A Novena to St. Thérèse of Lisieux

Feel free to use the following pages for reflection and your personal private prayer. By fostering a devotion to the saints, a person can strengthen his/her relationship with God. In imitating their example, one can seek holiness in the simple, everyday actions of life. May you be blessed on your spiritual journey. May St. Thérèse of Lisieux intercede for you.

Day One – September 22nd

Theme: Detachment Reflecting on the words of St. Thérèse: “If you only knew to what a degree I wish to be indifferent to the things of the earth! What matters to me all created beauty? I should be truly unfortunate were I to possess it. Oh! How great, how noble, seems my heart when I look at it in relation to this world’s goods, since all of them put together could never satisfy it; but when I consider it with reference to Jesus, how small it then appears to me.”

-- II Letter to Mother Agnes of Jesus Closing Prayer: “O loving God, help me to know in my own life that “true love is found only in complete self-forgetfulness, and it is only after we have detached ourselves from every creature that we find Jesus” (Jamart, Complete Spiritual Doctrine, p. 119)

Day Two – September 23rd

Theme: Hope Reflecting on the words of St. Thérèse: “How I thirst for Heaven – that blessed habitation where our love for Jesus will have no limit! But to get there we must suffer… we must weep… Well, I wish to suffer all that shall please my Beloved, I wish to let Him do just as He wills with His ‘little ball.’” -- Letter to Sr. Marie of the Sacred Heart Closing Prayer:

“I want, O my Beloved, at each beat of my heart to renew my offering to You an infinite number of times, until the shadows having disappeared I may be able to tell You of my Love in an Eternal Face to Face!” (John Clarke, trans., Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux, p. 277)

Day Three – September 24th

Theme: Humility Reflecting on the words of St. Thérèse: “I am a very little soul who can offer only very little things to God; yet, it often happens that these little sacrifices which give such peace to the heart, escape me; but that does not discourage me, I bear with having a little less peace and I try to be more watchful another time.”

-- Story of a Soul, Ch. X Closing Prayer: “What is going to open my heart wide? Nothing but love. Once the heart has been melted down in this gentle flame, what a pleasure it is, dear Jesus, to run along this new path… [till] I shall be able to follow you with a new song; what song will it be? It can only be the song of love” (Ronald Knox, Autobiography p. 272).

Day Four – September 25th

Theme: Mortification Reflecting on the words of St. Thérèse:

“She told the novices: “At recreation more than elsewhere will you find occasions for the exercise of virtue. If you would reap great benefit, never go to it with any thought of your own recreation, but thinking of the recreation of others; practice therein total detachment from yourself. If, for instance, you are relating to one of the Sisters a story which seems to you interesting, and that she interrupts it to tell you something else, even

though this may not at all interest you, listen to her as if it did, and do not try to return to your first subject. By so acting, you will go from the recreation room with great interior peace, and endued with fresh vigor in the practice of virtue, all because you have not sought to gratify yourself but to give pleasure to others. If one only knew what is gained by renouncing self in all things!...”

-- Counsels and Reminiscences Closing Prayer: “Oh, I know quite well that I am only a child, with all a child’s weaknesses; but that’s precisely what emboldens me to offer myself as a victim to your love… Love cannot be content without condescending – condescending to mere nothingness, and making this nothingness the fuel for its flame” (Knox, Autobiography p. 235-236).

Day Five – September 26th

Theme: Confidence Reflecting on the words of St. Thérèse: “Truly I am far from being a saint. I ought not to rejoice at the aridity of my soul, but attribute it to the scantiness of my fervor and fidelity. I ought to grieve because I fall asleep very often during my prayer and my thanksgiving. Well, I do not grieve! I reflect that little children when they sleep are as pleasing to their parents as when they are awake; that in order to perform operations, doctors put their patients to sleep; in fine, that the Lord knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are but dust” (Ps. 102:14).

-- Story of a Soul, Ch. VIII Closing Prayer: O God, “May I look for nothing and find nothing but you and you only; … May earthly things have no power to disturb the peace of my soul” (Knox, Autobiography p. 202).

Day Six – September 27th

Theme: Self-Abandonment Reflecting on the words of St. Thérèse:

“I had offered myself to the Child Jesus to be His little plaything. I had told Him not to use me like a costly toy which children are pleased to look at without daring to touch; but as He would a little ball of no value, that He might throw to the ground, toss about, pierce, leave in a corner, or else

press to His Heart if so it pleased Him. In a word I wanted to amuse the little Jesus, and to give myself up to all His childlike fancies.”

