The relics of Thérèse, Zélie and Louis Martin in Rome for the synod - October 3, 2014

The relics of  Thérèse, Zélie and Louis Martin in Rome for the synod
With the relics of the Quattrocchi spouses at the Basilica of St. Mary Major

Rome, October 3, 2014 (Zenit.org) by Anne Kurian |

Translated from the French

Cardinal Baldisseri, right, and Mgr Habert, bishop of Seez, left, with children in the chapel of the birthplace of St. Therese at Alencon, July 12, 2014.  Photo credit: the Shrine at Alencon.

The relics of St. Therese of Lisieux, of her blessed parents Zelie and Louis Martin, and of the blessed Quattrocchi spouses will be at Rome during the synod of the family (October 5-19, 2014)..

Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary-general of the synod of bishops, announced this at a press conference this morning, Friday, October 3, 2014, at the Vatican.  As Pope Francis recently emphasized, the works of the synod fathers is to be accompanied by the prayer of all the baptized, the Cardinal declared.

So, during the whole time of the synod, daily Eucharistic adoration is offered in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin, “Protectress of the Roman People” (Salus Populi Romani) of the Basilica of St. Mary Major.

Times of prayer here will also be organized by the diocese of Rome.  Each evening at 6:00 p.m., a bishop or a cardinal will celebrate Mass for the family, the secretary general explained.

Further, he announced the presence of the relics of the blessed Martin spouses, of their daughter St. Therese of the Child Jesus, and of the blessed Italian spouses Luigi et Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi.

All over the world, he added, prayers will be held in the shrines, especially those dedicated to the Holy Family, in the communities of consecrated life, in the dioceses, and in the parishes.
In a statement released on September 6, the cardinal invited “particular churches, parish communities, institutes of consecrated life, associations, and movements to pray at Masses and other celebrations in the days before the Synod and during its work.”

 ( October  3, 2014) © Innovative Media Inc.

"The Family is Suffering a Major Crisis in Our Time," an interview with Cardinal Baldisseri, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops on the Family, September 5, 2014

---

"The Family is Suffering From a Major Crisis"

Translated by Gordon Henry,  Famille Chretienne, No. 1911, August 30-September 5, 2014.  We  thank Famille Chretienne for its unique and in-depth coverage of the Martin family and of the Synod of Bishops on the Family.

“In this exclusive interview, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, discusses the context and the objectives of the assembly of bishops that will be held in Rome, from the 5th to the 19th of October.”

— Famille Chretienne, August 30-September 5, 2014

•  The Synod of Bishops will meet in extraordinary session in October. With what objective?

      The family, the central element of society, is suffering in our day from a major crisis, before which the Church feels the responsibility to intervene.  We must confront the challenge openly, with strength and determination, by proclaiming the "Gospel of the family.”

•  The Instrumentum Laboris (working document) of the Synod was made public on June 26th. What are its most important points?

      In the first instance, the Church must address the need for clear ideas on what the family is and find a common conceptual vocabulary that all can understand. Then we must clarify the Church's teachings on the family.  From that follows the need for good preparation for marriage.
     The challenges are many and enormous; they touch the life of individuals, of future generations, and of society as a whole.  They call for profound study, by the social sciences and the ecclesiastical sciences alike, specifically in the fields of anthropology and pastoral policy. This latter must seek to bring the Church close to people, to be with them when they are in difficulties, and to comfort them when they are suffering.

•  What are the particular difficulties to which the Church must respond?

      The long list that is given in the Instrumentum Laboris runs from problems that are internal to the family, like the crisis of faith, and violence and abuse, all the way to external pressures like poverty, war, and displacement, and including issues like family breakdown, financial bankruptcy, children undergoing certain family events, difficulties in education, and the phenomenon of same-sex unions. 

•  Contemporary culture is often opposed to the institution of the family.  Is this not precisely the opportune moment for the Church to promote and defend it?

      The Synod will survey the family from every angle, seeing not only what takes place within it, but its geographic, ethnic, social, and political dimension . . . . It is well, in fact, to have as broad a perspective as possible.  The West is marked by a strong tendency to devalue the family, notably at the legislative level.  But it is quite otherwise on other continents, where a strong family identity, tied to ancient traditions, is preserved.
     From this perspective, the Church does not feel itself alone.  Rather, it is encouraged to furnish to humanity its heritage of wisdom, as an expert in humanity.  I believe that the moment in which we find ourselves is, in fact, the best moment to make known and to offer to families the human and spiritual potential of the Church.

•  In this context of the crisis of the family, what attitude does the Church seek to instill in Christians?

