Lansing, Mich., Feb 27, 2020 / 03:01 am (CNA).- Fr. John Fain is getting the 19th-century family of St. Therese back together.
Well, sort of.
First-class relics of Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin, the recently canonized parents of St. Therese, have found a new home in a parish named for their daughter in Lansing, Michigan.
Fr. John Fain of St. Therese parish told CNA that the relics will be encased in a display case along with a relic of St. Therese, and a print of the whole family. All five of the children who survived childhood became religious sisters.
Fain said he hopes the relics inspire greater devotion to St. Therese herself, along with devotion to her family.
“What St. Therese is known for is The Little Way, and it’s doing small things with great love,” Fain said. “Her parents, I think, taught her that.”
“They were people who went to daily Mass, they practiced fasting, they regularly checked out for the neighbors, people in the neighborhood that were struggling. They would take them food and other things. They comforted the sick of their neighborhood and just lived a very joyful family life,” he added.
Fain said he was inspired to ask for relics of Louis and Zelie after ordering a print of an icon of the Martin family.
“I happened to buy a picture of the family of St. Therese of Lisieux and her parents and the entire family, including the children who had died. It just sort of occurred to me, ‘Wow, this would be really neat to have the relics here too.’”
But obtaining relics is no easy process. Fain petitioned Bishop Earl Boyea of Lansing to see if he could get relics of Louis and Zelie for the parish, thinking it would take several years.
Boyea put the chancellor of the diocese, Michael Andrews, on the task of obtaining the relics, Fain said. Andrews, who speaks several languages, contacted the head of Carmelite order in Rome to ask about obtaining relics of Louis and Zelie.
“That’s the only place you could get the relics from. It’s actually very hard to get relics anymore. It used to be somewhat easy, but there’s been so many abuses and trafficking in relics that basically you can only get one,” Fain said.
Fain said he believes his parish is one of the only places in the world to have first-class relics of Louis and Zelie, as they are recently canonized saints, and relics are a rarity.
First-class relics are fragments of the body of the saint, such as bone, flesh, or hair. Fain said he thinks the relics of Zelie and Louis are pieces of bone.
Anything touched to a first-class relic of a saint, like a rosary or a holy card, becomes a third-class relic. Fain added, “I think that’s pretty exciting in itself.”
Before they were married, both Louis and Zelie desired religious vocations. But both were turned away – Louis was rejected from seminary because he didn’t know Latin, and Zelie from a religious community because she had poor health. Louis then became a watchmaker, and Zelie a lacemaker. They had nine children, only five of whom survived childhood.
Zelie died from cancer at the age of 46, leaving Louis to care for the children alone, including Therese, who was four at the time. Louis died in 1894, after suffering two strokes in 1889.
The couple’s desire for holiness despite being turned down from religious vocations can be observed in the way they lived their family life, Fain said, and in a way, their home became “like a small convent in a lot of ways.”
“It’s just obvious that that’s what God’s intention was for their vocation was to be a married couple who shared their family life with their children,” Fain said.
Sts. Louis and Zelie were canonized Oct. 18, 2015 by Pope Francis – the first-ever married couple to be canonized together. Another married couple, Bl. Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi, were beatified together in October 2001.
Fain said he hopes the relics and life of the Martin family can show his parishioners that “spirituality doesn’t have to be a complicated thing. A lot of people are overwhelmed by the great saints and sometimes have a hard time relating to them, but St. Therese is one that I think everyone can relate to.”
He said he also hoped that couples were inspired to see their marriages as holy vocations as well.
“I think a lot of times married couples don’t see themselves as living a vocation. When they think of vocations, they think of priests or deacons or religious men and women, but they don’t really consider being married a religious vocation,” Fain said.
“The state of marriage is definitely in crisis. It’s in crisis in our country, but it’s also in crisis in the Church itself. I think by looking at a couple such as Louis and Zélie and by learning from their merits and example…again that it doesn’t have to be an extraordinary thing. It can just be living a good saintly life in a simple way. That’s ultimately how they made it to heaven. I think that can be a great hope for married couples,” he said.
Fain added that Bishop Boyea plans to visit the parish on Corpus Christi to bless people individually with the relic. The relics can also be removed from their display case by request for those hoping to touch rosaries, holy cards, or other objects to the relics.
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Prayer and fasting. Always good. Thousands of roses? I am sure. It did make the florists very happy.
Archbishop Cordileone asks us to pray and fast. I ask him to actually DO something. He has indicated that he is still in dialog (I hate that word) with Speaker Pelosi. If he has been doing this for all the years he has been bishop of San Francisco, it apparently has not done much good. She just pushed through the House the most drastic abortion bill ever – 218 democrats for and 210 republicans against. To solve a problem you have to accurately identify it. Those voting numbers show where the problem is in eliminating abortion. I don’t recall seeing that addressed by the bishops.