-- Story of a Soul, Ch. VI Closing Prayer: “To You alone, O Jesus, I must cling; and running to Your arms, dear Lord, There let me hide; Loving with childlike tenderness.” -- (Thérèse, in Jamart, Complete Spiritual Doctrine, p. 88).

Day Seven – September 28th

Theme: Gratitude Reflecting on the words of St. Thérèse: “Suppose the son of a skillful doctor is tripped by a stone in his path, which causes him to fall and fracture a limb. His father comes in haste, lifts him up lovingly and attends to his injuries, employing therein all the resources of his art; and the boy, very soon completely cured, testifies his gratitude. This child has certainly good reason to love so kind a father; but here is another supposition. The father having learnt that there lies in his son’s way a dangerous stone, sets out beforehand and removes it unseen by anyone. His son, the object of this tender forethought, unaware of the misfortune from which he has been preserved by the father’s hand, will of course show no gratitude, and will love him less than if he had cured him of a grievous wound. But should he come to

know all, will he not love him still more? Well – I am this child, the object of the preventing love of a Father who sent His Son not to redeem the just but sinners (Luke 5:32). He wills that I should love Him because He has forgiven me, not

much, but everything. Without waiting for me to love Him much, like St. Mary Magdalene, He has made me to know how He had loved me with a preventing and ineffable love, in order that I may now love Him even unto folly!”

-- Story of a Soul, Ch. IV Closing Prayer: I pray with Thérèse: “Jesus, for love of you, I’ve poured out my life, my future” (Valabek, “Approach to Gospel Living,” in Sullivan, Experiencing St. Thérèse, p. 81).

Day Eight – September 29th

Theme: Suffering Reflecting on the words of St. Thérèse:

“Suffering has held out its arms to me from my very entrance into Carmel, and lovingly have I embraced it. My intention in coming here, I declared in the solemn examination which preceded my profession: I am come in order to save souls, and especially to pray for Priests. When we want to attain an end we must employ the means, and

Jesus having made me understand that He would give me souls by means of the Cross, the more crosses I met with the more my attraction to suffering increased. During five years this way was mine; but I alone knew it. Here was just the hidden flower that I wanted to offer to Jesus, this flower which exhaled its fragrance for Heaven alone. ”

-- Story of a Soul, Ch. VII Closing Prayer: Oh, Jesus, “I do not want to lay up merits for heaven. I want to work for Your Love alone with the one purpose of pleasing You, consoling your Sacred Heart” (Clarke, Story of a Soul, p. 277).

Day Nine – September 30th

Theme: The Blessed Virgin Mary Reflecting on the words of St. Thérèse:

“Sometimes I find myself saying to the Holy Virgin: “Do you know, O cherished Mother, that I think myself more fortunate than you? I have you for Mother and you have not, like me, the Blessed Virgin to love… You are, it is true, the Mother of Jesus, but you have given Him to me, and He, from the Cross gave you to us as our Mother, so we are richer than you. Of old it was your desire that you might be the little

handmaiden of the Mother of God; and I, poor little creature, I am, not your servant, but your child: you are the Mother of Jesus and you are my Mother.”

-- XIII Letter to her sister Celine Closing Prayer: “Draw me into the furnace of [God’s] love, to unite me ever more closely with himself, till it is he who lives and acts in me” (Knox, Autobiography p. 310).

Prayer: O God, who open your Kingdom

to those who are humble and to little ones, lead us to follow trustingly in the little way of Saint Thérèse,

so that through her intercession we may see your eternal glory revealed. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives an reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Photo credits: http://www.archives-carmel-lisieux.fr/english/carmel/index.php/47-photos-english/gallery/27-47-photos-english#fwgallerytop

Reference Books: Clarke, John, trans. St. Thérèse of Lisieux: Her Last Conversations. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1977. Jamart, Francois. Complete Spiritual Doctrine of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Trans. Walter Van De Putte. New York: Alba House, 1961. Knox, Ronald, trans. Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. New York: P.J. Kenedy and Sons, 1958. Schmidt, Joseph F. Praying with Thérèse of Lisieux. Winona, MN: Saint Mary’s Press, Christian Brothers Publications, 1992. Sullivan, John, ed. Experiencing St. Thérèse Today. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1990. Thoughts of Saint Thérèse, translated from the French Pensées by an Irish Carmelite. Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1915.