Altar linens crafted for the Mass of Canonization of St. Therese of Lisieux with point d'Alencon lace such as her mother made

This unique exhibition is offered by the Ville d Alençon, the Alençon-Basingstoke Twinning Association, and Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council.

Basingstoke is a large town in northeast Hampshire, 48 miles southwest of London.  If you expect to be able to visit this exhibit, please e-mail me (see the link "e-mail me" at the right of this Web site) if you might be able to do some favors for this Web site while you are there.  Thank you.

Phnom Penh (AsiaNews/EDA) - Cambodian Catholics, a minority in a country where they were once persecuted, are celebrating the pilgrimage in the Asian country of the relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. The remains of the French nun and mystic, better known by her nickname of 'Little Flower' to distinguish her from St. Teresa of Avila, arrived on 26 April after travelling for over four months in the Philippines, one of only two countries on the continent with a Catholic majority (the other is East Timor). Now her earthly remains are the object of adoration and prayer for Cambodia's 25,000 Catholics, a small number in a country's of 12 million people, but full of life and faith.

The relics arrived at the small village of Taingkauk on 4 May, about 100 km from Phnom Penh, a place of great symbolic value for the Catholic Church in Cambodia, for it was here that the first bishop in  Cambodian history, Mgr Joseph Chhmar Salas, died from starvation, illness and hardship on a September day in 1977.

Bishop Joseph Chhmar Salas, martyr of Cambodia

Ordained in 1975, right before the Khmer Rouge took over, the bishop died like two million of his fellow citizens at the hands of Maoist revolutionaries led by Pol Pot, who exterminated one quarter of the population and destroyed all of the country's religious and cultural symbols.

Over 3,000 people took part in the Mass celebrated by Mgr Olivier Schmitthaeusler, the apostolic vicar to Cambodia. On this occasion, the saint's remains were placed on the bed, still miraculously intact, Mgr Salas used during his imprisonment under the Khmer Rouge and where he performed, occasionally and in secret, the Eucharistic service before he died.

The ceremony took place in the presence of other prelates, priests, and especially 85-year-old Mgr Yves Ramousse, Mgr Schmitthaeusler's predecessor, who also celebrated 50 years of episcopacy and 60 years of priesthood.

A substantial number of local Catholics took part in the adoration of the remains of the "patron saint of the missions", who is connected not only to China but to the whole continent of Asia as well.

During the ceremony, participants were reminded that the capital's Carmelite monastery, built in 1861 (after that of Saigon in 1838), was closed down following the Maoist takeover in 1975, but is now, thanks to a group of South Korean religious, open again, home to six of them.

- See the original story.  Used with permission.  My thanks to Asianews.

My note: my own information is that Lisieux Carmel was founded in 1838, that Saigon Carmel was founded from Lisieux in 1861, and that the Carmel in Phnom Penh was founded from Saigon in 1919; see below). 

 View a video of the replica of the hut in which Bishop Salas died; the video also shows photographs and souvenirs.

St. Therese of Lisieux is personally strongly linked to the history of the Church in Cambodia, for the Carmelite monastery in Phnom Penh traces its foundation to the Lisieux Carmel.  In 1861, Sister Philomene left the Lisieux Carmel with three others to found the Carmel of Saigon.  The Saigon Carmel went on to found seven Carmels in Indochina: four in Vietnam, one in Cambodia, and two in Thailand.  The Saigon Carmel founded a Carmel in Hanoi in 1895.  St. Therese wanted to volunteer for the foundation at Hanoi, but her health prevented it.  In 1919 the Saigon Carmel founded a monastery at Phnom Penh in Cambodia; in 1975 the nuns fled the Khmer Rouge.  The right of Christians in Cambodia to worship was not restored until 1990.  A Carmelite community was establshed in Cambodia about the year 2000, and on October 28, 2010, a new Carmelite monastery was dedicated in Phnom Penh.  View the dedication below. 

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 You can read Fr. Albert Dolan's biography of Leonie Martin, God Made the Violet, Too: A Life of Leonie, Sister of St. Therese (Chicago: Carmelite Press, 1948) online thanks to HathiTrust Digital Library. Fr. Albert Dolan, who founded the Society of the Little Flower, visited France and became acquainted with the sisters of St. Therese; he then spoke and wrote about them in the United States as he spread devotion to St. Therese. You may read the account of his visits with the sisters of St. Therese in his book The Intimate Life of Saint Therese Portrayed by Those Who Knew Her.

 When we speak, for example, of loving a person, we may think of good feelings and of intimacy and sharing.  When we speak of loving a thing, for example ice cream, or a vacation spot, or a sports team, we may think also of good feelings.  But what is most in common in the use of the word “love” to describe our relationship with people and things is what we do not feel toward them.  We do not feel adversarial or hostile. 

