St. Therese of Lisieux Trivia Quiz

Answer: true

Therese's father, Louis Martin, had been a soldier. At age 22, upon his return from active duty, he decided to join the Augustinian canons at the hospice of St. Bernard in the Alps (home of the famous breed of rescue dogs which bear the saint's name). Unfortunately the Alpine climate did not agree with his health, nor did he have any success in the study of Latin (a rigid requirement at that time). He retired to the more congenial climate of Alencon, where he set up shop as a watchmaker.

Therese's mother, Zelie Martin (nee Guerin) had also entertained thoughts of entering the religious life. Zelie had grown up in what today would be called a "dysfunctional" home; there was little affection in her family, and she had probably sought to join a convent to escape her unhappy life at home. Unfortunately, convent life proved not to be for her, and she became a lacemaker, at which she proved quite successful. She set up shop at Alencon, where she met Louis. They were married in 1858, at which time Louis was 34 and Zelie 26. In addition to his own profession, Louis helped manage his wife's lacemaking business. Together, they had nine children, of whom five would survive- all girls.

Answer: false

Therese was the youngest of nine children, of whom four had died in childhood. Her own life had originally been despaired of due to a childhood illness, from which she happily recovered. It was perhaps inevitable that she would be somewhat spoiled, even though the Martin's were not over-indulgent parents. Photographs show her to have been an adorable child, with a mischievous smile.

Her mother's letters describe her as being as delightful as these photographs would suggest, but she also describes the terrible tantrums which Therese could throw when she became angry or did not get her way, at times literally choking with rage. Little Therese was stubborn, willful, and greedy, and the family's long-suffering nursemaid on occasion called her a "little brat", not without justification.

She did have certain positive qualities, however: she was honest, courageous, intelligent, and affectionate, and her mother, while not blind to her faults, described her as a "good girl".

Answer: The death of her mother

Therese's beloved mother Zelie died in August, 1877, after a long battle with cancer. The loss had a profound effect on the entire family, but it permanently affected Therese's personality and outlook. She writes in her autobiography "My happy disposition completely changed. I became timid and retiring, sensitive to an excessive degree..." Religion, which had played an important part in the Martin's family life, now became even more central, and the family began paying frequent visits to churches, where they would pray before the Blessed Sacrament.

It was during this time that Therese developed the deep introspection and spiritual outlook which characterize her writings.

Answer: Carmelite

The Carmelite order is one of the oldest and most venerable; it traces its origins to pre-Christian times, to the days of the prophets Elijah and Elisha and their followers. It is the same order to which Therese's namesake, St. Teresa of Avila, had belonged (Teresa, like Therese, had left behind a fascinating biography, as well as other spiritual writings).

Other distinguished members of the order include St. John of the Cross, St. Peter of Alcantara, and St. Simon Stock, who had a vision of the Blessed Virgin in which she bestowed upon him the famous cloth known as the Scapular of Carmel, which became the basis for he Carmelite's familiar brown habit.

Answer: The Blessed Virgin

In her biography, Therese describes the illness she suffered from as a form of demonic possession; she was afflicted with terrible hallucinations in which objects in her room would transform themselves into various frightening shapes. There has been speculation that her illness was caused by a type of psychosis, and may have been precipitated by Pauline's sudden absence from the household. During the month of May, however, Therese had a much more pleasant vision, in which a statue of the Virgin near her bed appeared to smile at her. From this point, Therese's illness began to abate, and she attributed her cure to the Virgin.

It was during this illness that she decided to enter the Carmelite order; she later wrote that this determination had given her the strength to recover.

Answer: Christmas

The event that Therese would refer to as her "conversion" took place after Christmas Eve midnight mass, a few days before her fourteenth birthday. As Therese described it, "On that blessed night the sweet infant Jesus, scarcely an hour old, filled the darkness of my soul with floods of light. By becoming weak and little for love of me, He made me strong and brave: He put His own weapons into my hands, so that I went on from strength to strength, beginning if I may say so, to 'run as a giant'" It was in honor of this event that Therese, upon entering the Carmelite order, took the name "Therese of the Infant Jesus".

