Chapter One pages 13-33
As Therese began to write she was aware of her impending death. When the first signs and symptoms of her tuberculosis appeared she hid them until they finally became known when she coughed up blood on Good Friday (April 6) in 1896. She is therefore writing from the perspective of one who is deeply in touch with her own mortality. It is often said of her that she saw all that she saw through the light of eternity (or the light of heaven).
Therese began her spiritual autobiography, Story of a Soul, when she was 22 years old, just two and a half years before her death, near the beginning of 1895.
Manuscript A was not written for public or even wide consumption, much less publication. Rather it was written as a sort of “family souvenir.” That is, a record of stories from her childhood written for the amusement of her sisters. Her older sister, Pauline, who became Therese’s surrogate mother after their mother’s untimely death from breast cancer, ordered Therese to write it in her capacity as prioress. The oldest sister, Marie, also a nun, suggested that Pauline order Therese to write it.
Thus Therese begins her writing addressed to Mother Agnes (Pauline’s religious name) who is “doubly my mother” as she is both the sister who raised Therese after their mother’s death and mother prioress of the convent in which Therese and her sisters reside.
At first Therese was reluctant to write her story because she feared too much concentration on herself would distract her from her commitment to please Jesus. After further consideration and prayer she got a sense that taking up this writing project would please Jesus, so she put her pen to paper.
She begins with a question. Why does God seem to have preferences? Why don’t “all souls receive an equal amount of graces?”
What was revealed to her is the basis for both her nickname as the little flower and her “way” commonly referred to as the “little way.” All the flowers of the garden are important and beloved of Jesus. The regal lilly is no more beloved that the simple daisy.
“Perfection consists in doing God’s will, in being what God wills us to be.”
“The nature of love is to humble oneself.”
“The sun shines simultaneously on the tall cedars and on each little flower as though it were alone on the earth.” This vital theological truth is the basis for this statement that has been put in various ways by Christians across the ages, God loves each one of us as if we were the only available object for his love, and by some strange grace he loves us all the same. P. 15
Jesus gets all the credit in Therese’s story. “His mercy alone brought about everything that is good in her.”
Therese felt exceedingly loved by her parents and her sisters and counted this as a gift from God in her early childhood which would be interrupted by her mother’s death when she was 4.5 years old.
Therese has wonderful memories and illustrative accounts of her mother’s thoughts and feelings about her.Therese loved Pauline of all her sisters in a very special way from a very young age.
Therese’s mother described her as having a stubborn streak and a heart of gold calling her lovable and frank.
Therese was a high maintenance child who while not over spoiled by her parents did have by her account an “excessive self love.”
When she was still quite young Therese was offered the chance to pick some doll dresses from a great basket of dresses by her sister, Leonie. Therese said, “I choose all.” She later saw this episode as a metaphor for her spiritual journey. I don’t want to be half a saint, she said. I choose all of you o’God! “I fear only one thing: to keep my own will; so take it, for I choose all the You will!”
She had a dream when she was little that revealed to her that a soul enveloped in grace has nothing to fear.
In her childhood she developed a love of the wide open spacious of nature which she would keep for her whole short life.
“I found flowers under each of my steps…”