Born in 1873, Thérèse of Lisieux entered into this world as the youngest daughter of a devout Catholic family. By the time she passed away at the age of twenty-four, Thérèse was a Carmelite nun and spiritual adept, having identified a path toward sanctity that she practiced with fidelity and which she took pains to document at the end of her life. From the outside, the life of Thérèse was unassuming and humble, as befits a Carmelite nun. Those who knew her in the monastery seem to have been of the opinion that “she did nothing extraordinary, but she did everything extraordinarily well”. Yet the interior struggle that went unseen involved a long, dark night of the soul that persisted as Thérèse defined her way of perfection, a path that was refined through her daily encounter with the commonplace and the mundane that is endemic to any human life, be it cloistered or out in “the world”. Through her faithful practice to seek God in every moment, Thérèse sacralized the ordinary, and in so doing demonstrated that the path to holiness may be found in the everyday business of living one’s life.
Please join us for an evening of reflection on St. Thérèse of Lisieux as we consider her life and how it might speak to us today.
Sunday 8 September 2024
7:00 p.m. Central Time
By Zoom
Email me for URL
markjchmiel@gmail.com
photo by Natalie Long
