St Thérèse is a good example of a saint who manages to inspire despite everything her devotees have done to her. Quite early on, there were attempts to cast her as a saint in the sickly sentimental mould. Carefully editing out those parts of her autobiography at odds with their own ideas of holiness, Thérèse was presented as destined for a halo from birth: brought up in a "perfect" Catholic family, cultivating a childlike simplicity and dying young, she exemplified an ideal of sanctity that seems to appeal especially, I'm sorry to say, to men. The truth about Thérèse is so much more thrilling. The Little Flower was indeed of her generation, and there are passages in her writings which strike today's reader as unbearably coy; but there is also in Thérèse a core of steel — a truthfulness and determination to make the less courageous blench. She was ruthlessly honest about her own faults, prepared to say things that today would land her in trouble (the desire to be a priest can be spiritualized away until we lose all sense of how unthinkable it would have been for her contemporaries), faced the terrors of apparent loss of faith, and through it all held fast to her understanding of holiness realized in the ordinary, everyday events of life. In truth, there is nothing little about the Little Flower except the name.