Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897), also known as St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, is popularly named the Little Flower. A Carmelite nun, doctor of the church, and patron of a score of causes, she was famously acclaimed by Pope Pius X as the greatest saint of modern times. Therese is not only one of the most beloved saints of the Catholic Church but perhaps the most revered woman of the modern age. Pope John Paul II described her as a living icon of God. Her autobiography Story of a Soul has been translated into sixty languages. Having long transcended national and linguistic boundaries, she has crossed even religious ones. As daughter of Allah, she is venerated widely in Islamic cultures. Therese has been the subject of innumerable biographies and treatises, ranging from hagiographies to attacks on her intelligence and mental health. Thomas R. Nevin has gained access to many untapped archival materials and previously unpublished photographs. As a consequence he is able to offer a much fuller and more accurate portrait of the saints life and thought than his predecessors. He explores the dynamics of her family life and the early development of her spirituality. He draws extensively on the correspondence of her mother and documents her influence on Thereses autobiography and spirituality. He charts the development of Therese's career as a writer. He gives close attention to her poetry and plays usually dismissed as undistinguished and argues that they have great value as texts by which she addressed and informed her Carmelite community. He delves into the French medical literature of the time, in an effort to understand how the tuberculosis of which she died at the age of 24 was treated and lamentably mistreated. Finally, he offers a new understanding of Therese as a theologian for whom love, rather than doctrines and creeds, was the paramount value. Adding substantially to our knowledge and appreciation of this immensely popular and attractive figure, this book should appeal to many general readers as well as to scholars and students of modern Catholic history.

This remarkable biography of Thérèse of Lisieux, one of the most popular Catholic saints of all time, was commissioned by her sister and religious superior and was the first published in English in 1928. Msgr. August Pierre Laveille was able to portray Thérèse, as well as her parents Zélie and Louis who were canonized in 2015, with exquisite detail, having interviewed those who knew them best. When the autobiography of the life of Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, was first published a year after her death in 1898, the response was immediate and overwhelming, with tens of thousands of copies of her book sold in just a few short months. It was decided that an official biography should be written from the documents that had been gathered on the life of Thérèse Martin, whose cause for canonization was taken up without the customary fifty year waiting period. First published in French in 1925, the first English edition became available in 1928. This exhaustive record of the life of one of the most beloved of all Catholic saints includes biographical information about her parents and grandparents, her early years at home, her years in the cloister, her illness and death, and information about the miracles attributed to her after her death, when she made good the promise on her deathbed that she would "spend her heaven doing good on earth."

What does it mean to believe in God? This question still provokes a recalcitrant world. In spite of the apparent disinterest of our age, the religious question continues to task and to vex, sometimes quietly, sometimes dramatically. When religious divisions occasion civil strife, believers are faced with an even more radical inquiry. Wherein lies the real truth about Christian doctrine and its place in our lives? Can we appeal to any authority for belief? How do we escape the suspicions of a skeptical age? In this book, Romanus Cessario explores these questions and suggests responses taken from the history of theology. He offers a readable account of the accumulated wisdom of the Christian tradition concerning the faith-question, citing as major authorities the saints, those who have realized the will of God throughout the ages. Faith supplies not only the assurance but also the substance of things hoped for. The experience of Israel teaches that "God has foreseen something better for us"; this "something better" resides in the Word of God that takes flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Because it keeps being born again in the heart of every believer, as St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us, it leads us to the blessedness of eternal life. Since the end of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, authors have dealt mainly with the existential dimensions of Christian life. This volume, the fruit of more than two decades of contemplation on the virtues of Christian life, complements these as well as historical studies about faith. It presents a coherent meditation on faith's principal concerns: its acts of belief and confession, and its character as a virtue in the Christian life. Father Cessario explains how the mysteries of faith--what the Christian believer professes each Sunday in the Creed--transform our lives and make us living images of the Triune God. Consequently, this book will meet a wide range of needs by answering the questions of the informed reader, animating study groups and parish seminars, and stimulating the ordinary believer to appropriate "the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God." ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Romanus Cessario, O.P., is professor of systematic theology at St. John's Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts. Before assuming this post in the fall of 1995, Father Cessario taught at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. He served there as Academic Dean from 1979 to 1987. He is the author of numerous works, including The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics, Le Virtu, and Perpetual Angelus: As the Saints Pray the Rosary, and presently serves on the editorial boards of The Thomist, the French journal Pierre d'Angle, and the National Catholic Register.

Includes Part 1, Number 2: Books and Pamphlets, Including Serials and Contributions to Periodicals July - December)

In Thérèse of Lisieux: God's Gentle Warrior, Thomas Nevin examined the popular saint in the broad context of her life with her family and as a Carmelite nun. Now he focuses on her writings, especially the last of her three "autobiographical" manuscripts, known simply as "C". Nevin's book addresses the torment of doubt within the life and writing of a saint best known for the strength of her conviction.

Translated from the critical edition by John Clarke, OCD, 3rd ed. (1997). Includes Bibliography, general Index, and 11 photos. Two and a half years before her death in 1897 at the age of 24, as Thérèse Martin began writing down her childhood memories at the request of her blood sisters in the Lisieux Carmel, few could have guessed the eventual outcome. Yet this "story of my soul," first published in 1898 in a highly edited version, quickly became a modern spiritual classic, read by millions and translated into dozens of languages around the world. Decades later, in response to growing requests from scholars and devotees of the Saint, a facsimile edition of the manuscripts appeared, along with more popular French editions of what the Saint had actually written. Here, expressed with all of Thérèse's original spontaneity and fervor, we rediscover the great themes of her spirituality: confidence and love, the "little way," abandonment to God's merciful love, and her "mission" in the church and world today. Father John Clarke's acclaimed translation, first published in 1975 and now accepted as the standard throughout the English-speaking world, is a faithful and unaffected rendering of Thérèse's own words, from the original manuscripts. This new edition, prepared for the centenary of the Saint's death, includes a select bibliography of recent works in English on Thérèse, along with a new referencing system now widely used in studies of her doctrine.

Far more than a dry hagiographical account of the lives of saints, this entertaining and authoritative dictionary breathes life into its subjects and is as browsable as it is informative. First published in 1978, the Oxford Dictionary of Saints offers more than 1,700 fascinating and informative entries covering the lives, cults, and artistic associations of saints from around the world, from the famous to the obscure, the rich to the poor, and the academic to the uneducated. From all walks of life and from all periods of history and from around the world, the wide varieties of personalities and achievements of the canonized are reflected. An updated introduction explains the steps towards becoming a saint, the processes of beatification and canonization. This revised fifth edition includes appendices containing five maps of pilgrimage sites, a list of saints' patronages and iconographical emblems, and a calendar of principal feasts, as well as a new appendix on pilgrimages.