St. Thérèse of Lisieux

The youngest of nine in a devout French family, Thérèse lost her mother at four and was raised by her older sisters. At fifteen she received special permission to enter the Carmelite convent of Lisieux, where four of her sisters would also live. She remained there in silence and obscurity for the rest of her short life.

In her last years she wrote, under obedience, a spiritual memoir that her prioress published as Story of a Soul. She called her path the "Little Way" — a confidence that small acts done for love bring God more joy than great deeds done for ambition. She offered her sufferings of late-stage tuberculosis for missionaries she would never meet.

She died at twenty-four. Within twenty-five years she was a saint, and within a century she was named a Doctor of the Church — the third woman, and the youngest, to bear the title. "I want to spend my heaven," she said, "doing good on earth."