The Little Flower has to have the BIGGEST fan club going in the Catholic Church! If souls were flowers, Therese would be a very small and simple bloom: perhaps a tiny violet, the symbol of humility. 

Some of the saints are easier to admire than to imitate, so towering are they in their magnanimity of spirit and supernatural strength. In contrast, Therese is thoroughly unintimidating, a weakling by nature and unexceptional in human and divine gifts. Her exceptionality was the degree of her confidence in God.

Therese so trusted in the greatness of God’s Love for her that this trust became the source and springboard of her personal holiness. She understood that the Heart of God is Merciful Love – a Love that craves to embrace us in compassion like a mother, supplying for all of our infirmities and needs. Therese was unafraid to be weak and helpless before the Great I Am; and charmed by her confidence in Him, the more she showed God her weakness, the more He helped her ascend the steep mountain of Christian perfection. She became as a little child in the arms of her Saviour, surrendering herself to Him in every detail of her life, and allowing His arms to be her “elevator” to the summit.

In the eyes of God, humility is greatness. As Therese explained to one of her sisters, “…what pleases Him is that He sees me loving my littleness and my poverty, the blind hope that I have in His mercy… That is my only treasure…”. The Lord exalted little Therese because she desired to be nothing at all, having learned the truth that everything good is of the Lord and not of us. Once a tiny violet enclosed in Carmel, she is now co-patroness of foreign missions, spending her Heaven doing good upon Earth as she lets down a shower of roses.