I have come to believe that in our lives as Catholics, while we often choose saints to be our patrons ... sometimes, all through the grace of God, saints choose us, interceding for us and making their spiritual friendship known in our lives.
Is there a saint who has reached out to you or is perhaps inviting you, even now, to a closer relationship? Maybe you keep receiving holy cards with their images and prayers … maybe an important event in your life occurs on their feast day. What saint has graced you with their intercessory intervention in your life and taken you by surprise?
For me, it is St. Thérèse who adopted me.
The feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux is October 1. So much has been written about this popular saint throughout the years. The details of her life can be easily found in a simple web search or in her own autobiography, The Story of a Soul. But what is perhaps even more notable is how many lives have been touched by her loving example. My life is one of them.
St. Thérèse is known as “The Little Flower,” and, indeed, the fragrance of her mission to be “love in the heart of the Church,” has spread far and wide.
She said, “My vocation, at last I have found it; my vocation is love.”
St. Thérèse spoke of the many flowers of spring, and that not every one can be a rose, or spring would lose its loveliness: the wide array of blooms created by God to delight the eye. Roses are traditionally viewed as the queen of flowers, the most sublime. Ironically, roses are the flower most associated with St. Thérèse now. She is widely known to send roses to those who pray to her and request her intercession, often down to the very color of rose requested. She famously said that she would spend her heaven doing good on earth and that, “When I die, I will send down a shower of roses from the heavens.”
But in St. Thérèse’s humility, she didn’t see herself as one of God’s roses. Thérèse imagined herself as a little flower. Where did she get this idea?
It came from a holy card that belonged to Thérèse’s sister, Pauline. This holy card was titled "La Petit Fleur Du Divin Prisonnier.” It showed a flower blooming in front of a prison window, depicting Jesus as the Divine Eucharistic Prisoner in the Tabernacle. Like that flower outside His prison, Thérèse wanted to console Christ through her life and actions, however small they might be in comparison to His greatness. When I discovered this, I was overcome with how kindred I felt to this Little Flower, St. Thérèse.
Little white blooms
Part of what made me feel this bond was that when I was a child, my favorite flowers were wildflowers: the tiny lilies of the valley that grew in huge clusters in my yard every spring, and were often literally overshadowed by larger and showier plants. The little white blooms almost escaped notice and were shaped like lace-trimmed bonnets, their faces lowered to the ground. Nothing delighted me more than the surprise of these tiny blossoms, and I’d gather bouquets of them. They didn’t bloom for long, and they were so small, they could easily be overlooked, or stepped on. But they stirred my heart like no other flower. I later found out that they are also known as “Our Lady’s Tears,” and legend says that the tears Our Blessed Mother shed at the cross became lilies of the valley.
I could not have known when I was gathering those small bouquets of tears how my childhood would soon be pierced with a deep sorrow: the death of my young father. This crushing loss came when I was just 11 years old. In the midst of this early pruning, it was only God’s grace that allowed me to bloom.
Unable to sleep for many months after my great loss, I stayed awake long into the night. I found the most consolation when I envisioned that I was awake consoling Our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane. As I grew, this idea continued to accompany me. I could not shake the call to go into that Garden and console Him where He had been abandoned and where He grieved.
And still I sought out those tiny, almost-hidden, and often overlooked lilies of the valley each spring.
God has sent many consolations over the years as I hoped to console Him. One of them I did not know until later: the Carmelite saint named Thérèse who would become such a good spiritual friend to me. Perhaps because she understands the trauma of losing a parent as a child … (her mother died when she was a little girl) ... perhaps because she knew that I, too, was drawn to the abandoned Christ; perhaps because she knew that I’d become a Carmelite like her; maybe because she knew I loved little flowers. Maybe it’s just because she knew I needed a true friend just like her.
Always there for me
When I got married, I carried lilies of the valley as my bouquet. I offered my bouquet at the altar of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in our parish. While my husband and I were expecting our first baby, challenges arose, and a holy woman from my parish lent me a first-class relic of St. Thérèse (a fragment of her bone) for the remainder of my pregnancy.
I slept next to the St. Thérèse relic every night because she already felt like an old friend; and despite hardships along the way, so much was beautifully resolved through her intercession. From that point on, I began turning to my friend the Little Flower on a regular basis. Every time I was in need, it seemed as though she knew it, and the relic of Thérèse would be returned to me for a home visit, sometimes even without my asking. Through the mercy of God, St. Thérèse had her eye on me as she led me ever closer to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel.
I am sure that the intercession of St. Thérèse encouraged me to set out on my journey to become a Third Order Carmelite. I was received into the Carmelite Order in 2021, and in 2024 I made my Carmelite Profession at the altar. Did you know that Carmel means “Garden”? I realized this only after I had begun my formation as a Carmelite. Since my childhood, I had been seeking a path into the Garden with Jesus … and here was yet another sign that the order I had chosen was right for me.
And so, in 2023, I founded CatholicHolyHour.com so that many could be invited and reminded to pray and spiritually keep watch with Christ in the Garden, even right in their own homes. This work is an integral part of the way I live out my Carmelite vocation. If you’d like to join the prayer community of thousands worldwide consoling Our Lord, one guided HolyHour at a time, you can register for free here to have a free St. Thérèse-themed Holy Hour emailed to you.
Last year, when I made my Profession at the altar of our local cathedral as a Third Order Carmelite, I held that first class relic of St. Thérèse as I made my promises. I was allowed to take a new Carmelite “name in religion,” and guess what name I chose: Annabelle-Thérèse of Gethsemane.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux, pray for us!
