In Focus - Female Saints ( April 2026 )

In Focus

Title: Why we can never have enough of Therese and Teresa

Intro

Despite the similarity in their names, St Teresa of Avila and St Therese of Lisieux were completely different people. Maryn Kunthara writes about their influence on her life. 

Article

As a young girl, I desired to be unique and uncommon. So in ninth grade catechism, when we had to do a group project on a saint, I was displeased by the list of saints on the list: popular saints like St Joseph, St Therese, St Teresa of Avila – so overdone and common. I wanted St Moses the Black, former leader of a bandit gang! Or St Maximilian Kolbe, sacrificing his life for another prisoner in Auschwitz! I definitely didn’t want any popular female saints, who all seemed to be different iterations of the same quiet nun or beautiful virgin martyr. How many Teresas could we possibly canonise? But to my dismay, my group was assigned St Teresa of Avila and I begrudgingly began my research. 

As I read about St Teresa, I was kicking myself over how narrow-minded I’d been. No wonder I knew so many Teresas – who wouldn’t want to be named after her? She was charmingly fiery, clever, loving, and so in love with the Lord. A rebellious Spanish teen, she chose to stay at the convent after initially being sent there by her strict father. There, she desired to grow closer to God through mental prayer, but struggled; her convent was full of vanity, partying, money, and prestige. She found herself falling into the same narcissism, gossiping, and flattery. Eventually, after years of struggling with sickness and a great inability to pray, she rediscovered the power of prayer, blossoming an intimate relationship with God. She was inspired to start reformed convents and monasteries dedicated to poverty and prayer. Yet this endeavour was met with many great challenges.

During my project research, a particular story struck me. St Teresa, on a trip to establish a new monastery and in the midst of a storm, slipped off her horse and into the mud. In her quick temper and familiarity with God, she yelled to him, ‘Oh my Lord! When will you cease scattering obstacles in our path?!’ The Lord replied, ‘Do not complain, daughter. This is how I treat my friends.’ Her response? ‘If this is how you treat your friends, it is no wonder you have so few!’ As a ninth grader, I was taken aback by St Teresa’s unbridled honesty with Christ. How could she be so bitingly frank? It dawned on me that their relationship had to be quite intimate and trusting for her to say such a thing. This simple story reminded me how my honest, unfiltered thoughts do not cause God to pull away from me; on the contrary, it draws me into closer intimacy with Him. Like Teresa, I could be brutally honest, I could complain and weep and rejoice and rage and expose every part of my heart to Him, with confidence that He would always receive me and share His heart in return. 

St Teresa’s growth also comforted me. I struggle with a wandering mind when I pray, which discourages me. But St Teresa relates: ‘I was more anxious for the hour of prayer to be over than I was to remain there.’ And, ‘this intellect [of mine] is so wild that it doesn't seem to be anything else than a frantic madman no one can tie down.’ Ultimately, Teresa overcame these obstacles by allowing the heart, rather than the mind, to take the front seat: ‘For mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us. The important thing is not to think much but to love much and so do that which best stirs you to love. Love is not great delight but desire to please God in everything.’

I felt such a kinship with St Teresa. Like her, I too struggled with gossiping and vanity. Like her, I struggled with great interior battles when it came to prayer – distractions, boredom, and mental blocks. And like her, I was tempted by the world’s distractions to ignore God. But she gave me hope – that I could grow in holiness and deeper union with God. And then came into focus for me what everyone else had already caught onto; these female saints are so beloved because of the radical yet approachable ways they love Christ every day. I may not be called to slay a dragon like St George, but I know I am called to love in my every action like St Teresa. 

About the female saints, my mom says: ‘They’re all so different, some fiery and complex, some quiet and simple. Yet all have intense depth.’ While St Teresa was fierce and full of action, St Therese of Lisieux was simple and quiet. I joke that I regard St Therese as an enemy, while she insists on calling me friend. St Therese was a French girl who joined the convent at fifteen and spent the rest of her life there until her death at age twenty-four. She didn’t do anything remarkable by worldly standards; at her passing, one nun at her convent even remarked that there wasn’t much to say about her, yet her ‘Little Way’ of loving God and others has made her a Doctor of the Church, one of the greatest titles among saints. Her simple, little life has impacted generations of people all around the world. 

St Therese wrote Story of a Soul, detailing her life and her ‘Little Way,’ which consisted of doing small, ordinary things with great, extraordinary love. She lived like a tiny, little child of God, nestled in His strong, encompassing arms with complete love, trust, and humility. And upon first reading it, it irked me. St Therese’s dewy-eyed, simpering, weepy, utterly saccharine approach to God just irked me. It was like reading the words of a helpless, intensely emotional little girl who loved being childish and coddled by God. 

Yet that’s exactly what I so desired... I was jealous of her. 

I realised that she irritated me because she attained what I yearned for but was too proud to pursue.

At my core, I’m just a girl who wants to let go and be taken care of and loved by God. I wanted to be dewy-eyed and weepy and saccharine and overly emotional with God, and I resented St Therese because she unapologetically lived how I so wanted to live – with the freedom of a child of God. As Therese said, ‘it is your arms, Jesus, that are the lift to carry me to heaven. And so there is no need for me to grow up: I must stay little and become less and less.’ And that’s why I joke that Therese is my enemy while she insists I’m her friend; I’m jealous of her because she’s a woman after my own heart. At one point, after worrying about her vocation, her ultimate conclusion was: ‘O Jesus, my Love... my vocation, at last I have found it... My vocation is Love!’ Oh how annoyingly sweet of a disposition to have! I can feel a cavity coming on.

But honestly, I love St Therese very much, and her writing always greatly moves me. Her Little Way transforms my life. It’s so easy for me to complain, to be discouraged, to get annoyed, yet St Therese teaches me by example how to overcome these everyday struggles with extraordinary love. And I see what immense strength she must actually have to live this way.  One of my favourite stories involves a particular nun at Therese’s convent who completely irritated her. Instead of acting on her annoyance, Therese would actually seek this nun out and treat her ‘as if I loved her best of all.’ In fact, this nun once asked Therese, ‘What attracts you so much toward me; every time you look at me, I see your smile?’ It was only after Therese’s passing that the other nuns discovered from her diary that Therese had actually greatly struggled to get along with this nun. 

I also want to love in every little, unseen way. When someone cuts me off in traffic, I can thank God for them and my life. When my siblings don’t wash their dishes, I can wash them, praying for them and for souls in purgatory as I wash. St Therese said, ‘to pick up a pin for the love of God, can convert a soul.’ When I first heard that, I was working at a restaurant where sometimes I was given the mind-numbing task of packing tortilla chips into small bags. Inspired by Therese, I offered each chip I packed for a soul in purgatory and prayed for the person who would buy that chip bag. 

The stories I’ve heard from many different people about St Therese and St Teresa’s intercessions in their lives are staggering – they are widely loved. Ultimately, I see how great these female saints are for everyone; they are friends who help us join them in heaven with our loving God. 

Author Profile

Maryn Kunthara is a software engineer living in San Francisco, California and a parishioner of St Thomas Syro-Malabar Catholic Church in Fremont. Originally from Houston, Texas, she is a thrift-store treasure hunter and an unconventional cook who is always on the hunt to learn something new, whether it’s a niche subculture or a new hobby.