Paperback: I will spend my Heaven in doing good upon earth. - St Thérèse on 17 July 1897.
The success of this book is one of the most amazing stories in publishing history; for St Thérèse died at only age 24, after a nine-year hidden life as a cloistered Carmelite nun. The Story of a Soul, better known to the English public as The Autobiography of St Thérèse of Lisieux, was first published in 1899.
Translated into many languages, The Story of a Soul (2010, TAN Books) quickly had a phenomenal reception and millions of copies were distributed worldwide. Today, it ranks with the greatest of the Church's spiritual classics. The reading of this book has brought innumerable people into the Church or back to the practice of their religion.
Written under obedience, the book conveys her secrets of great holiness achieved in ordinary life, teaching the "Little Way of Spiritual Childhood" - her "elevator" to Heaven as she called it. She continually shows us in this book how her "Little Way of love and confidence" comes straight from Sacred Scripture. This method has since been approved and promulgated by Pope Pius XI as a way of holiness for all.
No Catholic should be ignorant of the mighty "little" Thérèse or her Little Way. The Story of a Soul is a book that belongs in every Catholic home.
The translation in this edition is made from the French edition of L'Histoire dune Ame published from the Carmel of Lisieux for the fiftieth anniversary of the death of St Thérèse de L'Enfant Jésus. The manuscript is presented in its three original parts while retaining the chapter divisions of the French edition. In the French, her style is extremely simple and spontaneous, having a charm which is hard to capture, especially when she rises to poetic heights.
It alters slightly in the three parts:
1) the first eight chapters for Pauline are written without reserve.
2) the two chapters for Mother Marie de Gonzague are more doctrinal and show a certain restraint.
3) while the final chapter, for her eldest sister Marie, is simply a childlike outpouring of her heart to Jesus Himself.
The Story of a Soul is edited by Mother Agnes of Jesus and translated by Michael Day.
About the author: St Thérèse of Lisieux, also known as "Thérèse of the Child Jesus" and "The Little Flower", was the last of nine children born to Louis and Zelie Martin, at France in 1873. She was often anxious and depressed in childhood, as she suffered the early death of her mother. After she converted interiorly and began to read Thomas à Kempis' The Imitation of Christ, she joined two of her sisters in a discalced Carmelite convent as a nun at just 15 years old. After her oldest sister was elected prioress, Thérèse became a permanent novice to allay suspicions that her family was dominating the small community. She lived humbly, concealing her intense prayer life and countless sacrifices
Thérèse is the author of her own popular autobiography entitled The Story of a Soul, which she began writing in 1895, and she instituted a simple path to holiness now widely known as the "Little Way".
She died of tuberculosis on 30 September 1897, at the age of 24 and was canonized only 28 years later, in 1925, by Pope Pius XI.
She was later installed as the thirty-third Doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II in 1997.
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