As she lay dying in the convent infirmary, she could see roses blossoming outside her window. Sadly, she succumbed to tuberculosis at age 24. “The splendor of the rose or the whiteness of the lily does not take away the perfume of the little violet,” Thérèse wrote, explaining how every person has a special place in God’s garden. Thérèse loved nature, and often used flowers as metaphors in her writing to help explain God’s love for the world. Thérèse’s emphasis on making small daily sacrifices to God, rather than performing large dramatic deeds, appealed to many and the book became a classic spiritual text. Those writings along with letters and poems were posthumously collected and comprise her autobiography, The Story of a Soul. During her years at the convent in Lisieux, France, Thérèse was asked by her superiors to write memoirs of her childhood and time as a cloistered nun. At 15, Thérèse entered a French Carmelite order.
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