Archbishop Cordileone *is* doing something. Instead of privately begging NP to change her support of abortion, in utter defiance of Church teaching, as his predecessors have done to no avail, he is putting this out in the public. He gives no doubt as to his defense of Catholic teaching and his desire to save her soul from hell, and for attempting to prevent her from leading others into scandal and mortal sin. I’m not sure what else he can possibly do to get through to NP. It is certainly an Act of Mercy for him to ask for prayers and fasting for her soul and for the end of all abortion in the USA. I admire him for his courage and especially for his service to the Church.
In the history of biblical interpretation, the Book of Revelation’s 666 and antichrist has been wrongly and notoriously read to mean one’s enemy or anybody one detests: the Pope, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Saddam, Obama, or Trump, etc. Similarly, Archbishop Cordileone here grotesquely implies by association that those who uphold abortion rights are Satanic.
Are you attempting to grotesquely imply that those who support infanticide are sanctified?
It certainly violates the 10 commandments, and the two commandments He gave us while here.
He is not “implying” it. He is openly suggesting it. And he is correct, Those who uphold infanticide are in the grip of Satan, whom they willingly serve.
I would also note that Satan has achieved the goal of convincing these poor dullards that he does not exist and thereby condones a belief that any action of hums that fulfills their desires is permissible.
Every now and then a statement such as yours causes me to bring up one of my favorite comebacks from about 50+ years ago in the Chicago Tribune by either Dear Abby or Ann Landers in response to an unusually moronic statement from one of her readers:
“You may have a point but if you keep your hat on maybe no one will notice.”
Pope Francis granted Nancy a private audience yesterday. That would be encouraging, if one actually believed that he confronted her about her support for abortion, which he recently termed as “murder.” It is more likely that he was “pastoral” rather than “political,” which would leave her with the impression that she is doing just fine. I think Jesus would have been “pastoral” and told her that she was endangering her eternal soul with her stance. That would be the most pastoral thing to do, as “pastoral” is not a synonym of “being nice.”
First, it is important that we are passionate to stop the murder of the innocent – especially defenseless children in the womb – is grounded in our love of God and His commandments (all of His commandments), including “Thou shalt not kill.” I fear too much of the time the passion of the Pro-Life movement is more about the movement, more about the cause, than the reason for the movement and cause – the eternal God and His commandments. We should be as passionate to change other evils in society as we are to change the evil practice of abortion (murder of innocent children in the womb). I know this will ruffle feathers of some, but it is intended to cause reflection on the real motivation behind the passion, and to ask for that same passion in defending the laws of God in every area of life and society.
Second, Moloch (also known as Molech, Milcom, Milkim, Malcham, Malik) was the name of the national god of the Ammonites, to whom children were sacrificed by fire. While those who support and/or practice the evil of abortion, which is nothing less than child sacrifice, may not believe they are worshiping Moloch (in effect worshiping demonic forces and even Satan), their beliefs in and practice of abortion is evidence they are submitting to the rule of Satan and demonic forces, in effect worshiping Moloch.
I would like to make some follow-up comments addressing Susan K.’s statement that Archbishop Cordileone is doing something. We have different concepts of what “doing” something is. He has been Pelosi’s bishop for nine years. I by no means think that Archbishop Cordileone is stupid. But there is an old saying that the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Obviously what he has been doing for nine years has not worked. Pelosi is more pro-abortion now than she was nine years ago.
Doing something would be enforcing Canon 915 of Canon Law – that she cold not receive the Eucharist. Doing something would be saying that being pro-abortion is a disqualifying issue for being elected to any office. These types of actions may have some positive effect on her. Even if not, it may have some effect on the 50% of Catholics who vote for pro-abortion politicians. As it stands, there seem to be many Catholics who believe that since nothing happens to the pro abortionists, then it must be OK to vote for them.
I would also like to see a little outrage in the bishops’ statements regarding the murder of millions of unborn babies. A little “Woe to you pharisees (pro-abortionists) might go a long way.
This doesn’t have to do with Archbishop Cordileone, but I just saw today that Pelosi had a meeting with the pope over the weekend. Several smiling pictures of the two together. But there was also a news item that she attended mass in Rome on Sunday, and the heckling made her leave church. There is a video of the priest saying that he was sorry she had to leave, as she was going to do the second reading. Good Grief!
To be fair, let’s keep in mind that the president and Speaker of the House both claim that they are opposed to abortion, but they do not think that it is helpful to use government power to stop it.
good