A four-minute film of the recreation room in the Lisieux Carmel, where "Story of a Soul" was born.

The Carmelites of Lisieux present a four-minute film in English of the recreation room St. Therese knew.  

The daily schedule of the Lisieux Carmel allowed an hour of communal recreation after lunch and again after supper.  This was one of the few times the nuns were free to speak.  In the summer, recreation was often spent in the "chestnut walk" (see the photo on the wall above, where Therese, with the statue of the Child Jesus, was photographed with her sisters), but in the winter and cooler seasons it was in this room on the ground floor, called the "warming room" (le chauffoir) because, unlike the other rooms in the monastery, it had a fireplace.  

Many incidents reported by Therese or her Carmelite sisters took place in this room, and all her religious plays were produced here.  Perhaps the most historic moment was a conversation among Therese and her sisters Marie and Pauline that led to Therese's writing her memoir, "Story of a Soul,"  which has transformed so many lives.  Pauline, who was prioress at the time, testified in 1910:

One winter's evening early in 1895 (two and a half years before Sister Therese's death), I was chatting with my two sisters, Marie and Therese, and the latter was telling us a lot of stories about her childhood.  "Mother," said Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart [Marie Martin], "what a pity we haven't got all that in writing!  If you asked Sister Therese of the Child Jesus to write down her childhood memories for us, I'm sure we'd find them very entertaining."  "I couldn't ask for anything better," I replied.  Then I turned to Sister Therese, who was laughing at what she took to be a bit of leg-pulling, and said "I order you to write down all your childhood memories."   

St. Therese of Lisieux by those who knew her, testimonies from the process of beatification, edited and translated by Christopher O'Mahony.  Dublin: Veritas Publications, 1975, p. 33.  

This conversation, at which the fourth sister, Celine, was not present, took place during the holidays after Christmas 1894; it could have been on Therese's twenty-second birthday, January 2, 1895.

See two early photos of this room at the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux. 

We congratulate and thank the Carmel of Lisieux and the Association of the friends of St. Therese and of her Carmel, which produced this film.  Thanks to their generosity and accomplishment, we can see without leaving home what the pilgrims who have flocked to Lisieux since Therese's death could not see: the rooms where, in her adventure of faith, she allowed God, "content with my weak efforts, to raise me to Himself and make me a saint, clothing me with His infinite merits."  

 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.