The Hidden Face

The Hidden Face is a biography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux by the Catholic author Ida Friederike Görres (1901 Bohemia  – 1971 Germany). Görres first published this book in German in 1944 as Das Verborgene Antlitz; in the eighth edition in German in 1958, it was renamed Das Senfkorn von Lisieux: Das verborgene Antlitz. Neue Deutung in German. An English version, translated by Richard and Clara Winston, was published in 1959; this was republished by Ignatius Press in 2003. The Hidden Face is considered to be Görres's most important work. The central question that prompted Görres to write The Hidden Face was, “Who was Thérèse of the Child Jesus in reality?” The book contains seven chapters. Synopsis I. The Question “The cult of Little Thérèse has from the first been a mass movement." In the first chapter, Görres explores the widespread fascination with St. Thérèse following her death in 1897. Görres presents the paradox that St. Thérèse never “did anything that struck her contemporaries as extraordinary” yet was the subject of an “incredible storm of veneration."