St. Therese Novena

Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin was born on January 2, 1873, in Alençon, France, the youngest of five surviving daughters. Her parents, Louis and Zélie Martin, raised their girls in a home of faith and love. In 2015 the Church canonized them together, the first married couple to be canonized as a couple.

Her mother died in August 1877, when Therese was four, and the family moved to Lisieux. Two of her older sisters, Pauline and Marie, became Carmelite nuns there, and Therese longed to follow them. At fourteen, on a pilgrimage to Rome, she asked Pope Leo XIII himself for permission to enter at fifteen. She entered the Carmel of Lisieux on April 9, 1888, and took the name Sister Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.

Her life there was hidden and ordinary: prayer, work and community life. In April 1896 she showed the first signs of tuberculosis, and at the same time she entered a trial of faith that lasted until her death. She died on September 30, 1897, at twenty-four. A year later her memoirs were published as Story of a Soul, and her way of trust spread quickly around the world.

Pope Pius XI canonized her on May 17, 1925, and in 1927 named her patron of the missions, with St. Francis Xavier, though she had spent her adult life inside a cloistered convent. St. John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church on October 19, 1997, a title the Church gives to saints whose teaching has deepened its understanding of the faith. Her feast day is October 1.

Therese longed to be a saint, and she was honest about how small she was. She accepted that she would never be great or strong in herself, so she looked for what she called a little way, short and straight, to God. She found it in a picture from her own time: an elevator. She could not climb the steep stairs to holiness, but the arms of Jesus could lift her, if she stayed small enough to be carried.

That is the heart of the Little Way: trust and love. Trust, because holiness is God's work in us before it is ours. Love, because the smallest act done for love matters to God. A smile for someone who gets on your nerves, a chore done without complaint, a kind word when you would rather be sharp, a prayer when you feel nothing: these were her materials, and they are within reach of anyone. St. John Paul II described her way as nothing other than the Gospel way of holiness for everyone.

Pope Francis has linked it to what Jesus said about the little ones: “thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to the little ones” (Matthew 11:25, DRA). It is not a way for spiritual athletes. It is the way of a child who knows she is loved.

A novena is a prayer prayed on nine days in a row, usually for one intention. The word comes from the Latin for nine. Most novenas are short, a prayer or two each day, prayed alone or with others.

Catholic tradition links the nine days to the time between the Ascension of Jesus and Pentecost, when the apostles prayed together while they waited for the Holy Spirit: “All these were persevering with one mind in prayer with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren” (Acts 1:14, DRA). The Vatican's Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (2001) says the Pentecost novena grew out of prayerful reflection on those days.

A novena is not a formula that forces God's hand, and it is not a chain letter. The Carmelites who look after St. Therese's National Shrine in Illinois say plainly that no novena has to be prayed at a certain hour to work, and that simple, honest prayer is what Therese taught. Think of it as nine days of staying with a request, the way the widow in Jesus' parable kept coming back to the judge (Luke 18:1-8).

Each day below starts from a moment in her life. The prayers are written for this page and addressed to God, and each ends by asking Therese to pray for us. The verses are from the Douay-Rheims; in Faithero you can read each one in context and have the whole chapter read aloud.

If one of these days touches something heavy, you may find more words in our prayers for grief, prayers for healing and prayers for guidance. And if you pray the Rosary, here are the mysteries for each day of the week.

Near the end of her life Therese said that after her death she would let fall a shower of roses. Pope Francis, writing in 2023, called the graces God gives through her prayers her roses.

From this grew a popular custom often called the novena of roses. People pray for nine days, often with a short prayer asking St. Therese to pick a rose from heaven's garden and send it as a sign of God's love, and some people tell of finding a rose, or the scent of roses, after they prayed. Others pray the same novena without asking for any sign at all.

If you pray it, hold the custom lightly. The Carmelites at her National Shrine say that the grace matters more than the roses, that many prayers are answered with no rose at all, and that one does not pray for roses. A rose can be a sweet reminder of her. It is not a promise, and God's answer does not depend on one.

Catholic and Orthodox Christians ask the saints to pray for them, much as you might ask a friend at church to pray for you. They believe that those who have died in Christ are alive in him and still part of one family with us, the communion of saints that Catholics celebrate on All Saints Day. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the saints in heaven do not stop interceding for us (956), and in that same paragraph it quotes Therese's own hope to spend her heaven doing good on earth. The morning prayers published by the Orthodox Church in America include one asking your patron saint to pray to God for you. Catholic teaching distinguishes this from worship, which belongs to God alone (957).

Most Protestant Christians do not ask the saints for their prayers. They pray to God directly, find no example of asking the departed in Scripture, and want to keep it clear that Christ is the one mediator between God and us (1 Timothy 2:5). If that is you, you can still pray these nine days. Every prayer is addressed to God. Leave out the last line, and let Therese's life be an example of trust rather than a go-between.