On january 10, 1889, Therese Martin, a 16-year-old postulant in the Carmelite monastery at Lisieux, received the Carmelite habit.  Thanks to the archives of the Carmel of Lisieux, you can understand her dispositions at that time by reading online the letters she wrote in the days before her Clothing. On this occasion Therese left the enclosure and assisted at the first part of the ceremony in the public chapel together with her family.  View a photo of the Carmelite chapel dating from Therese's time.  Read Therese's description of this day in her memoir, Story of a Soul. 

Thanks to the work of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux and their helpers, the first one hundred letters written by St. Therese of Lisieux are available online in English.  Please read her New Year's letter to her uncle and aunt, Isidore and Celine Guerin, written December 30, 1889.  She wrote at the end of the year 1889; the "bitter chalice" to which she refers is the illness of her father, who on February 12, 1889 had to be interned in a psychiatric hospital at Caen, where he remained for more than three years.