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 Sunday, October 19th, Mission Sunday in the Church’s liturgical calendar, fell this year on a gloriously beautiful and sunny fall day in Lisieux, France. This day will be remembered, not for the weather, but for the solemn celebration of the beatification of the parents of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus.
Cardinal Saraiva Martins, the Pope’s personal representative, invoked the solemn ritual in which Louis and Zelie Martin were declared blessed and in which he fixed the date for the annual celebration of their feast day as July 13th, the anniversary of their marriage.
The choice of their wedding date as the date for the liturgical celebration was deliberate in order to call attention to the fact that they were beatified specifically as a couple. The Church wanted to accentuate not only the sanctity of marriage but also to highlight the importance of the family as a “school of sanctity.” Describing her parents Saint Therese herself said she needed only to look to them to learn how the saints prayed. It was also said by Saint Therese in one of her last letters that she had been given parents more worthy of heaven than of earth.
Interestingly enough, Celine, Therese’s sister, lived long enough to have the joy of seeing the Cause of the Saints opened and to testify at the diocesan phase for the eventual beatification of her father. This occurred in 1956 by the then bishop of Bayeux-Lisieux, in which diocese Louis was living at the time of his death. A year later, in 1957, Zelie’s cause for beatification was opened in the diocese of Seez in which diocese the city of Alencon, where she lived and died, is located. The cause for the beatification advanced according to the normal procedures. Their heroic virtues were proclaimed by Pope John-Paul II in 1994. Finally, with the approval of the miracle of a healing granted through the intercession of Louis and Zelie Martin to a little boy named Pietro, the time came for their beatification.
One can only imagine what must have gone through Celine’s mind as she pondered that not only did she have a canonized saint as her blood sister but also the fact that her father (and now her mother too) would eventually be “raised to the altars.” It is not entirely beyond question that one day we might see Therese’s other sisters, Celine herself and Leonie, beatified. If one were to “google” Celine Martin, one would discover that there is a web site dedicated to promoting her beatification. That there would be such an interest in her beatification is not so surprising given the fact that by Therese’s own testimony Celine was intimately involved in Therese’s spiritual journey. One remembers, for example, that Therese’s famous Offering to God’s Merciful Love was done together with Celine. And with regard to Leonie, the “difficult” sister, who died in 1941 in the Visitation Convent in Caen, it is clear that there is an on-going public awareness of her own saintly pilgrimage judging by the constant stream of flowers placed on her grave which is located in the crypt chapel of that convent.
Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, personal legate of Pope Benedict XVI and prefect-emeritus of the Con-
gregation for the Saints, presided at the Mass. He was joined in the celebration of the Mass by an enormous throng of the faithful (estimated at 15,000 by actual count of hosts distributed) as well as by many, many dozens of cardinals, bishops, priests and deacons who concelebrated the Mass with him. In fact, there were so many priests concelebrating the Mass, and this on a Sunday morning, that one could not help but wonder who was saying Mass back home in the parishes. It was not until the following morning, at the solemn Mass of thanksgiving for the new Blesseds that I learned that most of the priests of the local diocese of Bayeux-Lisieux made the “sacrifice” of staying in their parishes for the day of the beatification. They came in massive numbers, however, if not each and every priest of the diocese, for the Mass of Thanksgiving. I believe that the reason for the massive turnout of priests for both the Mass of the Beatification and the Mass of Thanksgiving is the result of the vivid awareness on the part of priests of the role that Saint Therese played in the development of their vocation and continues to play in their daily lives.
On a more personal note, one of the major highlights of the three days that I spent in Lisieux for the various events surrounding the beatification was the unexpected pleasure of meeting the little boy who was cured along with his parents, and his older brothers and sisters. In this totally chance encounter we could talk about our own relationship with this holy family, the Martin family, and their guidance in our lives.
Tracing the Lives of Zélie Guérin and Louis Martin
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