To coincide with the World Meeting of Families 2018, the Carmelites have arranged that the relics of Saints Louis and Zélie Martin, and their youngest daughter, Saint Thérèse, have come from Lisieux to Ireland. The Relics will be at the WMOF2018 Opening Ceremony in the RDS, Dublin, on Tuesday, August 21, and they will also be in the sanctuary in the Phoenix Park for the Papal Mass on Sunday, August 26. Prior to these days, the Relics are travelling to several places across Ireland, and will continue to visit churches in Ireland after the event.
SAINTS LOUIS AND ZÉLIE MARTIN
Louis and Zélie Martin were beatified on 19 October 2008, not because they gave five religious to the Church, one of whom is a saint, but because their married life gave witness of an exemplary Christian life. That life was completely ordinary, that of a Christian couple who raised their children by working together. They knew the joy and pain of all families, but in their togetherness all was love: the love of God; love of their children; love of others. Saint Thérèse wrote to abbé Bellière: “The good Lord gave me a father and a mother more worthy of heaven than of earth.” And in a letter to Father Roulland she speaks of the “heaven towards which tended all their actions and all their desires.” Their life is like a catechism on family life.
On Friday the 10th of August the Relics were welcomed to the Cathedral of SS Patrick and Felim, Cavan, by Very Rev. Kevin Fay, Adm.
