Saint Therese of Lisieux: A Gateway

Please see "France's Jews Flee As Rioters Burn Paris Shops, Attack Synagogue" in the UK version of the Huffington Post, July 22, 2014. On July 20 riot police had to use tear gas to prevent a mob from destroying a synagogue in Sarcelles, a suburb of Paris. More than a thousand Jews have emigrated to Israel in ten days. Religious leaders gathered for an ecumenical service in the threatened synagogue on Monday.

In May 1944, as World War II moved nearer to Lisieux, St. Therese was named secondary patron of France along with St. Joan of Arc. (The principal patron of France is the Blessed Virgin, the young Jewish girl from Nazareth to whom the angel came to announce "You are to conceive, and bear a child, and you must name him Jesus."). May the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Therese, and St. Joan intercede for France and the whole world and deliver us from violence, from war, from anti-Semitism, and from every form of evil.

St. Therese had a great desire to visit the Holy Land, and, although her letter did not survive, she is known to have written to the Carmelite monastery in Jerusalem; a nun from Lisieux Carmel, before the time of Therese, was instrumental in founding that Carmel.  Therese's younger sister in Carmel, St. Edith Stein (Sister Teresa Blessed by the Cross), a Jewish Catholic saint who died at Auschwitz, once wrote "You can't know what it means to me to be a blood relative of His." St. Edith Stein, co-patron of Europe, pray for us! Blessed Virgin Mary, principal patron of France, pray for us! St. Jeanne d'Arc and St. Therese, secondary patrons of France, pray for us!