Thérèse Martin entered the Carmel of Lisieux at fifteen, became Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus, and died there of tuberculosis at twenty-four. By any worldly measure her life was unremarkable: she did not preach, did not travel, did not found anything. But the spiritual autobiography she was ordered to write — The Story of a Soul — became one of the most loved books of modern Catholicism.
Thérèse taught what she called the "little way": that holiness is not for the great alone, but is reached by doing the smallest things with the greatest love. "Picking up a pin for the love of God," she wrote, "could save a soul." Pope John Paul II named her a Doctor of the Church in 1997, the youngest person and one of only four women so honored.