Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face was born in Alencon, France on January 2nd 1873 and was baptized with the name Marie Francoise Therese. She was the ninth and last child of her parents who had five daughters enter the religious life and four of them into the Carmelites. Therese entered the Carmel at the age of fifteen and became a ‘novice’ one year later, professing her vows the next year. For three years she had simple jobs to do and at seventeen was put in charge of the sacristy. During the nine years she spent in the convent, she apparently never did anything remarkable in the outward sense but her writings were simply amazing. She was told to write down all her childhood recollections and the resulting manuscript which covered all her life was published as a book after her death: The Story of a Soul. The book took the Christian world by storm. Sister Therese’s “little way” of spiritual childhood, the way of trust and complete self-surrender, the way of simplicity and perfection in the doing of small things and daily duties, has become a pattern for millions of people. Graces without number are attributed to her intercession in Heaven and she is the Saint of an era. God enabled her to attain holiness through ordinary means in a short time. She was called to join the Lord in Heaven on September 30, 1897 — not yet even twenty-five years old. She was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1997 by Pope John Paul II.