There is certainly more to love than nonviolence, but the common and basic element in our many uses of the word love is our sense of nonviolence toward what we say we love.

Nonviolence is the bottom line in our loving. 

 This helps us to understand what Jesus means when he says “love your enemy.”  He is clearly not suggesting that we like our enemy, because if we felt “like” toward the person we experience as the enemy we would not have an “enemy” in the first place.  By cultivating feeling of hostility we “make” and keep the enemy.

 If, for whatever reason, we have feelings of dislike for a person and thereby make that person our “enemy,” Jesus is asking that we abide that negative feeling, not cultivate hostility, and thereby give love a chance.  We give love a chance by simply not being violent toward the “enemy.” 

 I think this is the way Therese understood “loving the enemy.”  Meditating on Jesus’ words she wrote: “We don’t have any enemies in Carmel.” But then she quickly qualified her statement, adding the insight: “but there are feelings.”  The feelings that “there are,” and that Therese did have, were feelings of dislike and repugnance.  She bore these feelings with as much patience as she could, did not cultivate these feelings into hostility and violence, and in that way came to “love the enemy.”  She gives examples of this in the stories in the final section of Story of a Soul, as she describes her nonviolent relationships with the difficult sisters she lived with.

 Therese clearly liked some sisters and disliked others, but she loved them all.  The sisters she disliked were her “enemies;” but she “loved” them by building her relationship with them on a spirit of nonviolence toward herself and toward them.

 Therese’s spirituality has no violence in it. It is the spirituality that we need personally and institutionally in these days of such subtle and overt violence.

 On Thursday, May 9 and Friday, May 10, 2013, the Association "The Message of Therese,"  together with the management of the Shrine of Lisieux, presented a sound and light show, "Joan of Arc: heart of fire, soul of a warrior" at the Basilica of Lisieux.

The core of the show is a stage play, performed by professional actors and amateurs, made up of extracts from Therese's writing about Joan of Arc.  Behind the actors, a giant screen shows the scenery and evokes a host of elements that fit into Joan's story.  The soundtrack plays poignant music.  Between the scenes written by Therese, which the actors play, videos told the transitional history, evoking the historical context of the life of Joan of Arc.  This carefully researched work has been produced in collaboration with the Centre Jeanne d'Arc of the city of Orleans.  Therese's text has been embedded in a broader framework.

The show was presented over two special days at Lisieux as part of a spiritual and cultural program on the theme of Therese of Lisieux and Joan of Arc, including Masses, conferences, and a concert.  The planners hoped to attract 5,000 people to Lisieux for this event.  A parallel exhibit about Therese and Joan of Arc is being presented at the Centre John Paul II, next to the Basilica. The exhibit will remain open until October 30, 2013.   

This show was organized by the Association "The Message of Therese."  Chaired by the Rector of the Shrine at Lisieux, it aims to organize various events to make the writings of Therese known in an artistic way.  It has hundreds of volunteers who support the organization in different areas. 

For details in French, see www.spectacle-jeanne-and-therese.com

Therese wrote and starred in two plays, or "pious recreations," as they were then called in Carmel, about Joan of Arc.  You may read them in The Plays of St. Therese of Lisieux: Pious Recreations, ed. Steven Payne, O.C.D.  Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2008.

Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin, the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux, are closer to being canonized than ever before. The Pilgrimage Office at the Shrine of Lisieux has announced that on Tuesday, May 21, 2013, the diocesan process in Valencia, Spain to examine whether the healing of a little girl named Carmen is a miracle attributed to the intercession of the Martin spouses will hold its closing ceremony.  Then the file will be sent to Rome for a final decision in the matter of their canonization.

As the tribunal finishes its work, a work of the faithful begins.  Guiding a cause from beatification to canonization is very expensive: in this case, trips to Spain, fees to medical specialists, costs for accommodation, duplicating and printing transcripts, and other costs.  The Cause of the Martin spouses is asking the friends of Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin for the necessary support, and Mgr. Lagoutte, Rector of the Basilica at Lisieux, has launched an appeal for that purpose.  We have translated into English the brochure with details; please view and download it here.  See the home page of the appeal (which is in French).  Please feel free to print and circulate the brochure; to circulate the link to it (http://tinyurl.com/bpqg9qe); and to e-mail it or post it on your own page.

Louis and Zelie supported many charitable and religious activities generously, and Louis wrote "Give, go on giving, and make people happy."  Please prayerfully consider making a gift to their cause.  And please continue to pray that the Holy Spirit enlightens the Church in this matter.  Thank you.

