The above is my Paris Metro card from 1997. It was the subway pass I used to get around the city while I studied at the University of Paris as a 19 year old. Yes, the above is me as a 19 year old, not a 12 year old. I weighed about 100 lbs and had to shave maybe once a month. Walking the lonely streets of Paris, I had almost no friends. I was once mugged at knifepoint by a Muslim while talking to my own mother back in the states in a phone-booth.
One day after that, I walked into a Catholic bookstore and I saw the autobiography of St. Therese. I didn’t know who she was, but I bought it. My French was barely good enough to read it, so I tackled it in the native language in which she wrote her journal. It sounds sappy to write it, but St. Therese became my closest friend during that lonely chapter of my life. She became my first saint friend, especially as I was a recent revert.
Later in life, I think I moved on from her. Not that I turned my back on St. Therese or even lost my devotion to her. I just got tired of her theology being commandeered by modernists claiming she didn’t do any penance (a total lie if you read her canonization records like I did in seminary.) In any case, I grew in devotion to many other saints in seminary. But she never gave up on me. From looking out for me on those dark streets of Paris so many years ago, she stayed with me, even when I didn’t stay with her.
Fast forward to 2025. I recently spoke at the LifeSite News “Rome Forum” about the Church crisis. (My main talk will about Fatima be up New Years Day 2026 at LSN.) Returning from Denver to Rome, I stayed for a few days with a family in Florida. Midway through that short stay on the coast, we heard that a very large reliquary of St. Therese of Lisieux was going to be on display. The middle-daughter of the family wanted to go pray at the relics, but the rest of us were ambivalent about it. The middle daughter prevailed, so we went, even though it was an hour and a half round trip in the car.
In the end, we were all so blessed to have gone. In that Church above, I wasn’t expecting any consolation (or anyone to take a picture of me) but I received both. In fact, I was blessed with more clarity and peace before the bones of St. Therese (and the Blessed Sacrament) than any other prayer experience I had in 2025. Of course, I am the first to say prayer experiences should not be based on feelings, but even I knew this was much more than feelings. God gave me great joy, peace and courage at that moment of prayer above. (Many others in the Church felt it too.)
Why did God allow us to close up 2025 with so much consolation before the body of St. Therese? If I had to guess, it is a call to return to the basics. Even amidst this Church crisis, we have to remember what St. Therese taught: “Jesus does not ask for glorious deeds. He asks only for self-surrender and gratitude.”—St. Therese of the Child Jesus, Autobiography, pp. 193.
Last year on someone else’s podcast I said that I believe St. Therese is an extremely important saint for navigating the Church crisis. I said I think God gave us her just before the 20th century because God knew that no amount of human ascetical acts could prepare us for the trial of faith that would descend upon the Church in the current eclipse of the hierarchy. In other words, only total trust in God would get us through this. And St. Therese was the one chosen to lead us to trust amidst the total darkness she often felt in her soul.
If the “Big Way” of the saints of yore was ground combat to the nth degree, the “Little Way” is the instruments of flying blind in the darkness of a Church crisis. In some sense, it takes more skill to navigate a large military aircraft at night in a war than to fight hand-to-hand on the ground during the day. St. Therese flew blind to Christ in the darkness of no consolation for many reasons. Perhaps one of those was to teach us to fly by night using the instruments of the faith as the visibility of the Church was to go out via the eclipse predicted in La Sallette.
As my friend Mike the Navy SEAL says, St. Therese teaches us to “handle the task at hand.” And Mike says that executing “the task at hand” was the one determining factor he noticed in who made it through BUDS and who didn’t. (In other words, those who worried about the next evolution instead of the challenge at-hand often ended DQing themselves by ringing the dreaded bell by thinking too far ahead on Coronado island.) Turns out St. Therese is not only the saint for little white kids who get mugged in Paris, but for all people trying to cooperate in trust with the mighty graces of God Almighty.
Or, perhaps I’m reading the Church crisis into too many things in my life and God just gave me a good feeling in prayer that evening in Florida. Either way, I was brought back to the way of total trust and confidence of St. Therese as we close out this rough year of 2025. This consolation before the bones of my old friend was a humbling gift of courage to launch me into 2026. It was a reminder not to be reliant on my own witty words, but in Christ Himself and His saints.
Blessed [almost] Octave of Our Lord’s birth and Joyous New Year’s 2026 to you all!