      What is important in the first place is to give people with the knowledge and the tools to enter the state of marriage fully conscious of the reasons for doing so. Marriages that last are normally those that have been built on a good foundation.  
     Furthermore, we must encourage among married couples openness, acceptance, kinship, as a free gift, and a great understanding of those who live differently, while at the same time learning to help them, if they need correction, to resume the right path.

•  What can Christians do to stop the weakening of the family unit?

      Even though it is no longer taken for granted as it once was, the family continues to be the core of society.  Ideologies that encourage hedonism, individualism, and materialism, and above all the massive incursions of propaganda on international organizations, have a great effect on the very fabric of the family structure.  It is almost as if the media were part of an organized effort aimed at destabilizing the family.
     Christians must react.  They will succeed if they rely on the appropriate means--if the rely on the faith, and the deepening of their faith, and on the concrete pastoral direction that will emanate from the Synod.

•  This July, you went to Alençon, following in the steps of Louis and Zélie Martin.  What connection do you see between your visit and the Synod?

      Louis and Zélie Martin are a married couple the Church has raised to the honors of the altar as models of married life and family life.  The approaching Synod on the family wants to highlight concrete examples of actual marriages and families.  The Martin spouses are one such example.  They illustrate the fact that it is possible to build a family in a Christian way, to become holy in the state of married life, in an intimate union fortified by the grace of God.

•  On July 12th at Alençon you received some relics.  What place will they have at the Synod?

      I did, in fact, have the honor of receiving relics of Blessed Louis and Zélie Martin at Alençon from the hands of Mgr Jacques Habert, and I am most grateful to him.  The exhibition of the relics of spouses who are saints or blesseds during the Assembly of the Synod in the month of October is in preparation.
     These relics will be exposed fpr the veneration of the Fathers and of the faithful in the chapel of the Synod.  They will be a powerful symbol during this Synod consecrated to the family.

"Louis and Zélie Martin: Patrons of the Synod on the Family?" - August 27, 2014

"Louis and Zélie Martin,
Patrons of the Synod on the Family?"

[translated from "Louis and Zélie Martin, patrons du synode sur la famille?" in Famille Chretienne, No. 1906 – July 26-August 1, 2014.  www.famillechretienne.fr  We thank the editors for their kind permission to translate and publish this article].

During his visit to Alençon and Lisieux (on July 12-13, 2014) for the feast of Louis and Zélie Martin, the secretary general of the Synod of Bishops received a relic of the blessed parents of St. Thérèse.

View fullsize

Cardinal Baldisseri, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, receives relics of Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin from Mgr Jacques Habert, bishop of Seez.  Basilica of Notre Dame d'Alencon, July 12, 2014

The moment was solemn.  On the evening of July 12th, the basilica of Notre Dame d'Alençon was full.  At the invitation of the diocese of Séez, several dozen married couples were present to celebrate their wedding anniversaries in the very church where Louis and Zélie Martin, the blessed parents of St. Thérèse, were married in 1858.

A Relic to be honored in October
 
     With the assembly present, all were attentive witnesses to an unexpected event: the surrender of a relic of Louis and Zélie Martin by Mgr Jacques Habert, bishop of Seez, to Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops.  This gesture took on a very special significance less than three months before the opening, in Rome, of a synod dedicated to "the challenges facing the family, seen in the context of evangelization.”  It was as though a torch had been passed and an appeal made to the Martins to aid the Church in her delicate mission toward the family.

     It was the cardinal himself who "insisted very much on receiving the relic officially,” said Laurence de Valbray, the person in charge of the day and of the pilgrimage office for the Martin family at Alençon.  The event reminds us that October 19th, the day the synod in Rome closes, will be the anniversary of the beatification of Louis and Zélie in 2008.

Celebrating the feast of Louis and Zelie Martin in the basilica at Lisieux, July 13, 2014 in the presence of their reliquary.

"Married and saints, why not us?"

     In all probability, the relic that was received by the cardinal will be held in special honor at the synod, and it is possible that the extraordinary meeting of the synod, to be held from October 5th to 19th, 2014, will be placed under the patronage of Louis and Zélie.  It would be a way to infuse a strongly spiritual atmosphere into the work of the synod, a need that is underlined by the Pope's prayer for the synod on the family. On July 13, at the foot of a big portrait of Blessed Louis and Zélie Martin in the well-filled basilica at Lisieux, Cardinal Baldisseri had this prayer read out: "Holy Family of Nazareth, may the coming synod of bishops awaken in everyone the consciousness of the sacred and inviolable character of the family, its beauty in the plan of God.”

View fullsize

Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary-general of the  Synod of Bishops on the Family, speaking about Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin in the Basilica of Notre Dame d'Alencon on their feast, July 12, 2014

About the work of the synod, Cardinal Baldisseri slipped a few hints into his conference, "Married and saints, why not us?” delivered in good French by this prelate who spent several years in the nunciature in Paris.  He began by reminding us that this synod on the family will unfold in two stages.  The first (in October 2014) will “examine the many challenges that have put the family in danger.”  The second (in 2015), “gathering the fruits of the first,” will “enlarge the scope of the debate” in order to “propose ways of thinking, and even solutions” to the Pope.

