Anyone who knows me personally knows that the main focus of my life is my Catholic faith. I try my best to live and breathe that faith. That being said, I know that I will never be perfect in my faith, but it is still my responsibility to strive to grow in it as much as I possibly can.

As a bookworm, I learn best by reading, and thankfully there are several saints who have written their own accounts of their faith journeys that I can look to for guidance and inspiration. One of the most profound and renowned of those memoirs is Story of a Soul by St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

St. Thérèse was a Carmelite nun, born to the saint power couple Zélie and Louis Martin in 1873 in France. One of nine children, only she and four of her sisters lived into adulthood, and amazingly, all five girls became nuns. Thérèse was the youngest daughter and longed from an early age to join the Carmelites. She even begged a pope to let her join the order early because she was too young but couldn’t wait any longer to dive into the life of a nun.

But she had a difficult journey through life, marked by chronic illness, and she died young of tuberculosis at the age of 24.

Story of a Soul is her own journey through life, in her own words. Originally published in French in 1922, it has been translated into many languages and is beloved around the world. It’s really a special experience to read the thoughts of a canonized saint, since many saints are known to us only as historical figures with no personal writings that survive.

This was an awesome read for me during Lent, because this year I’m really trying to go all in on becoming the best version of myself that I can be. As Catherine of Siena once said, “Be who you should be and you will set the world on fire.” To become the best version of oneself as a Catholic, the focus needs to lie in prayer and devotion, and this book offers a prime example of that.

As someone with chronic illness as well, this was an important read for me because I try to practice offering up my dysautonomia struggles for a greater good to God. St. Thérèse believed deeply in redemptive suffering, and her thoughts and words on the concept are beautiful.

I know whenever I post about a religious book, the Facebook comments can get a little crazy. There are always great people who offer incredible insight about the book in question, yet there are also always people who get fired up about religion as a whole and leave comments that, while I’m unbothered by them, I know are meant to harm.

To those people, I challenge you to read this book. Try to look at it not through a lens of hatred, and not even through the lens of someone who might convert someday, but simply through a human lens and try to see how St. Thérèse saw the world. Then you can comment whatever you want to me – just know that you don’t have to be religious to be decent.

Lent is my favorite part of the year because it reminds us that we are only here for the blink of an eye, and yet every morning is a new beginning to change something about ourselves. If you’re a Catholic and you haven’t read this book yet, tackling this one would be a great Lenten challenge.

It’s available on Kindle Unlimited, and you can also listen to it as an audiobook on the Hallow app!

Let yourself soak in the beauty of life through the eyes of a saint.