The Carmelites of Lisieux at prayer in the choir where St. Therese prayed. Click on the image to make a virtual visit to this choir.

The Carmelites of Lisieux invite you to make a "virtual visit" to the choir where St. Therese and the Carmelites of her day prayed the Divine Office, made their mental prayer, and attended Mass every day.  Join the Lisieux Carmelites in prayer at this 3:20 film on Vimeo, or make the English "pilgrimage visit" they offer on the Web site of the "Carmel de Lisieux."  An audio in English gives the words of St. Therese about prayer. 

As soon as the 15-year-old St. Therese entered the enclosure on April 9, 1888, as she writes, "I was led, as are all postulants, to the choir, and what struck me were the eyes of our holy Mother Genevieve, which were fixed on me."  It was here that she received the Habit on January 10, 1889 and, after her profession, received the black veil on September 24, 1890. 

The professed nuns participated in the Divine Office from their "stalls" against the wall.  At the time of Therese, at least some of them made the morning and evening hour of mental prayer" while sitting "on their heels" on the floor of the choir.  Sister Marie of the Trinity remembers that Therese, who never got enough sleep, often fell asleep during the hour of mental prayer or the thanksgiving after Holy Communion; her head fell over and she slept, her forehead touching the floor. 

It was also here that, at evening prayer, Therese was placed in front of Sister Marie of Jesus, who spent the whole hour unconsciously tapping her teeth with a fingernail.  Read Therese's humorous account of how "I paid close attention so as to hear it well, and my prayer, which was not the Prayer of Quiet, was spent in offering this concert to Jesus."

In the early summer of 1897, Therese was so sick that she had to give up attending the choir. But on August 30, 1897, she was placed on a movable bed and wheeled down the cloister from the infirmary to the entrance to the choir, where "she prayed for some time with her eyes fixed on the Blessed Sacrament.  We photographed her before bringing her in."  See the August 30, 1897 photograph of St. Therese. 

From this choir Therese's Carmelite sisters participated in her funeral Mass on October 4, 1897, and it was here, on March 26, 1923, that they welcomed their sister's body back after the solemn translation of her relics from her grave in the municipal cemetery at Lisieux to the chapel of the Carmel.

We congratulate the "Association les amis de Sainte Therese de Lisieux et de son Carmel" and the Carmelites of Lisieux for producing this beautiful film and for making it available in English.

"Lisieux basilica". Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Immediately after the liberation of Lisieux on August 24, 1944, two Canadian newspapermen interviewed the Carmelites and other townspeople and cabled the story to Canada.  Substantial excerpts from both stories about the "miracle of Lisieux" appeared in the Southern Cross, the newspaper of the diocese of Savannah, Georgia, on September 30, 1944. [Note: unfortunately, the archives of the Southern Cross have disappeared from the Web].

 "[On the night of June 8, 1944] [f]lames roared and crackled over blocks of the town, creeping nearer and nearer to the convent.  At the edge of the convent, perilously close to St. Therese's own chapel, the fire mysteriously slackened, then died out completely.  The townsfolk observed this, and today they are convinced that St. Therese herself intervened .  . . .

Devout brown-clad nuns of the Carmelite Order, to which Saint Therese belonged, today told me they believed the Saint had also intervened to spare the Basilica which bears her name. . . . I talked to Sister Anne of Jesus, aged 65 . . . to my surprise, I discovered the stooped, pale little nun was a Canadian, formerly Anne Goyer of Montreal . . . .

Tomorrow, a silent brown-garbed procession will walk quietly through the ruins of Lisieux, and the Carmelite nuns will once more step into silence and invisibility, which most will never leave again.

               Richard Sanburn, writing from Lisieux for the Ottawa Citizen

I found the nuns eating a simple meal on benches in one of the little side chapels, the chapel of the Virgin of the Smile.  In this and other side chapels of the crypt they have slept while men, women, and children have also been living and sleeping in close proximity, very different from the seclusion these women have known for years.  There were mattresses even on the flagged floor on each side of the altar.

                              Frederick Griffin, writing from Lisieux for the Toronto Star

The Allied troops enter Lisieux in the summer of 1944.  At the top, the Basilica of St. Therese

With thanks to the late Fr. J. Linus Ryan of Ireland, I am happy to present this excellent brief account of the bombing of Lisieux, a precise narrative of what happened to the town and to the Carmelite nuns in the summer of 1944, mentioning the public promise made on July 20, 1944 by curates of the town's three churches to celebrate the feast of St. Therese every year by bringing her relics in procession from St. Pierre's Cathedral to the Basilica.  The article was translated by Teresa Geslin Sweeney from "Therese de Lisieux," the magazine published by the Shrine at Lisieux; it appeared in English on the Web site of the Irish National Office of St. Therese.

 A journalist reports on how the bombing of Lisieux affected the Carmelites and tells the circumstances of the deaths of many other nuns: he learned the story from the Pilgrimage Director, Mgr Germain, three weeks after Lisieux was liberated.  Read the story of "How Lisieux Was Bombed."