St Thérèse's relics make Australian pilgrimage

Mother Teresa OCDM

Contents - Mar 2002 - Buy a copy now Editorial: Selecting and forming future priests - Michael Gilchrist St Thérèse's relics make Australian pilgrimage - Mother Teresa OCDM News: The Church Around the World 'Conservation Plan' recommends changes to Toowoomba's Cathedral - Michael Gilchrist North American vocations summit overlooks orthodox success stories - Zenit News Service Former Anglican Bishop of London explains why he became a Catholic - Monsignor Graham Leonard Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration spreads throughout the world - Fr Douglas Harris 'Liturgiam Authenticam', ICEL and the need for improved Mass translations - Anna Silvas The Benedictine medal: a long history of devotion - Fr Fabian Duggan OSB Thoughts of a recent convert to Catholicism - Rett Peaden Letters: Watered-down faith - Teresa Martin Letters: Testimonies - Raymond de Souza Letters: Apology - Fr M. Shadbolt PP Letters: Last straw (letter) - Justin Kearney Letters: Human Rights (letter) - Sr M.B. Eanswythe OSB Letters: Courage Needed (letter) - Frank Bellet Letters: Sunday obligation - Leo Willems Letters: Forgotten teachings - Mrs Hiske Deschepper Letters: Nicene Creed - Ken Bayliss Letters: Parish libraries? - Bob Cotterall Letters: Indian appeal - Kevin L. Fernandes Letters: Teaching position - Robert Anderson Books: Freedom and Virtue: The Conservative-Libertarian Debate, George W. Carey (ed) - Alex Sidhu (reviewer) Books: Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism, by Paul Vitz - Bill Muehlenberg (reviewer) Books: Living The Catholic Faith, by Archbishop Charles Chaput - Anthony Cappello (reviewer) Books: Fatima Handbook, by Leo Madigan - Catherine Sheehan (reviewer) Books: Fr Werenfried - A Life, by Joanna Bogle - Michael Daniel (reviewer) Books: New Titles from AD Books Reflection: John Paul II: St Joseph's renewed significance for the Church - Br Christian Moe FSC

As the relics of St Thérèse continue their visitation of Australia, Mother Teresa of the Carmelite monastery in Kew (Melbourne) provides an appreciation of the significance of this "pilgrimage of grace".

Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face wrote in 1896, one year before her death at the young age of 24 years: "I would like to preach the Gospel on all five continents simultaneously and even to the most remote isles. I would like to be a missionary, not for a few years only, but from the beginning of creation until the consummation of the ages" (Story of a Soul, p. 193).

On 4 October 1897 she was buried very quietly, with only a handful of mourners present, in the Lisieux municipal cemetery.

With hindsight we can say that like all the simple events in her ordinary life, even the secular legislation of the time, forbidding burial within monastery enclosures, proved providential. For the next twenty-five years hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world were drawn to visit her grave. Everyone could find her and relate to her as a person, a friend, a helper, a source of never-failing graces in all sorts of needs. And so it continues.

To honour and commemorate the beatification of Thérèse of Lisieux, on 29 April 1923, the people of Brazil designed and offered to Thérèse the beautiful Reliquary which now holds her earthly remains and which has been on Pilgrimage round the world since 1997, when Pope John Paul II proclaimed her Doctor of the Universal Church.

Australia is the twenty-third country this Reliquary has visited. It weighs 400 kilograms and is a magnificent composition of jacaranda wood and gilt silver. For security, it is covered with a clear, permanent plexiglass which has been carried, touched, kissed and covered with a sheen of love and prayer by millions of people of all races, cultures and nations. It has been welcomed as a gift of grace, a symbol and icon of God's abiding presence among His people - a treasure far greater than the human remains of the greatest saint of modern times.

Now, when the jacaranda trees are in full flower throughout Australia, Thérèse's Reliquary on its Pilgrimage of Grace will pass, it has been estimated, within an hour's drive of 80 per cent of our population. Blessed indeed are those who are able to see this sacred symbol and blessed too those who are not able to be present,