Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux (the Little Flower) [The Authorized English Translation of Therese's Original Unaltered Manuscripts]

I've intended to read this book for years, during which time I became more definitely Christian (the kind that believes in science). Finally picking it up this week, I was completely distracted by all the discussion of illness. First, there is her lengthy mysterious illness which obviously affected her brain during the time of her illness. But I was especially driven to distraction by numerous nuns at her convent dying from the 1889–1890 pandemic, which Wikipedia tells me "killed about 1 million people worldwide, out of a population of about 1.5 billion." The world population is much larger now but we've lost over 4 million people worldwide from Covid. She survived the pandemic only to die of tuberculosis in 1897.

But okay, the beginning of her life is a strange tale of a cult-like dedication to suffering for its own sake, to the point of sadism. Eventually, however, she also introduces a philosophy of kindness and appreciation of the holy within others-- especially those with whom we disagree. This also seems very timely as basically everyone is currently at war with everyone with whom they disagree.

I'm not in agreement with her philosophy that all Jesus requires of us is our love. In the Bible, Jesus was an activist, a healer, and even brought people back to life. Regardless of whether you believe in this as literal truth, I think the way you "show love to Jesus" is to be an activist for the causes that lessen human suffering and lessen human death.