Broad discussions, in perspective

    Of these challenges and dangers the cardinal then gave an impressive list, giving us an idea of the great range of the discussions that will take place at the Vatican among some 190 participants (presidents of episcopal conferences, members of religious orders, experts, etc.): the spread of couples living together outside marriage; unions between persons of the same sex, many of whom have been permitted to adopt children; marriages between persons of different faiths; single-parent families; polygamy; arranged marriages; caste systems; the culture of non-engagement; forms of feminism hostile to the Church; the phenomenon of migration; the reformulation of the very idea of marriage; relativistic pluralism in the concept of marriage; the influence of the media on popular culture in the concept of marriage and of family life; the currents of thought that inspire legislation that devalues the permanence and fidelity of the marriage bond; the phenomenon of surrogate mothers (“renting” wombs); new interpretations of human rights, or, still more, the weakening or the abandonment of faith in the sacramentality of marriage and in the therapeutic power of sacramental penance.  

     Absent from this list is the topic of divorced persons, notably those who have contracted a second, civil marriage. This topic, frequently portrayed in the media as being of prime importance to the synod, was deliberately "forgotten" by Cardinal Baldisseri. He explains this in the following way: "People talk a lot about this subject. Every time I give an interview, the first question concerns it, but, of the 195 points set forth in the Instrumentum Laboris (the preparatory document of the synod), only five or six relate to it. What about all the others?" 

This is why the cardinal concludes by expressing the hope that everyone, notably the bishops, can help him to make a presentation of the synod on the family that is all-encompassing” and that reflects the diversity of challenges with which the family is confronted today. It is a demanding approach, for it entails “working on the whole of the issues,” some highly complex, and not merely presenting some simplistic ideas on the subjects sold by the media.

[Sidebar 1]:

  "On the bridge of Alençon"

View fullsize

July 12 at Alencon: several dozen couples walked in the steps of the parents of Saint Therese

     On Saturday, July 12th, there were moments of emotion on the Bridge of Sarthe, in Alençon.  Several dozen women of every age and every kind came from one side of the bridge, several dozen men from the other, and each found her or his mate . . .  It was the last stage of a walk of several kilometers by husbands and wives, launched that same morning, at nine o’clock, near the house of the parents of Louis Martin, by Bishop Jacques Habert.  The pilgrimage has taken place every year since 2008 on the feast of Blessed Louis and Zélie Martin.

     It was on this bridge that they met 156 years ago, on a beautiful spring day. Upon passing this thirty-four-year-old man, the young Zélie, 26, heard an inner voice: “This is the one I have prepared for you." Less than three months later, they were married in the basilica of Notre Dame d' Alençon.  Today, the diocese of Séez and the Church of Alençon make the anniversary of the blessed couple's beatification in 2008 a privileged day for married couples, especially those who are celebrating their wedding anniversaries. It is an initiative that has enjoyed growing success, explains Laurence de Valbray, director of the pilgrimage office for the Martin family.

Sidebar 2:

  "The long roster of married saints"- an extract from Cardinal Baldisseri's conference at Alençon, July 12, 2014

     "[There is] an impressive list of exemplary couples who were sanctified in marriage. They did not found religious orders; they did not depart as missionaries to distant lands; they did not withdraw from the world into the silence of some hermitage.  They simply lived their married life as a path toward God, and, in so doing, became saints.  The first couple of modern times to open this way of married sanctity was Maria and Luigi Beltrame Quattrochi [members of the comfortable middle-class who lived in Rome in the first half of the twentieth century].  Their beatification [in 2000 marked] a turning point, “historic,” so to speak, in our way of imagining sanctity.  It is a path open to and achievable by all Christian couples.  There are also other couples, whose causes are now open or in process, who will follow them.  Men and women of prayer, they lived their Christian faith consistently.  They gave themselves to the service of their neighbors, whoever they were . . . These servants of God are: Aristide Calvani and Adela Fontana; Eduardo Ortiz de Heredia and Laura Otaegui; Eugenio Balmori and Marina Francisca Cinta, to cite only a few. One holy couple, it is true, is a little more well-known, but more for their charitable works than for the saintliness of their lives, which was the lifeblood of their work: Raoul Follereau and Madeleine Boudou."

Translated by Gordon Henry of Vancouver and Maureen O’Riordan of Philadelphia.  The English-language links we have added did not appear in the original article in Famille Chretienne.

