The encounter with St Therese in 2024

Materials have just arrived from Rome to help us continue our studies of the thinking of St Therese of Lisieux into 2024. Secular groups have been focussing on this great saint since the beginning of last year, the 150th anniversary of her birth. She continues to speak to innumerable souls in this 21st century. One of my friends, a convert from Calvinism, likes to recall that he was given Story of a Soul in his Baptist days by a Baptist pastor. He reckons that his encounter with Therese in her book was the start of his pilgrimage into the Catholic Church. Such has been the power after her death of this nun who lived out her short life in obscurity behind the walls of an Enclosed monastery. 'Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage' - as the poet Richard Lovelace (1617-1658) wrote - nor do they block the soaring flight of the human mind and heart, which have their own ways of communication.