Saint Thérèse of Lisieux was described in her mother’s letters and diaries as a cheerful, bright child, but after her mother’s untimely death when Thérèse was just 4 years old, the girl became sullen, withdrawn, and sensitive.
The saint faced many challenges in her life: In addition to the early loss of her mother, her beloved older sister Pauline joined the Carmelites, a cloistered order, when Thérèse was just 9, leading her to feel that she was being abandoned all over again.
Thérèse notes in her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, that she was the baby of her family and spoiled by her older sisters.
“As I was the youngest, I wasn’t used to looking after myself. Céline tidied our bedroom and I never did a stroke of housework,” she wrote.
She added, “My extreme sensitiveness made me unbearable.”
She explained that if she offended anyone, instead of making up she “wept bitterly and so made things worse. Then, when I’d stopped weeping, I’d start all over again and weep for having wept.”
Thérèse wrote that she needed a miracle to help her grow out of her childish behavior, and that miracle came on Christmas day in 1886, when she was nearly 14 years old.
“Jesus, the Child then only an hour old, flooded the darkness of my soul with torrents of light,” she wrote. “By becoming weak and frail for me, He gave me strength and courage. He clothed me with His weapons, and from that blessed night I was unconquerable.”
Thérèse, her sister Céline, and her father had just arrived home after attending midnight Mass. Thérèse mentions that she had received Communion and that she was excited to see her shoe full of presents.
“When we were small children,” she wrote, “this old custom gave us such delight that Céline wanted to continue treating me like a baby.”
She said that for years, her father had delighted in her childish Christmas joy as she opened her presents.
“But as Jesus wanted to free me from the faults of childhood, He also took away its innocent pleasures,” she wrote. “He arranged matters so that Daddy was irritated at seeing my shoes in the fireplace.”
Her father said, “Thank goodness it’s the last time we shall have this kind of thing!” which Thérèse said “hurt her very much.” After he said that, Thérèse went up to her room to take off her hat, and her sister told her to stay upstairs, and wait to open the presents, as it would upset her too much.
“But Thérèse was not the same girl. Jesus had changed her,” the saint related. She ran downstairs and opened her presents with the same cheer as previous years, with her father laughing along and her sister watching in awe of Thérèse’s newfound composure.
She reflected, “Thérèse had got back for good the strength of soul which she had lost when she was four and a half. On this glorious night the third period of my life began.”
The saint said that from the night, after her victory over her emotions, Jesus made her a fisher of men, like His apostles.
“I longed to work for the conversion of sinners with a passion I’d never felt before,” she wrote.“Love filled my heart, I forgot myself and henceforth I was happy.”
When Thérèse became a Carmelite sister at the age of 15, she took the name “Thérèse of the Child Jesus,” showing her lifelong devotion to the Holy Infant after her Christmas day miracle.
This article has been updated and originally appeared on CatholicVote on Dec. 24, 2024.