The year 1997 is the centenary celebration of St. Therese of Lisieux - commemorating one hundred years since her death and entrance into heaven. It had been determined infallibly by the Church on May 17, 1925 that St. Therese practiced heroic virtue and entered heaven immediately after death. Such was confirmed by at least two officially recognized miracles from heaven which occurred through her intercession. Her canonization signifies, among other things, that she not only may, but must receive public honor. What better way to help honor her than to make available her autobiography which she had written under obedience as a Carmelite nun shortly before she died at the age of 24! But first, a brief biography:
Therese was born "Marie-Francois Therese Martin" in Alencon, France, 1873. She was the ninth child of parents who themselves at one time aspired to the religious life, but found their vocations in marriage. Her mother died when she was four and her family moved to Lisieux. Therese was given permission by Church authority to enter a Carmelite monastery at the early age of fifteen. A couple of her sisters had already entered the same convent years before. There, as "Sister Therese of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face", she lived the life of an ordinary cloistered nun. She lived such a perfect hidden life as the Spouse of Christ that the other religious sisters with whom she lived were unaware of the extent of her holiness; they simply considered her a good religious. She suffered and died of tuberculosis. Here last words immediately before giving up her soul: "My God...I...love You!"
St. Therese was not one to perform public cures nor to have mystical experiences such as levitation or ecstasies. These are not essential to great sanctity; the great Saints who had manifested such did not seek to experience them but the Lord would have their sanctity known to the world by them. With St. Therese the Lord would Providentially have her sanctity known in another way....she was commanded under holy obedience to write the story of her life before death. This "Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux" has also come to be known to the world as the Catholic classic "The Story of a Soul" first published two years after her death. (This work can be downloaded from the Catholic Dispatch Centenary Celebration page).
It is interesting to note her views on the undesirability of a nun writing her own memoirs. To one who expressed a wish to do so, she replied, "Mind you do nothing of the sort. You cannot do it without permission, and I advise you not to ask. For myself, I should not like to write anything about my life without an express order, and one which I had not solicited. It is more humble not to write anything about oneself. The great graces of one's life, such as one's vocation, cannot be forgotten. The memory of those graces will avail you more if you confine yourself to going over them in your mind, than if you write them down."
Her reluctance was overcome by holy obedience when the superior asked her to write her childhood memories. She began doing so but only during the little free time allowed to Carmelites by their Rule. We can well imagine how many hidden holy souls there must have been in the religious life throughout the centuries whom the Lord did not wish to make so publicly known through such works. This work of St. Therese has brought innumerable people into the Church or back to the practice of their religion. (The Catholic Dispatch knows of an elderly religious today who was converted from Atheism to Catholicism back in the 1930’s simply by reading this book.)
St. Therese said: "After death I will let fall a shower of roses". So many people have since experienced the fruits of a devotion to the "Little Flower", as she refered to herself. Well before beatification St. Pope Pius X called her "the greatest saint of modern times". No Catholic should be unfamiliar with this book, which the Church highly recommends:

"The abundant fruits of salvation, remarkable and worldwide, that reading this so engrossing and touching work still daily produces, far exceed the results of efforts purely human."
-Decree on the Heroic Virtue of Sister Therese, August 14, 1921

"The Sovereign Pontiff Pius X did not hesitate to declare that in this account of her life, which has now achieved a worldwide distribution, the virtues of the Maid of Lisieux shine so brightly that it is her very soul, as it were, that one breathes therein."
-Pope Pius XI, Brief of Beatification, April 28, 1923

"The new St. Therese was penetrated with the Gospel teaching, and put it into practice in her daily life. Yet more, she taught the way of spiritual childhood by her words and example to the novices of her Monastery, and she has revealed it to all by her writings, which have been spread all over the world and which none can read without returning and re-reading them with great profit."
-Pope Pius XI in the Homily of the Mass of Canonization

"...in the Autobiography which Sister Therese wrote by order of her Superiors we find a fact as wonderful as it is universal, that is to say, the abundant fruit which is derived from the reading of this attractive and fascinating biography - effects which far exceed the narrow limits of the merely human.
In fact this reading moves the hearts of men, inclines their wills, amends their lives, kindles charity and produces other salutary results which absolutely transcend human power, and can find no adequate explanation except in the action of Divine Grace itself."
-The Sacred Congregation of Rites in 1921