Third Sunday of Lent – Year C: 23.03.25
11.30am Mass – St. Peter & Paul’s Church, Monasterevin
Visit of the Relics of St. Therese & her parents Ss. Louis & Zelie Martin
Introduction:
This morning’s gospel presents us with the plight of the fig tree planted in the middle of the vineyard. The Martin family, whose relics we are privileged to have with us this morning – the parents Louis and Zélie and the daughter, the much loved ‘little flower’, Thérese; they would be all well familiar with fig trees, growing up in Alencon, France before moving to Les Buissonnets at Lisieux.
We love the opportunity of ‘a second chance’! The fig tree image in today’s gospel, marking the third Sunday of Lent offers us one more chance, another opportunity to love God, love neighbour and love ourselves.
Of course our God is a God who offers several second chances! We’re the ones who complicate the message; we’re the ones who are slow at offering second chances, and most acutely to ourselves. The fig tree gets its reprieve for one more year.
The psalmist offers us remission with the words: “The Lord is compassion and love, slow to anger and rich in mercy”[1]. Aren’t we so glad of that compassion, that love, that mercy …
… trusting in the Lord as pilgrims of hope this Lent, we turn to the Lord and acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the immense gift of love that is the Eucharist.
- Lord Jesus, you graciously turn to us and lift us up with your compassion and love. Lord, have mercy.
- You call us to repentance and reconcile us to one another and to the Father. Christ, have mercy.
- You heal the wounds of sin and division and pour into us a spirit of peace. Lord, have mercy.
Homily:
We are privileged to be in the presence this morning of the relics of St. Thérese and her parents Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin. We have with us a family, who were graced by God in a very real way, but a family who were not immune to suffering and hardship.
Louis trained as a watchmaker; Zélie embraced the the art of lacemaking, so closely associated with the region of Alencon. Their careers were after earlier rebuttals by religious orders, the Augustinians rejecting Louis, because of his inability to learn Latin and Zélie was refused entry into a community because of her ill health. They met through Louis’s mam, who was taking a class from Zélie on lacemaking! Literally a match made in heaven!
They would give birth to nine children, four of whom died young. All five remaining daughters would eventually become nuns. Four of them becoming Carmelites, and one becoming a Visitation nun, after several efforts, I’ll come back to her later.
The family home was a happy place but sickness and worry was never far from its door. Zélie and Louis worked hard to care for their family, Zélie often referring to them as her “little pickles”, working at night to keep her lacemaking business going. For both Louis and Zélie prayer and caring for the poor were in daily evidence in their family. The death of Zélie of breast cancer, while on pilgrimage to Lourdes, necessitated Louis and the girls leaving their home and renting a home close to Lisieux.
We know a lot of Thérese, less about Louis and Zélie and probably nothing about Léonie, whose relics are not with us. Léonie was in the words of her mother “the greatest sorrow I have ever had in my life”. She suffered from whooping cough and severe eczema and had learning difficulties. She was emotionally abused by the family nanny, which led to her becoming even more withdrawn and difficult. She was asked to leave the local school and later the Visitation Boarding School. She found the rigidity of the Novice Mistress in the Visitation Sisters impossible. The community and family later realised all these things and Léonie was welcomed back where she lived ‘a hidden life’ with the Sisters in Caen until her death in 1941. Her cause for canonisation was opened in 2015.
St. Thérese reminds us of her ‘little way’, of how holiness can be found by loving God through small deeds. She learned that philosophy in her family. Family is so important to us all. It’s in the family we meet God and we meet one another. It’s in the family we are taught to first to love, to forgive, to be patient.
The patience that allows the forgotten member of the Martin family, Léonie to fourish, the fig tree to flourish. As the vinedresser asks to give the fig tree another year: “leave it one more year and give me time to dig round it and manure it”[2], I often wonder did the dormant vine produce fruit a year later? I doubt it, but it reminds us of the patience and enduring love of our God, the hope that is crystallised in this Jubilee Year.
I repeat that concluding verse of our psalm: “The Lord is compassion and love, slow to anger and rich in mercy”[3]. Lent is our space, our Holy Ground that Moses walks on in our first reading, like the Martin family home in Alencon and later near Lisieux. Ten years ago on October 18th, 2015 Louis and Zélie were the first married couple to be canonized together.
This morning in the presence of their relics and those of their daughter, the well known Thérese, may all families be blessed. None of us come from a perfect family; none of us are dropped from heaven perfectly formed, we have our squeaky doors and loose pot handles but we are loved, created and held by God, just as he did the Martin family.
[1] Ps.102:8
[2] Lk.13:8
[3] Ps.102:8