- Feb 5, 2002
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When she entered the Dominican cloister, Lalia Jones said that she wanted to become a nun ‘like the Little Flower.’
The spirituality of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower, is so profound and timeless that Pope St. John Paul II named her a doctor of the Church a 100 years after her death. The Little Flower inspired Catholics all over the world to adopt her spirituality of undertaking little acts with heroic love. Yet in 1945, in America’s Bible Belt, it was a young African-American Protestant whose life was transformed by the wisdom of a cloistered French nun.
Lalia Ilivia Jones was born in 1925 in Chicago to a Methodist household on the south side of the city. According to the testimony of Dominican Mother Mary of the Precious Blood, Lalia’s mother was devout and instilled in her daughter the love of God and a desire for virtue. When she was a young girl, still in primary school, God began to place very specific desires in Lalia’s heart. She would attend the Methodist service with her mother, but Lalia longed for greater silence. Her mother obliged her young child’s holy desire and began to take Lalia to visit different churches. The pair stumbled upon St. Anselm, a Catholic church in their own neighborhood.
Continued below.
Sister Mary of the Rosary, OP: ‘The Little Flower of Alabama’
The spirituality of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower, is so profound and timeless that Pope St. John Paul II named her a doctor of the Church a 100 years after her death. The Little Flower inspired Catholics all over the world to adopt her spirituality of undertaking little acts with heroic love. Yet in 1945, in America’s Bible Belt, it was a young African-American Protestant whose life was transformed by the wisdom of a cloistered French nun.
Lalia Ilivia Jones was born in 1925 in Chicago to a Methodist household on the south side of the city. According to the testimony of Dominican Mother Mary of the Precious Blood, Lalia’s mother was devout and instilled in her daughter the love of God and a desire for virtue. When she was a young girl, still in primary school, God began to place very specific desires in Lalia’s heart. She would attend the Methodist service with her mother, but Lalia longed for greater silence. Her mother obliged her young child’s holy desire and began to take Lalia to visit different churches. The pair stumbled upon St. Anselm, a Catholic church in their own neighborhood.
Continued below.
Sister Mary of the Rosary, OP: ‘The Little Flower of Alabama’
