Summer Spirituality Series: Praying with Therese of Lisieux

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It was the ultimate Goodwill find: in one trip, Praying with Therese of Lisieux, collected writings of Hildegard of Bingen, and a book about Our Lady of Fatima*, one of my favorite Marian apparitions. I brought all three home, ready to start my quest to learn more about Mary and the female Doctors of the Church. So far I’ve worked my way through the two about Therese and Hildegard, and I’ve just started the one about Fatima.

Praying with Therese of Lisieux by Joseph F. Schmidt was published as part of the Companions for the Journey Series by the Word Among Us. Unfortunately most of the rest of the series is out of print, which was disappointing, because I would have liked to try out the books featuring the other female Doctors of the Church that the series had. But the book on Therese is still available online, as are several other books by Joseph F. Schmidt, FSC. I am looking forward to checking these out.

The book is set up with a little bit of background on St. Therese at the beginning, followed by 15 meditations from her writings. Each meditation is set up with a theme, opening prayer, story from Therese’s life, some of Therese’s words from her writings, a small reflection, numerous ideas for personal prayer, then a scripture and closing prayer. This sounds like a lot and it is. I normally do my prayer and reflection in the mornings before my household is up, and there were several times I had to spread this all throughout the day in order to do it. I did really like all the prayer suggestions, especially because I am a journaler. I felt like there were many ideas I could think about and write about as part of my prayer.

Because there are fifteen meditations and because of their length, this book would make a great retreat for a group or an individual. I used this book during our school’s winter break, which gave me an uninterrupted two weeks to do one meditation per day without all the extra things I would be doing during work. I could see this book being a nice resource on a vacation when the pace of life is a little slower.

This book would make a great gift for someone going through RCIA or about to be confirmed. It would be an excellent resource for a spirituality group or provide a structure for a retreat based on St. Therese.

Popcorn Rating: 3. Because the lengths and topics vary from meditation to meditation, some days of using this book were easier than others. I got a lot out of all the meditations regardless of ease.

Stars: 4. The only reason I didn’t give this book 5 stars is that sometimes the meditations were too long and detailed to fit my daily life. But the content and organization were great, and the author clearly knows a lot about St. Therese and loves her. I am looking forward to reading his other books.

*The links to books in this post are affiliate links. This means that if you purchase a book using my link, I receive a small commission at no cost to you.