The Little Way of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux Is a Path of Hope

Father Jacques Philippe Commentaries, October 1, 2025 | National Catholic Register

This year, the Catholic Church celebrates the centenary of the canonization of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of her birth in 2023, Pope Francis wrote an apostolic exhortation entitled “It Is Trust,” which is a beautiful synthesis of the spirituality and message of this young nun, who was proclaimed doctor of the Church by Pope St. John Paul II in 1997.

Her feast day is an invitation for us to take an interest again in the message of little Thérèse, a message of inexhaustible richness and topicality.

We are in the Jubilee Year of Hope. Thérèse’s “Little Way” is based on the certainty that “hope does not disappoint,” according to the words of St. Paul in the Letter to the Romans, given as the title of the bull of indiction of the Jubilee. Let’s focus on two aspects of hope in Thérèse’s life: hope for the salvation of sinners and hope to become a saint…

Hope for the Salvation of Sinners

A beautiful experience of “hope that does not disappoint” is when Thérèse prayed for a great sinner. In August 1887, a year before she entered the Carmel convent, she heard of a great criminal, Pranzini, who had murdered a woman, her daughter and her servant in order to rob them.

He was condemned to the guillotine, but remained totally unrepentant and refused to see a priest. Thérèse could not bear that this unfortunate man was headed for hell.

Portrait of St. Thérèse of Lisieux in the Carmelite Convent's inner court yard, she holds in her left hand a parchment on which she has written these words of Teresa of Ávila: ‘I would give a thousand lives to save a soul’; and in her right hand a book by Léonide Guiot.

“By having Masses offered for him and praying with complete confidence for his salvation, she was convinced that she was drawing him ever closer to the blood of Jesus, and she told God that she was sure that at the last moment he would pardon him ‘even if he went to his death without any signs of repentance.’ As the reason for her certainty, she stated:

‘I was absolutely confident in the mercy of Jesus.’ How great was her emotion when she learned that Pranzini, after mounting the scaffold, ‘suddenly, seized by an inspiration, turned, took hold of the crucifix the priest was holding out to him  

A shocking detail: Thérèse would call this man, whom all the newspapers called a monster, “my first child” in her autobiography.

…. Continue at National Catholic Register.