Chaplet of St. Therese

Description

How to pray the chaplet:

Begin at the crucifix with the Sign of the Cross. On the medal of St. Therese, tell her your intentions.

On the first white bead, pray “St. Therese of the Child Jesus, Patroness of the Missions, pray for us!”

On each of the 24 remaining beads, pray a “Glory Be”, each in thanksgiving to God for her 24 years on earth.

And that’s it!

The chaplet is usually prayed as a novena, recite this chaplet every day for nine days, or for 24 days.  It has often been reported that Therese will send you a specific colored rose as a sign that your petition was granted.

About the Saint:

Born during the time of the heresy of Jansenism, Therese of Lisieux was heavily influenced by its ideology that all souls are trash because of Original Sin and completely unable to obtain any sort of holiness through the use of free will – that God either would or would not save you, and there was literally no prayer, no sacrifice, no almsgiving, nothing that you could do to change it.

We do have to choose to love God. We will always be unworthy, and it IS God’s freely given gifts of grace, but if we aren’t trying we can never obtain sanctity, and if we ARE trying God will help us.

Which is exactly what Therese found in her Little Way.

She searched through the Gospels for a sign that all was not lost: that despite the fact that she was the weakest of God’s children that she had a chance to be a Saint and fulfill this great desire of her heart.

And she found it: “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Mt. 18:3

Therese chose to remain little, like a child, and perform all her duties with great love, no matter how small. In remaining little, she trusted that Jesus would stoop to the low places, and seeing her effort, take her up and bring her to the heights. It was her elevator to heaven.

And unlike Jansenism, it rests greatly on our use of free will to perform our duties with great love, our free will to choose to remain little and small, trusting in the goodness of God, the Fatherhood of God, to come and take us to heaven.

Before she died, Therese said that she wanted to spend her heaven helping souls on earth know God and letting fall “a shower of roses”. Her unfailing intercession has made her both the patron saint of missionaries (though she remained in a cloistered convent her whole life) and a Doctor of the Church.