The remains of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face arrived in the Holy Land yesterday morning at around 9.30 am at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport.
A small crowd attended the arrival ceremony, with the youngsters from the Carmel School of Haifa, representatives of the Carmelites, religious (men and women) of various orders, Bishops and clergy who led a small liturgy of welcome.
The organization by the Carmelite Father Abdo Abdo, parish priest of the parish of St. Joseph, Haifa, was beautiful, simple and attentive, and he had personally taken care of every detail. The parish priest of Jerusalem, Father Feras Hejazin ofm, who is collaborating on this great event, was also present.
Thérèse, who entered the Carmelite Convent of Lisieux when she was very young, never saw the Holy Land, the place of the incarnation of that “Jesus who wanted to be loved”, as she wrote in her diary of inner life, subsequently to be published as the book entitled “The Story of a Soul”.
A truly great sign! The local Church is visited by this Saint, proclaimed a Doctor of the Church at this very time when a family pastoral is beginning to bring the Word to every family.
It was from her family that St. Thérèse received the seed of faith that blossomed and bore plentiful fruit in the life of this small great nun, although she met sister death when she was only 25 years old. For this reason, her parents were recently proclaimed blessed by the Catholic Church.
The life of the Little Flower, as she is called to distinguish her from the other great Carmelite Saint, Teresa of Avila, was very intense and not without suffering.
Her mother died when she was only four and at a very early age she heard the call to consecrated life, entering a convent at only 15, driven by an uncontainable quest for God’s love. However, her enthusiasm was to come into conflict with the daily life in the convent which did not exactly meet her expectations. Used to living with the presence of God that appeared to her in different ways, she found herself wrapped in darkness where it was impossible to see a supernatural sign: “the darkness of the faith". In this terrible ordeal, she discovered that although small and humble, she had been given the knowledge of the “small way”, the path of abandonment to the will of the Lord like a child who abandons himself in the safe arms of his parents. In the end the ordeal of suffering: she caught tuberculosis and died in little over a year. On Wednesday 16th March at 4.30 pm there will be the solemn entrance of the Saint’s reliquary into Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate. On this occasion, it is impossible not to remember the words he wrote the day she was consecrated: "The day of 10th January was the triumph of my King, I compare it to the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem." Welcome, little saint!
Articles and photos by Gavasso Marco
A small crowd attended the arrival ceremony, with the youngsters from the Carmel School of Haifa, representatives of the Carmelites, religious (men and women) of various orders, Bishops and clergy who led a small liturgy of welcome.
The organization by the Carmelite Father Abdo Abdo, parish priest of the parish of St. Joseph, Haifa, was beautiful, simple and attentive, and he had personally taken care of every detail. The parish priest of Jerusalem, Father Feras Hejazin ofm, who is collaborating on this great event, was also present.
Thérèse, who entered the Carmelite Convent of Lisieux when she was very young, never saw the Holy Land, the place of the incarnation of that “Jesus who wanted to be loved”, as she wrote in her diary of inner life, subsequently to be published as the book entitled “The Story of a Soul”.
A truly great sign! The local Church is visited by this Saint, proclaimed a Doctor of the Church at this very time when a family pastoral is beginning to bring the Word to every family.
It was from her family that St. Thérèse received the seed of faith that blossomed and bore plentiful fruit in the life of this small great nun, although she met sister death when she was only 25 years old. For this reason, her parents were recently proclaimed blessed by the Catholic Church.
The life of the Little Flower, as she is called to distinguish her from the other great Carmelite Saint, Teresa of Avila, was very intense and not without suffering.
Her mother died when she was only four and at a very early age she heard the call to consecrated life, entering a convent at only 15, driven by an uncontainable quest for God’s love. However, her enthusiasm was to come into conflict with the daily life in the convent which did not exactly meet her expectations. Used to living with the presence of God that appeared to her in different ways, she found herself wrapped in darkness where it was impossible to see a supernatural sign: “the darkness of the faith". In this terrible ordeal, she discovered that although small and humble, she had been given the knowledge of the “small way”, the path of abandonment to the will of the Lord like a child who abandons himself in the safe arms of his parents. In the end the ordeal of suffering: she caught tuberculosis and died in little over a year. On Wednesday 16th March at 4.30 pm there will be the solemn entrance of the Saint’s reliquary into Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate. On this occasion, it is impossible not to remember the words he wrote the day she was consecrated: "The day of 10th January was the triumph of my King, I compare it to the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem." Welcome, little saint!
Articles and photos by Gavasso Marco