Answer: A convicted murderer

Pranzini was guilty of a particularly horrendous triple murder; he had killed two women and a child, and had been sentenced to the guillotine. According to the newspaper accounts, he was completely unrepentant of this heinous crime. A priest had been in to see him, to whom he behaved quite pleasantly, but who had been unable to persuade him to make a confession, or to show the slightest degree of remorse. Upon reading of the case, Therese began to pray incessantly for his soul, and to offer masses for his repentance. Upon the day of execution, the priest followed him to the guillotine holding a crucifix.

He refused the ministrations of the priest until the moment when the executioner was about to put his head into the block, whereupon he took the crucifix and kissed the sacred wounds three times.

Therese believed that his final act of repentance had been in answer to her prayers; this event strengthened her belief that she could achieve great things through prayer.

Answer: Fifteen

Therese had approached the authorities at the Carmelite convent with her request to become a nun when she was still only fourteen years of age. They very gently told her that she was too young, and that she should apply again when she was twenty-one. Undeterred, she approached Bishop Hugonin of Bayeux, who until the day he died never forgot his interview with her. He noted, with amusement, that she had put her hair up in order to appear more mature. Although he was duly impressed with her fervor and determination, he told her that he needed time to consider her request, and that he would write her father with his decision. Still undeterred, Therese traveled to Italy in November of 1887 to present her appeal to Pope Leo XIII himself. Kneeling before the pontiff, she asked him to grant her request, upon which her superiors would have no choice but to admit her. The pontiff replied "Dear child, if God wills it, you will enter the convent."

Although Therese was discouraged after her inconclusive audience with the Pope, the impression she had made upon Bishop Hugonin had its effect, and on New Year's Day, 1888, she was told by the prioress of the Carmelite convent at Lisieux that she would be received the following April. The following day, January 2nd, she turned fifteen.

Answer: Violet

In her biography, "Story of a Soul", Therese compares herself to the more humble flowers, such as the violet and the daisy: "The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent nor the daisy of its simple charm ... It is just the same in the world of souls - which is the garden of Jesus. He has created the great saints who are like the lilies and the roses, but he has also created much lesser saints and they must be content to be the daisies or the violets which rejoice his eyes whenever he glances down."

Therese's "little way", and her constant references to her own "littleness" have struck some as precious and sentimental. It should be noted that she was not referring to size, but rather to her own personal limitations, of which she was acutely aware. She had not been gifted with superhuman patience or mystical ardor; during prayer, minor distractions such as a fellow nun's constant fidgeting, could drive her to distraction. Her health precluded her from participating in the extravagant mortifications of the flesh typically practiced by cloistered nuns, and she was not gifted with any supernatural visions or revelations. Her "little way" consisted in finding a path to spiritual perfection within the confines of her own imperfections.

Answer: She hated receiving communion.

Therese's spirituality was uniquely spontaneous and heartfelt. She was put off by lengthy, repetitious prayer rituals, and frequently when saying the Divine Office with the community, she simply could not stay awake. Her bouts of sleepiness caused her considerable embarrassment, but she reasoned that this did not greatly displease her God since "...parents love their children as much when they are asleep as when they are awake." For similar reasons, she always found saying the rosary to be a chore, in spite of her unquestioned devotion to the Blessed Virgin. For devotional reading, she avoided learned spiritual treatises in which, as she said, "...perfection is shown with a thousand obstacles in the way and a host of illusions around it" and turned instead to the Scriptures. "Then" she writes "All seems luminous, a single word opens up infinite horizons too my soul, perfection seems easy."

Very far from hating communion, Therese was devoted to Christ in the Eucharist, and departed drastically from the conventions of the time by receiving as frequently as possible. She felt that "Christ had not come to us in the Eucharist in order to reside in a golden ciborium", and felt that he had instituted the Eucharist in order to give himself to the faithful, and transform them into himself.

Answer: Between Holy Thursday and Good Friday.

In 1896, Holy Thursday, which commemorates the Last Supper, fell on April 2nd. Therese had kept vigil in the choir until midnight; upon retiring to her cell, she suddenly vomited into her handkerchief. Opening the shutter of her window to admit the moonlight, she saw that her handkerchief was soaked with blood; she had suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage.

