I already had a long history with St. Thérèse of Lisieux when I learned that her relics were coming to the United States, including to a church just 30 minutes from my house. The opportunity to venerate the bones of the 19th-century saint was rare, because the relics leave France only once every 25 years and visit only a handful of locations. I thought of it as a pilgrimage—just what I needed.

As I left my house, the coming dawn was pushing away the darkness. Only a few squirrels and birds rustled around, and the cool, foggy air, uncommon for Florida, added a quiet mystery. My mother, retired and in her late 70s, prefers to sleep in, but I, with an 8-year-old at home, get up early all the time. Yet I had not slept well the night before, having felt full of anticipation and a restlessness I couldn’t shake. I had high expectations for how the day would go.

“I didn’t even eat anything this morning,” I told my mother when I picked her up.

We had no idea how crowded it would be or when we would be back home. We used to attend this sort of thing often together—healing services, retreats, alleged apparition sites—but had not attempted one in a long time.

From her small purse, my mother pulled out something wrapped in aluminum foil. “Well,” she said, “I’ve got French toast if you’re hungry.”

It reminded me so much of her mother, my oma, now long gone, I could only laugh. Oma always offered nourishment but was not one for practical travel foods like granola bars or pretzels. Once she sent me to the airport in the late morning with packed sandwiches, breaded chicken and strudel, all after offering me a quick shot of Bailey’s liquor. This memory surfacing seemed like a sign that the day would be as wonderful as I had hoped.

I wanted to tell my mother but instead stayed silent on our journey. She did the same, both of us trapped in a vicious cycle of never saying enough because we are always afraid to say too much. She often told me she was scared of being admonished by people for saying the wrong thing. Meanwhile, I could not find words to explain to her the complicated web of cracks that had formed beneath my feet when my relationship with God and the Catholic Church turned complex.

I first encountered St. Thérèse when I was a lonely high school student, and she was still a few years away from being named a doctor of the church, the third woman and the youngest to receive the honor. I found a holy card of her on my English teacher’s desk one day after class. I was intrigued by the black-and-white photo, taken in 1896, of this young woman in a religious habit with a slight smile and serious eyes. In her handwriting, written in French, were the words: To love is to give all, and to give oneself. There was something special about it, and I took it from his desk. That may sound terrible, but I was too shy to ask him about it. I photocopied it and returned the original the next day, fairly sure he never even knew it was gone.

Having the holy card gave me comfort, and during this time I became familiar with St. Thérèse and her way of being. I loved her because she had a devoted white spaniel and loved the ocean. I loved her for her fight to gain early entrance into the Carmelite convent because she knew she belonged there. She endured periods of fear and darkness and did not let it warp her soul. She transformed ordinary actions into ones of great love and devotion, pledging to remember those on earth by showering them with roses from heaven.

A year ago, my husband unexpectedly lost his job. In the panic and stress of the moment, I thought of St. Thérèse and wanted to hold her holy card again. I tore my house apart but couldn’t find it. My mother kept saying maybe it was meant for someone else who needed it more now. Selfishly, I didn’t find comfort in her reasoning, but I gave up looking. Instead, I sat in silence for a few minutes each day and prayed a novena to her, asking for her to help my husband through a tough time. Days after I finished my novena, I saw a tote bag full of fresh roses hanging on the back of a chair in a bookstore. Weeks later, my husband got a job he loved, starting just days before the 100th anniversary of St. Thérèse’s canonization and feast day. Later still, I opened a random book on my shelf and found the holy card. None of this was a miracle, just life working itself out, but it felt as if a dialogue between me and Thérèse had opened again.

I did, however, hope for something spectacular for myself on the Sunday my mom and I went to see Thérèse’s relics. I imagined being in the presence of her bones would spark a dramatic change in me. I would suddenly feel I belonged in the church again—my soul made whole. Once an ardent Catholic, nearly becoming a religious sister, I ended up an outsider, mostly because of the sorry state of my own soul. But I have spent many years longing to return to the rituals and beliefs I once held so close, to restore the personal relationship with God I had once experienced.

A Moment of Light

My mother and I arrived at the church to find an almost empty parking lot. We planned to attend the 7:30 a.m. Mass and then visit the small chapel with the relics. We argued over where to sit in church. When the Mass started, a man a few rows away shouted the first word of each response, which startled me every time. Then, in the chapel, we lined up to have our moment with the relics.

Nothing went as I had envisioned. The pastor stopped the line midway to wipe down the glass cabinet protecting the relics. The next woman to go knelt on the ground and held so many items up against the glass that when she got up, she knocked the stand it sat on, causing the whole thing to shake back and forth. When it was our turn, I told my mother to go first because I wanted a moment alone, but the ushers pushed us forward together, even though there wasn’t a long line. In the end, there was really nothing to see. We stood before a reliquary that looked like an ornate, tiny coffin under protective glass. Too self-conscious to hold anything up to the glass or touch it, I moved on quickly to let others take their turns.

As we settled back in the pews of the chapel, my mother kept trying to talk to me. When I waved her away, she approached one of the ushers in the front.

“What’s in there?” my mother asked. 

“It’s St. Thérèse,” the woman said sharply, because she didn’t understand at first, and I felt mortified. Then her tone softened a little. “Her clavicle,” she whispered and drew her hand across her upper chest.

The day was not at all like what I had imagined in my mind. Nice, yes, but entirely ordinary. I felt the same way leaving as when I had walked in. But the priest’s words from the homily nagged at me. He had started by saying it is a sin to allow yourself to stay in a state of despair. I thought a lecture on not trusting God’s plan would follow. Yet he explained despair in this way: as turning your back on a relationship with God because you believe you have sinned so greatly that you cannot be forgiven. St. Thérèse herself said, “It is true I am not always faithful, but I never lose courage.” I saw now that I had convinced myself that no change or acceptance was possible for me and had surrendered to a state of despair.

No switch flipped in me that morning with St. Thérèse; all the right answers didn’t immediately flood my soul. But I know that I stood in that moment and place because St. Thérèse drew me there, and the smallest ray of light came through the cracks. She continued to speak to me, still. The priest’s words opened another possibility. It changed my perspective to allow me to begin to focus first on a relationship between God and me alone—not an institution. And it felt good to know that the relationship did not rest entirely on my own shoulders, that I had support from saints like Thérèse.

I can’t know for sure if the reliquary did in fact contain St. Thérèse’s clavicle. But the usher’s mention of the clavicle stayed with me. I learned that the clavicle is the first bone to form and the last to fuse. The image gave me words I couldn’t have come up with before. When I talk to my mother next, I’ll thank her for asking about the relics that day. I’ll tell her that my faith journey is like the clavicle—present from the very beginning, but only now, finally, starting to connect as it was always meant to. 

This article appears in May 2026.

Emily Webber is a writer of criticism, fiction and nonfiction whose work has appeared in The Rumpus, Ploughshares and elsewhere. She is the author of Macerated, a chapbook of flash fiction, and lives in South Florida with her husband and son.