Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

A statue of The Little Flower along with one of her first-class relics.

Blessed Feast of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. 

Cardinal Ratzinger (now-Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) wrote of her in his Introduction to Christianity:

"First of all, the believer is always threatened with the uncertainty which in moments of temptation can suddenly and unexpectedly cast a piercing light on the fragility of the whole that usually seems so self-evident to him. A few examples will help to make this clear. That lovable saint Teresa of Lisieux, who looks so naïve and unproblematical, had grown up in an atmosphere of complete religious security; her whole existence from beginning to end, and down to the smallest detail, was so completely moulded by the faith of the Church that the invisible world had become not just a part of her everyday life, but that life itself. It seemed to be an almost tangible reality that could not be removed by any amount of thinking. To her, 'religion' really was a self-evident presupposition of her daily existence; she dealt with it as we deal with the concrete cocooned in the complete security, left behind her, from the last weeks of her passion, shattering admissions which her horrified sisters toned down in her literary remains and which have only now come to light in the new verbatim editions. She says, for example, 'I am assailed by the worst temptations of atheism.' Everything has become questionable, everything is dark. She feels tempted to take only the sheer void for granted. In other words, in what is apparently a flawlessly interlocking world someone here suddenly catches a glimpse of the abyss lurking––even for her––under the firm structure of the supporting conventions. In a situation like this, what is in question is not the sort of thing that one perhaps quarrels about otherwise––the dogma of the Assumption, the proper use of confession––all this becomes absolutely secondary. What is at stake is the whole structure; it is question of all or nothing. That is the only remaining alternative; nowhere does there seem anything to cling to in this sudden fall. All that can be seen is the bottomless depths of the void into which one is also staring."