As it was now Good Friday, the commemoration of Christ's passion, she felt that it was a sign that she was to share in the sufferings of her savior.

She hid the seriousness of her condition from her superior and insisted on observing the penitential Lenten practices until Easter.

Answer: The Holy Face

Therese had long had a devotion to the Holy Face, as it appeared on the Shroud; a talented artist, she frequently painted this likeness on coats of arms, on chasubles, and on other priestly vestments, and on her stationary. It has been noted that the face bears a marked resemblance to that of Therese's beloved father in his final years when, having suffered two strokes, he had lapsed into senile dementia, his face made nearly unrecognizable by suffering, as was the face of Christ. Monsieur Martin died in 1894; the same year in which Therese began to be afflicted with ailments of the throat, which presaged her final illness.

Therese was photographed in June of 1897, at which time she was quite ill, kneeling in the garden of the convent holding pictures of both the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. By this time, even the effort of kneeling for the picture caused her acute suffering. Even worse than the physical pain was the accompanying spiritual agony, in which she was overcome with a sense of futility and doubted the existence of Heaven and even of God himself. The great Carmelite friar St. John of the Cross, whose writings Therese found greatly helpful, had famously described such periods of trial as the "Dark Night of the Soul". It has recently been revealed that Mother Teresa of Calcutta suffered similar crises of soul during her long life of service.

Answer: Because of her deep interest in, and prayers for, the missions.

Therese had often cherished the hope of becoming a missionary, having a special interest in what was then French Indochina. As late as 1896, by which time she was gravely ill, she expressed a desire to serve at the Carmelite missions at Hanoi and Saigon, and kept up a lively correspondence with some of the missionary nuns there.

She was greatly inspired by the life of the French Jesuit martyr Theophane Venard, who had been a missionary in Tonkin, where he had been imprisoned and beheaded in 1861.

Although her illness ultimately prevented her from even leaving the convent at Lisieux, she frequently expressed a desire to serve the foreign missions, even if she had to wait until after her death. Two years after her canonization in 1925, Pope Pius XI named her co-patroness of foreign missions, along with St. Francis Xavier.

Answer: false

In her writings, Therese frequently spoke of "scattering flowers", and on her deathbed she comforted one of her fellow nuns by promising that "...there will be many blessings after I am gone; they will be like a shower of roses from heaven." (This is rather similar to another promise Therese had made, which was that she would "...spend my heaven doing good on earth").

In Catholic devotional art, Therese is often depicted scattering roses, sometimes while standing on a cloud, surrounded by cherubs, which has given rise to the belief that an actual shower of roses occurred after her death. In fact, no such Fortean event has ever been reported, and a careful reading makes it clear that Therese was speaking metaphorically. Certainly, more miracles have been attributed to Therese's intercession than to virtually any other saint. Of particular note was the cure of a blind four year-old girl at Therese's tomb in 1908, which was one of the miracles presented at her beatification process. During a procession of her relics in 1923, shortly before her beatification ceremony, a blind woman regained her site as the procession passed her, and an injured military veteran claimed to have suddenly regained his ability to walk. In more tolerant days, devotion to Therese even existed among Muslims (and may still today, though less overt), who called her "Allah's little saint". A basilica was erected at Choubrah in Cairo, Egypt by the Muslims, in thanksgiving for the many favors they claimed to have received from her.

Answer: 28 years

Therese has been called a "spiritual prodigy", in much the same way that Mozart was a musical prodigy. She had advanced so far, and accomplished so much in her short life that it seemed fitting that the formal recognition of her sainthood should proceed at a rapid pace.

After the posthumous publication of her biography "Histoire d'une Aime" in 1898, her cult grew so rapidly that Pope Leo XIII, to whom she had appealed years before to grant permission for her to enter the convent, decided to dispense with the rule that 50 years should elapse before the process of canonization could be started.

She was beatified by Pope Pius XI only twenty-six years after her death, and in the Jubilee year, 1925, she was proclaimed a saint. Had she lived, she would have been 52 years old at the time of her canonization.

In 1997, Pope John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church in recognition of her spiritual writings which, in addition to her biography, include numerous poems and prayers. She is one of only three women so honored; the other two being St. Catherine of Siena and Therese's namesake, St. Teresa of Avila.