“I will send down a shower of roses from heaven; I will spend my heaven doing good on earth”: this is the promise made by Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, also known as Thérèse of Lisieux and, more familiarly, as Saint Thérèse.
We all know of her ardent love for God and her fellow brothers and sisters, but did she keep her magnificent promise? Indeed she did! The Lord answered her prayer: many extraordinary miracles bear witness to it in Lisieux and throughout the world. Let us look at some of them.
“I saw Thérèse there, very close to my bed”
A four-year-old girl, Reine Fauquet, suffers from a form of blindness considered incurable by doctors. On May 26, 1908, she goes with her family to Thérèse’s tomb. Marie, her older sister, explains that on the morning of May 26 she had seen the little girl suddenly calm down after a severe attack of pain; then she had looked at something and smiled before falling peacefully asleep. After returning from the pilgrimage, the girl regains her sight and, first to Marie and later to her mother and the Carmelites of Lisieux, she recounts: “I saw Thérèse there, very close to my bed. She took my hand and smiled at me. She was beautiful, she was wearing a veil, and everything around her head was illuminated.” One of the nuns asks her: “What was she wearing?” The girl replies: “Like you!” The doctor’s certificate attesting to little Reine’s complete recovery is dated July 6, 1908. This miracle leads to the opening of Thérèse’s beatification process.
A young seminarian healed of tuberculosis
In 1906, a young seminarian from Lisieux suffers from pulmonary tuberculosis. His doctor’s diagnosis is devastating. The young man prepares to die. After praying two novenas to Thérèse, his health improves almost immediately. An X-ray shows that the tuberculosis has disappeared completely. The doctor is left speechless. This is the miracle chosen for her beatification.
The healing of a novice
Sister Louise, a novice at the convent of the Daughters of the Cross in Ustaritz, suffers from violent vomiting attacks. Medical tests reveal a stomach ulcer. After spending several months in the infirmary, she feels better, but the pain soon returns. Her condition worsens to such an extent that she receives the last rites. She cannot even swallow water. The community prays for the intercession of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Sister Luoise also joins their prayer and later recounts: “I had the impression of her hand on my head, as if to reassure me, and for three days a mysterious fragrance, which the other sisters were unable to explain, spread through the room where I was staying.” Yet the healing still does not occur, so Sister Louise begins to invoke the saint for comfort and assistance. One September night, Saint Thérèse appears to the novice, telling her: “Be generous; you will soon be healed, I promise you.” The next morning, the nuns find rose petals around the novice’s bed. A few days later, Sister Louise wakes up without pain or symptoms. She is completely healed.
The healing of Sister Gabriella Trimusi
Gabriella Trimusi enters the Congregation of the Little Daughters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary at the age of 23. One of her knees causes her problems, but this does not keep her from doing housework, which she continues to perform diligently. As a result, the knee joint deteriorates.
The situation worsens to the point that an infection causes her severe pain. She begins to lose her appetite and loses a great deal of weight. Gabriella battles the illness for three years and, despite the numerous treatments prescribed by the most experienced doctors, the disease also affects her spinal column. Desperate, Gabriella turns to Thérèse. On the last day of the novena, Gabriella goes to the chapel and realizes that she can kneel without feeling pain. Immediately afterward, the pain in her back also disappears. Gabriella is healed!
“This cannot be explained naturally”
Another miraculous healing is that of Maria Pellemans, who was Belgian by birth. In 1919, she begins to suffer from intestinal tuberculosis. She makes an initial pilgrimage to Lourdes to ask for healing, but her health does not improve. The following year she goes to Lisieux and, after fervently praying at Thérèse’s tomb, she is healed immediately. She herself bears witness to this at the convent of the Carmelites of Lisieux: “It was in the Carmelites’ convent parlor that I conceived the desire to ask for my healing so that I could fulfill the dream of my life: becoming a Carmelite. Despite my extreme exhaustion, I wanted to return to Thérèse’s tomb. When I arrived there, an extraordinarily sweet and supernatural feeling took hold of me; a heavenly well-being entered my soul and body. I felt as though I were in another world, flooded by an ocean of peace. I was filled with such extraordinary emotion that inwardly I thought: ‘I am certainly healed!’” The doctor who examines her after she returns home finds her healing inexplicable. “This cannot be explained naturally, because the stomach and intestines were incurable. Yes, if this transformation lasts, we can say that it is a great miracle.” And so it was. It was a miracle!
The miracle of Gallipoli
This time, it is not a physical healing but another kind of assistance. Mother Maria Carmela of the Heart of Jesus, prioress of the Carmelite convent in Gallipoli, is deeply worried because of her Carmel’s debts. One night, Saint Thérèse appears to her in a dream, comforts her, and addresses her gently, saying: “The Lord uses both the inhabitants of heaven and those of earth.
Here are five hundred lire with which you will pay her community’s debts.” When she wakes, the superior is so disturbed that her daughters consider calling the doctor. “To prevent them from doing so, I told them that a dream had shaken me and spoke about it simply,” Mother Maria Carmela recounts in a letter to the superior of the Carmelite convent in Lisieux. “These two sisters then wanted me to go and open the chest, but I told them that they should not believe in dreams, that it was even a sin. In the end, faced with their insistence, I did so, but only to please them. I went to the tower, opened the chest, and really found the miraculous five-hundred-lire banknote there!”
At the time these miracles occurred, that young French Carmelite, who had died with a reputation for holiness a few years earlier, was not yet well known. And this is hardly surprising, since even in France little Thérèse was not yet considered either a mystic or, much less, a saint, not even within the walls of her own convent.
Only in 1925 was Teresa Martin (that was her name “in the world”) proclaimed a saint by Pope Pius XI.
In this jubilee year marking the 150th anniversary of Teresa’s birth, let us rediscover the saint of the “little way” and confidently turn to her intercession: we too will see a magnificent shower of roses descend from heaven.
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