Her father was left to raise the five girls, ranging from four to seventeen. His brother-in-law, Isidore Guérin, a chemist in Lisieux, invited them all to go and live with him in this small town, with its population of just 18600 people. They moved on 15 November 1877.

Thérèse spent eleven years at Les Buissonnets, a fine house with a quiet garden, some way from the center of the town. Her sisters, Marie and Pauline, took care of her education. "Poor Léonie" was a difficult child. Wine, nearly four years older, was her favorite playmate. Louis Martin was both father and mother to his children. He called Thérèse his "little queen" and often took her walking or fishing in the surrounding countryside. Her character had changed: the shock of her mother's death had turned her into an introverted, shy and self-effacing child. Her entry into the Benedictine Abbey school of Notre-Dame du Pré was a trial for her: "The five years (1881-1886) I spent there were the saddest of my life". She worked hard, and loved catechism, history and science, but had trouble with spelling and mathematics.

At the age of ten, she was deeply distressed when Pauline, her favorite sister whom she had chosen as a substitute mother, left to become a Carmelite (2 October 1882). This new emotional shock went so deep that she fell seriously ill. For a whole month, her family were at their wits' end even doctors could find no explanation for the hallucinations, tossings, turnings and anorexia which afflicted her. Family and Carmelites alike prayed to Our Lady of Victories. And, on 13 May 1883, when it seemed that she would either die or lose her sanity, the family's statue of the Virgin smiled at her, and she was cured. But "spiritual torment" was to be her lot for years to come, slackening only when she started preparing for her long-awaited First Communion.

At the age of eleven, on 8 May 1884, she received her first "kiss of love", a sense of being "united" with Jesus, of His giving Himself to her, as she gave herself to Him. Her eucharistic hunger made her long for daily communion. Confirmation, "the sacrament of Love", which she received on 14 June 1884 filled her with ecstasy. Holidays in Trouville and Saint- Ouen-le-Pin were followed, however, by a retreat which triggered a crisis of scruples, lasting seventeen months. Her sister, Marie, helped her to overcome it. But Marie in her turn entered the Lisieux Carmel on 15 October 1886.

This was too much for the adolescent Thérèse, who had now lost a third mother. She was nearly fourteen and already strikingly good-looking, 1.62 meters tall with magnificent eyes and long hair. She attracted notice on the beach in Trouville, where people nicknamed her "the tall English girl". But she was tormented by an inner anguish which found relief only when, in November 1886, she appealed to her four brothers and sisters in heaven to intercede for her. Even then, she remained hypersensitive, weakwilled, "crying at having cried". How could she possibly enter the Carmel -something she had dreamed of since the age of nine as a way of living with Jesus - in this pitiful state?

The Christmas Conversion

Grace intervened to change her life as she was going up the stairs at Les Buissonnets on her return from Midnight Mass at Saint Peter's Cathedral on 25 December 1886. Something her father said provoked a sudden inner change. The Holy Child's strength supplanted her weakness. The strong character she had had at the age of four and a half was suddenly restored to her. A ten-year struggle had ended. Her tears had dried up. Freed at last from herself, she embarked on her "Giant's Race". "My heart was filled with charity I forgot myself to please others and, in doing so, became happy myself'. Now, she could fulfill her dream of entering the Carmel as soon as possible to love Jesus and pray for sinners. Grace received at Mass in Summer 1887 left her with a vision of standing at the foot of the Cross, collecting the blood of Jesus and giving it to souls. Having heard people speak of the three murders committed by a certain Pranzini, she decided to save him from hell through prayer and sacrifice. On 1 September 1887, she wept for joy: just before being guillotined, the prisoner kissed the crucifix. For Thérése, her "first child" had obtained God's mercy. She hoped that many others would follow once she was in the Carmel.

For Thérèse,1887 was a year of global development - physical, intellectual, artistic and especially spiritual. With the stubbornness of a woman in love, she fought to enter the Carmel at the age of fifteen. She had to overcome the opposition of her father (easily persuaded), her uncle Guérin, the bursar of the Carmel and Monseigneur Hugonin, the Bishop of Bayeux... So, during the pilgrimage to Italy with her father and sister Céline, she decided to approach Leo XIII himself.

This month of November 1887, when she discovered Switzerland, Florence, Venice, Assisi and above all Rome, marked a turning point in her life. She looked and listened eagerly, now realizing that priests were not angels, but "weak and fragile human beings", greatly in need of prayer. She understood better just what it meant to be a Carmelite. But the aim of her pilgrimage never wavered: to ask the Pope's permission to enter the Carmel at fifteen. According to Céline, the audience, which took place on Sunday 20 November 1887, was a disaster. Leo XIII answered Thérèse's entreaties evasively. The young girl was carried out in tears by the papal guards. Now she only had Jesus to turn to.

Back in Lisieux and after a difficult wait, she finally received Bishop Hugonin's permission. But she still had to be patient a while longer. On Monday 9 April 1888, an emotional and tearful but determined Thérèse Martin said good-bye to Les Buissonnets and her family. She was going to live "for ever and ever" in the desert with Jesus and twenty-four enclosed companions: she was fifteen years and three months old.

....