This link is to "Sponsor A Rose" at St Thérèse International Day at Knock Shrine on July 12th https://t.co/8O2MPgrv9L .When You Sponsor A Rose it represents your specific personal prayers/intentions.Each sponsored Rose will be blessed by the Relic of St Thérèse and placed beside the Relic ,You can also have a name put on Your Rose #sttherese #knock #catholic #ireland Please Share🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹@catholicassoc@ewtnireland@wrdcsc@LukeCoppen @catholicheritage @dianahenry@mickthehack@CarmelLizzy@IrishCathNews@lawlor_aine
If you would like to sponsor a rose and have it blessed and placed beside the Relic of St Therese please go to https://t.co/HoZcXYCnVz #sttherese#faith#pray#prayer
One soldier came back alive from a suicide mission at Verdun.
He swore St. Thérèse of Lisieux — the Little Flower — stopped the German guns with her hand.
She had been dead for nineteen years.
This is a true story. It comes from a real letter, written by a real soldier, preserved for over a century. The source is at the bottom of this post.
And stay with me to the end. Because the last thing you'll read is a promise Thérèse made on her deathbed — and the men in the trenches watched her keep it.
World War One. The Battle of Verdun.
One of the bloodiest battles in human history. Hundreds of thousands of men fed into the meat grinder.
A French soldier gets an order that sounds like a death sentence.
Ride into the city. Alone. At night. Bring back food for the unit.
The only route ran straight across open road.
Fully exposed. In full view of the German guns.
He got on the bike anyway.
Pedaling around the craters. Weaving through the rubble.
Then the road lit up.
Bullets. Shells. Smoke.
He had one way to describe it later: an ocean of iron and fire.
Men did not survive that road. He knew it. Every soldier at Verdun knew it.
So he screamed four words into the dark.
"Over here, Sister Thérèse!"
Think about who he was calling.
Not a warrior saint. Not St. Michael with his sword.
A young French nun who never left her convent walls.
The gentle "Little Flower" on the holy cards.
Dead since 1897 — before this war was even imaginable.
And then he saw her.
Standing in the middle of the gunfire. Bright. Wrapped in a halo. Bullets tearing the air around her.
He says she lifted her hand.
And every German gun went silent.
Not one more shell. Not one more bullet. Not until he rolled safely into Verdun.
He survived the deadliest stretch of road at Verdun.
And he did what soldiers all over that war were about to do.
He wrote it down. And he mailed it to her convent in Lisieux.
Now here's the part I promised you.
He wasn't the only one.
When the war ended, the Carmel of Lisieux was buried under an avalanche of letters from the trenches.
Hardened men. Officers. Machine gunners. Decorated heroes mailing their medals to a convent.
All swearing the same impossible things.
Thérèse appeared in the sky over the lines.
She took their hand in no man's land.
She knelt beside them under fire.
She stopped the bullets.
The soldiers gave her a battlefield name.
The saint of the Poilus. The patron saint of soldiers.
The world calls her mild. Sweet. A "Little Flower."
The men of World War One knew better.
Because before she died — 24 years old, coughing blood in a convent bed — Thérèse made one promise:
"I will spend my heaven doing good on earth."
She wasn't comforting herself.
She was making a promise.
And nineteen years later, on the worst battlefield in human history, she showed up to carry them out.
The saints are not soft.
And the war didn't end in 1918. You're standing in one right now — for your soul, your marriage, your children.
We're building a brotherhood of Catholic men who train for that fight.
Come stand in the line with us. Link in the first comment.
—
Source: The soldier's letter, dated September 10, 1916, was mailed to the Carmel of Lisieux and is published in "Stronger than Steel: Soldiers of the Great War Write to Thérèse of Lisieux" (Angelico Press, 2021) — real letters from WWI soldiers, preserved by her convent.
@riecker I read the book "stronger than steel", a book. There are testimonies like this in that stirring, moving book. Testimonies mainly by French soldiers but a few others too in letters sent to her order mostly. There may even be one letter from an American.
Looking for a moment of peace? Join the global celebration for St. Thérèse International Day 2026 at Knock Shrine on Sunday, July 12! 🌹
Experience powerful prayer, relic veneration, and the beautiful blessing of roses. Can't make it? Sponsor a rose with your personal intentions online.
Details: https://t.co/Qssv6Ue7BD
When Sponsoring A Rose we place a sticker (as seen in video) with the name you choose onto the Rose and it is then blessed and placed beside the Relic of St Thérèse. You can Sponsor at https://t.co/8O2MPgrv9L with "Rose" followed by the name You would like placed on the Rose.Please like&share ,Thank You . #sttherese #catholic #faith #prayer
When I was a child, Eucharistic Corpus Christi processions were seen as a ‘thing of the past’. It’s great to see them being revived in so many Irish parishes, and the enthusiasm from so many young Catholics.