Lent is a season to engage in a spiritual purgation to nurture a more peaceful soul that is pleasing to God. It is a time to grow in humility. St. Teresa of Avila names humility as one of three qualities “to possess inwardly and outwardly the peace our Lord recommended highly to us” (W 4, 4).

During Lent, we are asked to devote ourselves to seeking the Lord in prayer and reading Scripture, to service by giving alms, and to sacrifice self-control through fasting.

God is inviting us, through Joseph, to cut down on our talking and, like him, be better listeners and doers of His Word. As St. John of the Cross wisely says, “what is wanting, if anything is wanting, is not writing or speaking - rather these usually superabound - but silence and work.”

First-class relics are contained within a ring on the left hand of the statue of Thérèse in the tomb chapel of the Basilica of the Little Flower.

Declared venerable by Pope St. John Paul II in 1994 and beatified in 2008, the Martins are believed to be the first parents of a saint to be canonized.

Born in Alençon, France in 1873, Thérèse Martin made a trip to Rome at the age of 15 to make a personal request of Pope Leo XIII for special permission: entering the Carmelite monastery of Lisieux.