The Story Of A Soul (Saint Therese Of The Child JESUS) & Saint Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton

Advertisements

The Story of a Soul (l’Histoire d’une Âme) is the autobiography of Thérèse of Lisieux, a French Discalced Carmelite nun, later recognized as a saint. It was first published on September 30, 1898, a year to the day after her death from tuberculosis at the age of 24, on September 30, 1897. The book was a single volume formed from three distinct manuscripts – manuscripts of different length, written at different times, addressed to different people, and differing from one another in character. The work of unifying these disparate manuscripts was carried out by Pauline, the sister of Thérèse. It was initially published with a limited audience in mind, the Carmelite convents and certain religious personalities, and just 2000 copies of the 475 page book were printed. It quickly became a publishing phenomenon however and Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus was canonised in 1925.
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (French: Sainte-Thérèse de Lisieux), born Marie Françoise-Thérèse Martin (2 January 1873 – 30 September 1897), also known as Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, O.C.D., was a Roman Catholic French Discalced Carmelite nun who is widely venerated in modern times. She is popularly known as “The Little Flower of Jesus” or simply “The Little Flower”.
Thérèse has been a highly influential model of sanctity for Catholics and for others because of the “simplicity and practicality of her approach to the spiritual life”. Together with Saint Francis of Assisi, she is one of the most popular saints in the history of the church.[2][3][4] Pope Pius X called her “the greatest saint of modern times”.
Thérèse felt an early call to religious life, and overcoming various obstacles, in 1888 at the early age of 15, she became a nun and joined two of her elder sisters in the cloistered Carmelite community of Lisieux, Normandy. After nine years as a Carmelite religious, having fulfilled various offices such as sacristan and assistant to the novice mistress, and having spent her last eighteen months in Carmel in a night of faith, she died at aged 24, following a slow and painful fight against tuberculosis.
Her feast day is 1 October (3 October in the extraordinary form). Thérèse is well known throughout the world, with the Basilica of Lisieux being the second-largest place of pilgrimage in France after Lourdes.
This is a picturesque and moving account of the life and work of Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton (1774-1821), the first native-born citizen of the United States to be canonized a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. This widowed mother of five established schools in New York and Maryland and was the first to found a congregation of Religious Sisters in the United States, the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, whose motherhouse stands today in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, S.C., (August 28, 1774 – January 4, 1821) was the first native-born citizen[1] of the United States to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church (September 14, 1975).[2] She established the first Catholic girls’ school in the nation in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where she also founded the first American congregation of religious sisters, the Sisters of Charity.