MALOLOS CITY, Bulacan—A prelate took the opportunity to extoll the life of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux as her pilgrim relics arrived at the Cathedral and Minor Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in this city last weekend, saying she healed many, spread the Good News and lived a life of deep prayer.
“Saint Thérèse granted healing to those who asked for her intercession, she proclaimed the Gospel of the Lord while she was still living on Earth, and she spent a life of prayer in a Carmelite monastery in Lisieux,” Malolos Bishop Jose Oliveros said in a Mass concelebrated with Msgr. Bartolome Santos and other members of the Malolos clergy.
He explained some traits of the young saint that the faithful should admire and follow.
“Saint Thérèse fulfilled and followed what the Lord has spoken: ‘Unless you become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of God,’” Oliveros added. “She personified a life of a child who is fully dependent to God’s will.”
Likewise, Oliveros asked the faithful to seek the intercession of the “Little Flower” in praying for our priests and consecrated persons that they may become instruments of God in bestowing spiritual healing by proclaiming and living the Gospel and maintaining a deep prayer life.
Meanwhile, Br. Froilan Torres, OCDS, a member of the organizing committee of the fourth Philippine Visit of the Pilgrim Relics of Saint Therese, said in an interview with CBCPNews that the reliquary carrying the bones from Saint Thérèse’s right leg is traveling around the world.
Torres said this is to satisfy the saint’s promise to become a missionary until the end of time—bringing the Gospel even to the remotest islands.
The relics stayed in the Diocese of Malolos and visited various parishes and other institutions before its transfer to the Diocese of Kalookan on February 8.
The pilgrim relics of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus arrived on January 12, its fourth time in the Philippines. It will visit over 40 dioceses from Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao until May 31.
The pilgrim relics of Saint Thérèse have visited the Philippines in 2000, 2008 and 2013.
Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, also called Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, was born on January 2, 1873, in Alençon, France. She died on September 30, 1897, at the age of 24.
She is one of the most popular Catholic saints. As a doctor of the church, she is the subject of much theological comment and study.
Relics are the material remains of a saint or holy person after death, as well as objects sanctified by contact with his or her body.
Real or first-class relics include the skin and bones, clothing, objects used for penance and instruments of a martyr’s imprisonment or passion, while representative relics are objects placed in contact with the body or grave of a saint.
The Catholic faithful venerate the relics of saints because as intercessors with God for the living, through their relics—a record of the saint—God manifests his presence.
“To welcome the relics of Saint Thérèse is to welcome the saint herself,” the primer on the pilgrim relics said. “In the presence of and contact with her [Saint Thérèse] mortal remains, God, who had received from her so many acts of love when she was alive here on Earth, is pleased to manifest His love through the remains of her humanity.”
Image credits: Rainier Policarpio/CBCPNews, Facebook.com/ThereseRelicsPH