BOOK OF THE MONTH

SAINT THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX
Doctor of the Universal Church

Steven Payne, OCD

On World Mission Sunday, October 19, 1997, Pope John Paul II declared St. Thérèse of Lisieux a "Doctor of the Universal Church." This event marked not only the culmination of an unprecedented series of honors bestowed on "the greatest saint of modern times," as St. Pius X called her, but it also represented a watershed in the evolution of the understanding of this ecclesiastical title bestowed on only 33 saints in the history of the Church.

Certainly, at the time of her death in 1897, no one would have guessed that this 24-year-old Carmelite nun, with such a limited education and imperfect literary style, who never wrote a treatise or published an article and who died virtually unknown in an obscure French Carmel, would one day come to be ranked alongside such eminent personalities as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, as a doctor ecclesiae. Her selection did not come about in a vacuum, nor did it happen easily.

SAINT FOR THE THIRD MILLENNIUM
ST. THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX

Rev. Charles P. Connor

"Through spiritual childhood one experiences that everything comes from God, returns to Him, and abides in Him, for the salvation of all, in a mystery of merciful love. Such is the doctrinal message taught and lived by Saint Thérèse of Lisieux."
After having thus turned the spotlight on the spiritual message of the Little Flower, Pope John Paul II solemnly declared her a Doctor of the Church at a Youth Day Rally in Paris, France, on Mission Sunday, October 19, 1997. Probably one of the best known and certainly one of the best loved of all the Saints in the Roman Calendar, questions still remain regarding the mystery of her impact on the modern world.

Who was she? What exactly was her message? How did she embody the doctrine that she taught? What does she have to say to us that would make us call her: The Saint for the Third Millennium? In his well-researched, inimitable and highly readable style, Father Connor sheds new insights into the life and message of this great saint who has much to say to us today.