When I was five years old I woke up one morning and told my mother about a vivid dream I had. In the dream there was a young woman, clothed in black, brown, and white. She stood smiling at me and had rose petals at her feet that fell from her hands. My mother said to me, “You either saw Mary or St. Therese.” I was intrigued by the notion of St. Therese and my mother pulled out one of our paperback books on the saints and showed me a page about St. Therese where I saw a smiling young woman surrounded by red, pink, and yellow roses. I was captivated. 

From that day on, a friendship was formed. I have since told anyone who will listen to me that St. Therese of Lisieux, also known as the Little Flower, is the most insistent friend I have ever had and aside from Jesus and Mary is my dearest friend in heaven. It wasn’t until high school that my friendship with her became more than a passing fancy. During my first day of confirmation class each student had to introduce themselves and give two interesting facts. My interesting facts were that I loved to read and that I already knew my confirmation saint would be St. Therese. Afterwards, an older girl who was helping with the class came up to me and said, “I love books and St. Therese is my patron saint too, let’s be friends!” 

That girl to this day is one of my dearest friends and confidants. She became my confirmation sponsor and her daughter is my goddaughter. So much of who I am comes from my friendship with her, a friendship facilitated by St. Therese. This friend gave me my first copy of Story of a Soul, St. Therese’s spiritual autobiography, which absolutely changed the course of my life as a teenager and whose pages I have read over and over again in the years since. 

In college, I can count no less than five friends with whom I shared a deep love of St. Therese. Being blessed enough to go to a Catholic college and study theology, there were many opportunities to talk about favorite saints and devotions, but St. Therese always seemed to come up as new friendships blossomed. A novena to her helped me to discern a relationship through which she provided an abundance of white roses in a place I had never seen such roses before. The real proof of intense love and friendship from the Little Flower came during my junior of college when I studied abroad in Ireland. 

Now you might think that going to Ireland would have nothing to do with a little French nun who died at the close of the nineteenth century. However, that just so happened to be the same time that St. Therese’s holy parents, Zelie and Louis Martin, would be canonized together. I knew this before I left for Ireland and had spent months trying to figure out how does one even go to a canonization mass (I was only twenty at the time with aboslutely no clue what I was doing). On the feast of St. Therese, October 1, two weeks before the canonization, everything fell into place. I found accommodation in Rome, booked my plane ticket, and figured out how to reserve a ticket. I would be going alone, but had managed to make a few contacts with whom I could meet up at different times. 

The canonization Mass was beautiful. I got to meet so many wonderful people who also shared a deep and abiding love for the Martin family. I was privileged to get a tour of St. Peter’s from a friend of a friend who was studying in Rome at the North American College. I got to go down to the Scavi and see with my own two eyes the bones of St. Peter, that complicated and amazing apostle who did what the Lord asked of him. St. Therese truly spoiled me. 

At the end of my semester abroad, I was speaking with a woman who worked in the international student office during a farewell party for the international students. She and I had built up a good friendship over the months because I was one of a handful of students she knew who was actually devout. I had come singing into the office on St. Therese’s feast day to share the good news about going to the canonization mass and she had heard all about it from me. She pulled me aside to give me something that belonged to her mother. She had been giving me small devotional items throughout the semester so I was not too surprised. She said, very seriously, “My children aren’t practicing and when I die they will not understand what this is and probably will throw it away. I want you to have it because I know how much you will treasure and protect it.” She placed in my hand a locket. I was confused. I opened the locket and there, tiny and precious, was a first-class relic of my very insistent heavenly friend, St. Therese. I immediately began crying. How does a little girl from Texas end up in Ireland with a first class relic of a French nun who died in obscurity over 115 years earlier? Only by the insistence of that little French nun! 

The relic accompanied me back home and was put in a prized place of reverence in my college apartment for my last year and a half of undergrad. The graces from that time are too numerous to recount. The greatest grace was yet to come, unbeknownst to me. 

I had decided to pursue my master’s degree in theology from the Augustine Institute as an on-campus student in Denver, Colorado. The women I ended up sharing a house with, fellow Augustine Institute students and employees, all also had a deep devotion to the Little Flower. In her honor, with the relic in pride of place on our mantle, we named our house Les Buissonnets after her childhood home. Our chaplain at the AI was also very devoted to St. Therese and the Little Way. He kicked off a study on Story of a Soul for the students with a Mass in the basement of our house, which included reverencing the relic. After Mass, several fellow students asked in wonder and awe how I acquired the relic and I told the story above about studying abroad, the canonization mass, and the generosity of a wonderful Irish woman. A guy in our group, by whom I’d already sat for most of our classes and with whom we already shared a love of Lewis and Tolkien said to me, “Hey I studied abroad in Slovakia that fall semester too. I also found a way to the canonization mass because of my personal devotion to St. Therese.” 

Turns out, that guy had prayed to St. Therese that very morning to make it as obvious as possible if there was a young woman he ought to pursue. He asked me out on our first date three days later. Our first Christmas together he made me a reliquary for my relic of St. Therese complete with beautiful drawings of Therese, Zelie, and Louis (his undergrad was in studio arts). When he proposed, he knelt down in front of a beautiful statue of our dear mutual friend in heaven. We have now been married five years and are imminently due with our third child. The reliquary with the first class relic of St. Therese has pride of place in our home on an altar built by the hands of my husband. Our daughters love to kiss the relic and are familiar with all the images of the little saint we have throughout our home. 

I share this story of a heavenly friendship because I think too many people are afraid to build friendships with the saints. So many people see them as distant ethereal souls far from us. But we are all in the same Mystical Body as long as we are in a state of grace. We have recourse to the intercession and the friendship of the saints. Many times we think we might choose a saint because we admire some aspect of their life, but oftentimes the saints choose us. I cannot fathom why I have been so privileged to be singled out by the Little Flower. Many people are devoted to her and her Little Way, but I have yet to meet anyone else who she has so aggressively befriended as myself and my husband. So much of the life I live is because of her influence, her friendship, her Little Way. I have only learned more from the Blessed Mother about how to follow Jesus devoutly. When I think of how I want to grow in love to Our Lord, I turn to Our Lady and to St. Therese. They have never failed me. 

I encourage you to reach out to the Little Flower. She is a dear friend. Read Story of a Soul. If you have already read it (or tried to read it) and found it wanting, try it again. She is simple but she is profound. Read her letters, her plays, her poetry. There is much to mine from her words. If St. Therese is not your insistent friend as she is mine, open yourself up to see which other saint might be pursuing you. We have great recourse to the saints. They were ordinary people, just like you and me, who tried (and often failed) to live a life of virtue. In the end, they succeeded. We want to succeed too. Turn to them to help you to grow in holiness, to be like Christ! They have done it. If you want to do it too, you cannot do it alone. Seek the friendship of the saints. You never know what may come of such a heavenly friend.