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Zusatztext "A wonderful story of love! told with such authenticity! simplicity and freshness that the reader will be nothing but captivated ... I would like to invite all of you to rediscover this great little treasure! this glowing commentary on the Gospel fully lived." –His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI Informationen zum Autor John Beevers was born in 1911 in Yorkshire. He received his MA from Queens College in Cambridge in 1933, and began an extensive career in journalism, working with the BBC from 1941 to 1969. Although he privately wrote fiction and poetry, printing a volume of poems under the pseudonym John Clayton, he is best known for his biographies of Roman Catholic saints. He died in 1975. Klappentext Few spiritual figures have touched as many readers in the past century as Saint Therese of Lisieux, the saint popularly known as the Little Flower. Though she was only twenty-four years old when she died, her writings have had tremendous impact, making her one of the most popular spiritual writers in the twentieth century. Her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, has been a source of priceless inspiration ever since it was written, and has become the great spiritual bestseller of our time. A hundred years after her death in 1897, millions of copies have spread throughout the world and it has been translated into more than fifty languages.The reason for the continued success of her autobiography is, quite simply, that it is unlike any work of devotion and spiritual insight ever written. Once it is read, it cannot be forgotten. Its appeal across cultures and generations has been extensive, moving both peasants and popes, men and women, young and old-people of every kind of intelligence and education succumb to its spell. Yet is not a conventional work of religious devotion; instead, it is in many ways a supernatural book. In the words of Pope Pius XI, Saint Therese "attained the knowledge of supernatural things in such abundant measure that she was able to point out the sure way of salvation to others," and it is especially in The Story of a Soul that she has pointed out this sure way to the generations that have followed her. As Therese herself said of this book just prior to her death, "What I have written will do a lot of good. It will make the kindness of God better known." CHAPTER ONE I am going to entrust the story of my soul to you, my darling Mother, to you who are doubly my mother. When you asked me to do this, I felt it might be too great a distraction and might make me too concerned about myself, but afterwards Jesus made me realise that I should please Him by unquestioning obedience. Besides, it involves me in only one thing: to start extolling now the mercies of the Lord-which I shall go on doing throughout eternity. Before starting, I knelt before the statue of Mary, the one which has given us so many proofs that the Queen of Heaven looks after us like a mother. I begged her to guide my hand so that I should not write a line that would displease her. Then I opened the Gospels and saw these words: "Then He went up onto the mountainside, and called to Him those whom it pleased Him to call." There, indeed, was the mystery of my vocation, of my whole life, and of the special graces given me by Jesus. He does not call those who are worthy, but those He chooses. As St. Paul says: "I will show pity, He tells Moses, on those whom I pity; I will show mercy where I am merciful; the effect comes, then, from God's mercy, not from man's will, or man's alacrity." I had wondered for a long time why God had preferences and why all souls did not receive an equal amount of grace. I was astonished to see how He showered extraordinary favours on saints who had sinned against Him, saints such as St. Paul and St. Augustine. He forced them, as it were, to accept His graces. I was just as astonished when I read the lives of saints to see that Our Lord cherished c...
