Relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux are in St. Louis from Nov. 10-13 as part of a nationwide tour
St. Thérèse of Lisieux has been a guiding force in Mary Howard’s life since childhood.
Howard chose the Little Flower as her confirmation saint; then, as an adult, she was inspired to join the secular Discalced Carmelites.
“Everything that she (Thérèse) loved in the Church, I love in the Church — the Holy Infant, the Holy Face. All those devotions are my devotions. She’s been influencing my spirituality my whole life,” said Howard, a parishioner at Most Sacred Heart in Eureka.
Naturally, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to pray with St. Thérèse’s remains during the relics’ first stop in the St. Louis area on Nov. 10 at St. Agnes Home in Kirkwood. As part of a nationwide tour, the relics will also be on display at the Carmel of St. Joseph in Ladue on Nov. 11-12 and Little Flower Parish in Richmond Heights on Nov. 13.
The U.S. relic tour marks 100 years since St. Thérèse’s canonization and coincides with the Jubilee Year of Hope. The tour started on her feast day, Oct. 1, and continues through Dec. 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The reliquary, from the Sanctuary of St. Thérèse in Lisieux, contains some of the saint’s bones.
St. Thérèse lived in France at the end of the 19th century. She entered a cloistered Carmelite convent in Lisieux at age 15 and died of tuberculosis at age 24. She lived a hidden life, but after her death, she became well-known through her autobiography “Story of a Soul,” spreading her spirituality known as the “little way” of childlike trust and confidence in God’s love.
She was canonized in 1925, 27 years after her death. In 1997, St. John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church, one of four women to hold that title. In 2023, Pope Francis wrote an apostolic exhortation “C’est la Confiance: On Confidence in the Merciful Love of God” to mark 150 years since St. Thérèse’s birth.
On Nov. 10, the chapel at St. Agnes Home opened for public veneration of the relics at 8 a.m.; by 8:15 a.m., the pews were filled. During 9 a.m. Mass, people squeezed into the choir loft, in extra chairs along the aisle and spilled out into the lobby area.
Archbishop Emeritus Robert J. Carlson, who resides at St. Agnes Home, celebrated the votive Mass for St. Thérèse, which included special readings and prayers related to the saint.
He quoted Pope Benedict XVI in his homily: “Little Thérèse has never stopped helping the simplest souls, the little, the poor and the suffering who pray to her.”
“St. Thérèse of Lisieux was a woman of great faithfulness and humility who took great joy in serving God,” the archbishop emeritus said. “May your presence here be an opportunity to strengthen you in all aspects of your faith, and may you take joy, like her, in serving God.”
As visitors approached to venerate St. Thérèse, they knelt in front of the reliquary, elevated on a low table in front of the sanctuary. Some pressed rosaries or prayer cards against the glass surrounding the relics.
Jessie Eisenmann and three of her six children, parishioners at St. Clare of Assisi in Ellisville, came to venerate St. Thérèse’s relics in the morning. Their family has a deep devotion to the saint, Eisenmann said, and often seeks her intercession.
“Her little way, her simplicity — it doesn’t have to be this high theological thing to grasp,” she said. “It’s just ordinary little acts of love that have really impacted us.”
Her daughter Elizabeth chose St. Thérèse as her confirmation saint when she was confirmed in May. Reading “Story of a Soul” changed her faith life by helping her realize that the simple but hard work of loving people around you can be the way to heaven, she said.
“I think often it’s hard to relate to saints because they seem so high and mighty, but St. Thérèse taught us that if you pick up a pin for love of God, then you save a soul,” Elizabeth said.
Neil McCloskey volunteers with the Little Flowers girls’ club at his parish, St. Peter in Kirkwood. He was eager to pray with St. Thérèse’s relics because she has been a model for him of how small acts of love can be transformed to move mountains.
“Whatever effort you are able to put forth is really multiplied with God’s grace, and she was just a great example of that,” he said. “Just me, as a father, trying to be the best example to my family that I can be, I look to her for strength and prayers because she’s just so inspirational to me.”
St. Agnes Home is home to the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus, who, in addition to the assisted living facility, also operate the adjacent Carmelite Child Development Center. Children from the daycare visited the relics mid-morning, processing into the chapel with pink and yellow roses and taking turns placing them in front of the relics.
Welcoming the beloved Carmelite saint into their own Carmelite home has been beautiful for the community, Sister Anunciata Grace, DCJ, said.
“She’s obtained so many graces for so many of us. A lot of our sisters have Thérèse in their name. And so all of us, I think, have a deep devotion to her in some way,” Sister Anunciata Grace said. “So it’s just been such a gift to have her body present, which is so holy, and which we know will be her body that rises on the last day. Just being so close to that, I think it makes her spiritual presence more clear.”
St. Thérèse’s own devotion to the Sacred Heart has also led her to renewed prayer that those who don’t know Jesus will come to know His heart and be drawn into His merciful love, she said.
“My prayer for everyone who’s coming here is that by being in her presence, that a great desire for sanctity would well up in their hearts, that the Lord would set hearts on fire, like He set St. Thérèse’s heart on fire,” she said, “that people would know that sanctity is for them, not just a faraway concept, but that the Lord wants to be present in their hearts and their lives and make them holy as He is holy.”
See St. Thérèse’s relics in St. Louis
Monday, Nov. 10, at St. Agnes Home in Kirkwood: Veneration of relics from 8 a.m.-6 p.m.; Mass at 9 a.m.
Tuesday, Nov. 11 and Wednesday, Nov. 12 at the Carmel of St. Joseph in Ladue: Veneration of relics from 6:30 a.m.-8:30 p.m.; Mass at 7 p.m.
Thursday, Nov. 13 at Little Flower Church in Richmond Heights: Veneration of relics from 10 a.m.-6:15 p.m.; Mass at 6:30 p.m.
