Special Masses — including one with Archbishop Jeffrey S. Grob — and the opportunity for veneration of relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux drew thousands of people to the Basilica and National Shrine of Mary Help of Christians at Holy Hill. (Photo by seancsmithphotos.com)
The life of Thérèse Martin of Lisieux was short, and it was ordinary.
Thérèse was shy, sensitive and thoughtful. She was misunderstood by the girls at school and preferred to be at home, in the company of her sisters and close family members. She took one grand trip to Rome as a teenager but otherwise did not travel much outside of her native France. At the age of 15 she became a Carmelite, and after that was cloistered from the outside world. For nine years her days were filled with chores, prayer and contemplation. She never had a husband, a child or a paying job. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 24 — a common end, for that era, to a common life.
And yet, on an unseasonably warm day in late autumn, 128 years after her death, crowds ascended a hill in Hubertus, Wisconsin — a world away from any place Thérèse had ever known — because they heard she was coming to town.
They clutched rosaries, prayer cards, scapulars and medals. They leaned on walking sticks and canes. They carried babies in their arms and balanced toddlers on their shoulders. They filled the cavernous upper church of the Basilica and National Shrine of Mary Help of Christians at Holy Hill for a Mass on Saturday, Nov. 15, and their numbers were so great that they likewise packed the lower church — the St. Therese Chapel — to view Mass on a live feed.
After Mass, they waited in long lines that stretched out of the church and into the evening chill, waiting for the chance to be close to her earthly remains. Other Masses, including one with Archbishop Jeffrey S. Grob, drew more Sunday, Nov. 16.
First-class relics of Thérèse, who was canonized a saint in 1925 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1997, are currently making a tour of the United States. Their stop at Holy Hill, which is under the care of the Discalced Carmelite Friars of Holy Hill, began Saturday, Nov. 15, and ends Nov. 18.
When asked, the pilgrims waiting in line spoke about St. Thérèse as if she were a dear friend.
“She’s one of the first saints that I’ve gotten to know,” explained Jenelle Devries, who had made her way from the east side of Madison to be at Holy Hill. “I was really excited to hear that she’d be here.”
Devries brought a copy of “Story of a Soul,” the book compiled from St. Thérèse’s writings — a simple collection of manuscripts, memories jotted down at the request of her sisters near the end of her short life.
“She writes so candidly and beautifully,” said Devries. “I don’t know. I just find myself grabbing it a lot.”
“She has just been such a big role model in my life. I was talking to my friends about it in the car on the way here, too — just how she was such an emotional person, and so sensitive. I relate to her in that way,” explained Maryam Perez-Hernandez, a student at UW-La Crosse. “I see that in (“Story of a Soul”) — just how she prays for peace in her heart, and learning to take control over her emotions, and how that’s led her to grow in her faith, closer to Jesus.”
This was not Eddie Vanderwerff’s first time venerating St. Thérèse’s relics — he was here at Holy Hill in 1999, and in 2009 he made the trip to see her Carmel in Lisieux, where she spent her religious life and where her body is interred. He also went to venerate her relics when they were visiting the National Shrine of St. Thérèse in Darien, Illinois.
“We were fortunate to go see her. Now she’s nice enough to come back and see us,” said Vanderwerff, who lives in Brighton in Kenosha County and made the trip with his wife, daughter, mother-in-law and sister-in-law. “We weren’t going to miss this.”
St. Thérèse, he said, “is a wonderful, humble little saint, who — without trying to sound cliche — does show you the little way to God.”
“Her writings are wonderful,” he said. “At 24 years old, with no doctoral education or anything like that — and she has such a profound, intimate understanding of Almighty God.”
“In spite of my littleness, I would like to enlighten souls as did the Prophets and the Doctors,” wrote Thérèse shortly before her death. “I would like to travel over the whole earth to preach Your Name … from the beginning of creation until the consummation of the ages.”
In death, St. Thérèse has done exactly that.
Volunteer Nancy Preston, a parishioner at St. Mary of the Hill Parish, was on duty all night, and said she was surprised by the size of the crowds on the first day of the visit.
“We were told it would be a lot (of people), but we really didn’t think, because this was just a half of a day, that it was going to be so busy,” she said.
Volunteers were given some time to pray before the relics earlier on Saturday, before they were brought up the hill to the basilica in a procession.
“It was just like the sun shining,” said Preston of the time she spent with St. Thérèse’s relics.
In his homily during the vigil Mass, presider Fr. Michael-Joseph Paris, O.C.D., noted how St. Thérèse frequently wrote about Jesus as “the Divine Sun.”
“We come to visit her relics today, not simply to admire her … but that the healing she received from those rays of the Divine Sun can also touch us,” he said. “St. Thérèse teaches us that God is more tender than a mother. And if we strive to open ourselves to his mercy each day, through our prayer and through striving to love amidst our own negative emotions, we will experience the healing rays of the Divine Sun.”