Blessed Louis Martin and the Panama Canal - 100 years since it opened on August 15, 1914

Excavation and removal of dirt at the famous Culebra Cut, Panama Canal, 1907 By H.C. White Co. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Did you know that in 1888 Blessed Louis Martin, the father of St. Therese of Lisieux, invested and lost a great deal of money on the Panama Canal?

August 15, 2014 was the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Panama Canal.  Its successful construction by the United States was preceded by many earlier attempts:

In 1881, France proposed a sea-level Panama canal, without locks to raise and lower ships to accommodate changes in elevation, along the same basic route as the Panama Railroad. But owing to engineering problems and high worker mortality, the project went bankrupt and was abandoned in 1889 when it was about 50 percent complete. France had spent $287 million and an estimated 22,000 workers had died.

("Panama Canal Anniversary 2014: 100 Years Ago Today, Navigation Project Launched 'American Century,'" by Alan Huffman.  International Business Times, August 15, 2014).

Louis Martin invested the fortune he and his wife had  earned as artisans in various enterprises, including real estate.  In May and June 1888, very soon after Therese's entrance, he was preoccupied with putting his affairs in order; he wanted to provide for his daughters and to purchase Les Buissonnets, their home, which he held by lease.  During those two months, while Therese was a postulant, Louis made several trips to Paris on business in connection with investing in the loan to finance the Panama Canal. 

On July 1, 1888, his daughter Pauline, Sister Agnes of Jesus, who had been in Carmel for almost six years, wrote to him:

Men of genius may very well occupy themselves with cutting through Panama.  We, too, shall cut through whatever could hold us to this earth, and it is then that the ocean of love will surround us on every side." 

When "the scandal of Panama" swept over France, many investors lost vast sums of money.   His daughter Celine, Sister Genevieve, later wrote that the Martin family "lost fifty thousand francs on the Panama enterprise and different sales of property" at the time of her father's illness.  (Letters of Saint Therese of Lisieux, Volume I, 1877-1890.  Washington, D.C.: Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, 1982.  LC 94, footnote 5, pp. 485-486).  This did not prevent Louis, when his pastor announced that he was launching a drive to raise 10,000 francs for a new main altar for St. Pierre's Cathedral, from donating the whole sum immediately.  (Sainte Therese de Lisieux (1873-1897), by Guy Gaucher.  Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2010, p. 300, footnotes 2 and 3). 

The extent to which the Panama Canal was in the news in France is also reflected in two letters to Therese, who was preparing to receive the Habit, from her prioress, Mother Marie de Gonzague. 

December 10, 1888 (?):

Yes, child of Jesus, the Cross is our lot!  Let us rejoice in this blessing1  It is from heaven and not from earth.  What a joy, a humiliation! This is worth all the treasures of Panama.

December 13, 1888 (?):

My darling grain of sand [nickname for Therese] laughed at my Panama jackpot as compared to her little humiliation . . .

(Letters, op. cit.,pp. 485-486).

Part of the fortune Louis and Zelie earned through their hard work was invested and lost in the New World, in the Panama Canal Zone, which, from 1903 through 1979, was controlled by the United States.  During that same century, both American continents might well say that it was thanks to St. Therese that "the ocean of love surrounds us on every side." 

July 29, 2014 - 120 years since Blessed Louis Martin entered into life. A celebration at Alencon.

View fullsize

Celebrate at Alençon the 100 years since Blessed Louis Martin entered into life.

The programme:

- 12 noon:  Mass at the Basilica of Notre-Dame, followed by a picnic lunch at the Providence Center

- 3:30 p.m.: A presentation on the great “Trial of Louis Martin” by Father Thierry Hénault-Morel, on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of Louis Martin’s death.

- Pilgrimage to the Butte Chaumont, where Louis loved to go on foot.  (By car from Alençon to the foot of the Butte Chaumont, then on foot.

- 5:00 – Solemn Vespers in the church of Roche-Mabile

[The above article is translated with thanks to the Web site of the Shrine at Alencon.  Read it here in French.]

Interestingly, Father Thierry Hénault-Morel is a lateral descendant of Louis Martin.  He is the great-grandson of Adolphe Leriche, Louis's nephew.  Adolphe's mother, Louis's sister Fannie, died when the child was very young, and Adolphe lived with Louis and Louis's parents in the house on the Rue Pont-Neuf.  In 1870 he purchased the watch-shop from Louis and was in business there until his death in 1894.  His daughter, Berthe Leriche, married Victor Hénault-Morel; she was the grandmother of Father Thierry Hénault-Morel , who, until recently, was the rector of the Basilica of Notre Dame in Alençon.  Could Louis ever have imagined that his parish church would be raised to the rank of a basilica after he and Zélie were declared blessed, or that a descendant of his family would one day be rector there?  Or that, 120 years after his death, a member of his family would speak about his great trial?