordinate roles, but can equally be read as a radical subversion - she claims the 'little' position not as a limitation imposed by others but as the spiritually privileged place of encounter with God.
Theological Significance
Thérèse's most significant theological contribution is her recovery of grace against achievement in the Catholic spiritual tradition. The French Jansenism of her cultural environment had emphasized divine severity, the rarity of salvation, and the demanding character of the spiritual life. Thérèse, drawing on the Pauline letters she had memorized and on the words of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, insisted that God's mercy is not reserved for the heroically virtuous but is the natural environment of the humble soul.
This is a theologically rigorous claim, not merely a sentimental one: it is grounded in Romans 5:8 ('God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us'), in Luke 15 (the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal son - God's initiative in seeking the lost rather than waiting for them to become worthy), and in the entire Johannine theology of love. Thérèse reads the Gospel with precision and applies it with pastoral confidence.
Legacy
Thérèse's influence on twentieth-century Catholicism was extraordinary. The 'little way' became the dominant spirituality of popular Catholicism in France and spread worldwide. Her impact on devotional practice - novenas to 'the Little Flower,' her roses as signs of divine favor - became global. More significantly, her theological vision shaped the pastoral approach of the Second Vatican Council's emphasis on the universal call to holiness (Lumen Gentium, Chapter 5), which affirms that every baptized person is called to the fullness of Christian life and love.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study Matthew 18:1-6 (becoming as little children), Luke 18:9-17 (the Pharisee and the tax collector; the children brought to Jesus), Luke 15 (the three parables of the lost), Romans 5:1-11 (justified by faith, loved while still sinners), and Isaiah 66:10-13 (God as a mother comforting her child).
Further Reading
- Hans Urs von Balthasar, Thérèse of Lisieux: The Story of a Mission (1950; English tr. 1954) - the most theologically profound appreciation of Thérèse's contribution. - Conrad De Meester, The Power of Confidence: Genesis and Structure of the 'Way of Spiritual Childhood' of St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1998) - the most thorough scholarly analysis of the 'little way' and its scriptural foundations. - Patrick Ahern, Maurice and Thérèse: The Story of a Love (1998) - a moving account of Thérèse's spiritual direction of a seminarian through letters, demonstrating the practical application of the 'little way.'