St. Thérèse said the sky would clear when she died

LISIEUX, Normandy, October 1, 1897 AD — All through her illness, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux had said that when she died, the sky would be clear. She died on Thursday, September 30, 1897 AD. It was a dark day, and it rained.

St. Thérèse had joined the Carmelite convent at Lisieux, in Normandy, when she was fifteen. Two of her older sisters were already nuns there. They were Pauline, now Mother Agnes of Jesus, and Marie, now Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart. Another sister, Céline, followed them in 1894 AD. On June 9, 1895 AD, St. Thérèse offered her life to God as a sacrifice to His Merciful Love.

St. Thérèse had tuberculosis, and by August it had reached both her lungs. On July 8 she was carried down to the infirmary. The nuns knew that a sister sent down there was going down to die. Facing her bed stood a statue of Our Lady.

A clock strikes three

In the middle of her last afternoon, strange pains began in her arms and legs. She put one arm on Mother Agnes’s shoulder and gave the other to Céline to hold. Just then, the clock struck three. St. Thérèse said of the offering she had made in 1895 AD: “I do not repent of having delivered myself up to Love.” A little later she said: “I would never have believed it possible to suffer so much! Never! never! I can only explain it by my ardent desire to save souls.”

Towards five o’clock her face suddenly changed. Her agony, the last struggle before death, had begun. The nuns were called to the infirmary, and St. Thérèse greeted each of them with a smile. All that time a crowd of small birds sat in a tree beside the open window and sang. Céline laid a small piece of ice on her sister’s dry lips. St. Thérèse gave Céline a long look and smiled, and the nuns watching took it for her last goodbye.

When the stars came out

Towards seven, the clouds broke up quickly and the stars came out.

The prioress, Mother Marie de Gonzague, was in charge of the convent. A few minutes after seven, thinking the end was still some way off, the prioress sent the nuns away. St. Thérèse asked the prioress whether this was the agony, and whether she was going to die. The prioress told her that it was the agony, but that God might let it last some hours more. St. Thérèse answered: “Ah, well!.. So be it; so be it!.. Oh! I do not wish to suffer less.”

Then she looked at her crucifix and said: “Oh!.. I love Him!.. My God!.. I… love… Thee!”

She fell back at once. The prioress had the infirmary bell rung to bring the nuns back, and she called out, “Open all the doors.” The nuns came back in time to kneel around the bed.

St. Thérèse raised herself, as if someone had called her. She fixed her eyes on a point a little above the statue of Our Lady. Her face had turned purple in the struggle. Now it turned as white as it had been when she was well, and her eyes shone with peace and joy. That lasted about as long as it takes to say the Creed. Then she closed her eyes and died, at about twenty past seven.

Her uncle, Isidore Guérin, his wife and her sister Léonie were praying in the convent chapel. Straight away Mother Agnes passed them a note: “My beloved parents, my darling Léonie, Our Angel is in Heaven.”

Mother Agnes and Sister Marie got the body ready, with Sister Aimée of Jesus. St. Thérèse was holding her crucifix so tightly that they had trouble freeing it from her hands. A smile stayed on her face. The three nuns said she looked no older than a girl of twelve or thirteen. Céline had brought a camera into the convent. The next morning, before the body was lifted from the infirmary, Céline took a picture of her sister.