Mgr Carlos Osoro Serra, Archbishop of Valencia, with the little Carmen

The closing of the diocesan tribunal to consider the "presumed miracle" brings to an end many years of work in France to examine the causes of the Martin spouses. You may read a detailed summary of the history of the cause in A Call to a Deeper Love: The Family Correspondence of the Parents of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus (tr. Ann Hess, ed. Dr. Frances Renda.  New York: Alba House, 2011).  Louis's cause was opened on March 22, 1957 in Lisieux, and Zelie's on October 10, 1957 in the diocese of Sees, where she died.  Later the two causes were joined, and on March 26, 1994, Pope John Paul II declared that Louis and Zelie Martin had practiced "heroic virtue" and designated them "Venerable." After the examination of the healing of newborn Pietro Schiliro, they were beatified on October 19, 2008.  A second miracle is necessary to open the way for their canonization.

Mgr Jacques Habert, bishop of SeesMgr Carlos Osoro Serra, Archbishop of Valencia, will preside at the closing session.  Mgr Jacques Habert, bishop of Sees, and Mgr Jean-Claude Boulanger, Mgr Jean-Claude Boulanger, bishop of Bayeux and Lisieuxbishop of Bayeux and Lisieux, will travel to Valencia for the closing ceremony.  The next day the file will be submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome, where it will be examined first by seven medical specialists, then by theologians, and finally by cardinals before it is given to the Holy Father.  Although evidence is gathered and evaluated first at the diocesan level, the decision to canonize is always made by Rome. 

Please pray that the Church receives the light of the Holy Spirit  to see whether God intends this couple to be canonized. 

Se abre proceso en España para examinar un “presunto milagro” para la canonización de los Beatos Luis y Celia Martin,  los padres de Santa Teresa de Lisieux

escrito por Maureen O´Riordan
traducido por Teodolinda García

para www.thereseoflisieux.org

In cooperation with the Carmelite Forum, the Center for Spirituality at Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana announces its annual Carmelite Summer Seminar, "Carmel at Prayer: A Surge of the Heart, A Glance Toward Heaven," a title drawn from St. Therese.  The seminar offers lectures every morning.  Steven Payne, O.C.D., author of St. Therese of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church, will lecture on "A Surge of the Heart: Therese of Lisieux on Prayer."  Other lectures include:

• "The Carmelite School of Prayer: A Coat of Many Colors" by Dr. Keith Egan;  
• "Rule of Carmel: A Life Structure for Today's Pilgrim"
  by John Welch, O. Carm.;
•  "Prayer of Recollection and Contemplation
  in Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross,"
  by Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D.; and 
• "Journey to the Deepest Center with Edith Stein,"
  by Fran Horner, O.C.D. and Mary Fleig, O.C.D.. 

You may choose a total of four morning and afternoon workshops lasting three sessions each, each attended by a smaller group. Morning  workshops include

• "Spiritual Guidance: A Carmelite Approach"
  by Kevin Culligan, O.C.D. 
• "The Promise of Contemplative Prayer in John of the Cross" by Constance FitzGerald, O.C.D. 
• "Carmel and the Child Jesus,"
  by Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. 
• "Dark Prayer: The Nights of John of the Cross,"
  by John Welch, O. Carm. and
• "Praying with John of the Cross' Poetry"
  by Dr. Keith Egan. 

Afternoon workshops:

• "John of the Cross' Spiritual Canticle and Ecospirituality," by Mary Frohlich, RSCJ
• "Touraine: Carmel's Forgotten Reform,"
  by Leopold Glueckert, O. Carm.
• "Teresa, Teach Us to Pray,"
  by Fran Horner, O.C.D. and Mary Fleig, O.C.D.
• "'All Must be Loved' - Teresa of Avila on Community,"
  by Steven Payne, O.C.D.

I have attended this seminar many times, and I recommend it.  You do not need to be a Carmelite to attend.  The group is friendly and relaxed; each year many attend for the first time, and it is not a social challenge to arrive on your own.  For details, click here.  Get a discount if your registration is received before May 23.

The Carmel of Lisieux announced today that the exhibit "Therese: Burning with Love" is coming to the New World. This beautiful exhibit, which drew seven million visitors at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris last summer, has continued its travels in Europe. After Paris, Caen, and Geneva, the beautiful city of Turin has the joy of welcoming it. But "the greatest saint of modern times" has other ideas: the exhibition will be at World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro this summer. This is very natural, since St. Therese is co-patron of World Youth Day, with Pier Giorgio Frasatti.

The mission of the exhibit "Therese: Burning with Love" is to reach people in distress. The exhibit should also be displayed in a favela (a shantytown) in Brazil. If the local authorities accept it, a copy of the exhibition will stay in Rio and tour several Brazilian cities. We confide this beautiful project to your prayers.

(Translated courtesy of the Web site of the Carmel of Lisieux).