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Fresno parish was world’s first named for St. Thérèse
| Saturday, Aug 4 2007 5:00 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Aug 3 2007 1:01 PM
Los Angeles has Our Lady of the Angels. San Francisco has St. Francis of Assisi. And Bakersfield has...Uh...St. Baker?
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St. Therese of Lisieux
St. Therese of Lisieux
St. Therese of Lisieux
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Oh, non, non, non! Mon Dieu!
She is French, our fair city’s patron saint — actually the patroness for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno, which includes Bakersfield — and her name is St. Thérèse de Lisieux.
Who is St. Thérèse of Lisieux?
• St. Thérèse is known for having put her heart into everything she did, doing even little things in big ways.
• She had a very giving spirit — like we do in Bakersfield.
“It may not be true today in 2007 as it was for most of the last century, but she was one of the most widely popular saints in the whole world,” said Monsignor James Petersen, pastor of the Shrine of St. Therese on East Floradora Avenue in Fresno. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mother Teresa of Calcutta took her name from the saint, Petersen said.
“She is the saint of the little way: Everything she did was for the glory of God,” even little things, said Jose Iguain, who runs All Saints Catholic Store at 717 H St. “And that’s what it takes to be a saint — that’s her wisdom.”
Such simple, childlike wisdom and devotion is what got Thérèse — as many of her devotees call her — canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1925, just 28 years after she died of tuberculosis on Sept. 30, 1897, at the young age of 24, in a Carmelite convent in Lisieux, France.
A doctor of the church
St. Thérèse was born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin on Jan. 2, 1873, to Louis Martin, a watchmaker, and his wife, Zélie-Marie, both very religious people.
Her mother died when Thérèse, the youngest of nine children, was only 4, but she and Louis instilled a deep religious fervor in her.
“She wanted to be a nun too early,” Iguain said.
While on a pilgrimage to Rome with her father when she was only 15, Thérèse was granted an audience with Pope Leo XIII and told the pontiff the superiors of her local Carmelite order said she was still too young to be allowed in.
“She asked the pope to make an exception,” Iguain said.
The pope told her to submit to the judgment of her superiors but somehow, later that year, they allowed her to become a cloistered nun.
Once a nun, Thérèse’s superiors encouraged her to keep her memoirs and meditations in a diary that was edited and published posthumously as her autobiography and titled “Story of a Soul.”
It became a best-seller in dozens of languages and is the main reason why Pope John Paul II declared her a doctor (an eminent theologian and sound teacher of doctrine) of the church in 1997, on the 100th anniversary of her death.
Petersen said he read the book while training to become a priest, and he and his fellow seminarians were all impressed with it.
“The spiritual books we had before then were pretty somber and heavy-going and this was so bright, breezy, and light that it was a breath of fresh air,” he said, adding that anyone would be able to understand St. Thérèse’s writings.
California’s patron saints
“Usually, those cities that have patron saints were settled and founded by the Spanish and were named for the saint on the feast day when they were founded,” said deacon Jesse Avila, spokesman for the Fresno Diocese.
This was the norm during the Spanish mission period, Avila said, before the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, when California and other western states became part of the United States.
Bakersfield was settled 10 years later and incorporated in 1873, according to city records, hence its lack of a Spanish name and namesake patron saint to go with it.
According to church records from the Shrine of St. Therese in Fresno, Bishop John G. MacGinley, of the then Diocese of Monterey-Fresno, was in Rome at the time of St. Thérèse’s canonization and asked the pope to name her the patroness of his diocese. The pope agreed on one condition: that a local church and parish be named after her.
The name of Our Lady of Victory Parish, established in 1919, was changed, and it has since boasted of being the first parish in the world dedicated to St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
There are relics of the saint, including photographs and what appears to be a piece of garment, kept in a safe at the shrine.
St. Thérèse’s miracles
“She’s so famous for answering prayers,” said Iguain, born in Argentina to Basque parents who fled there from Spain during the Spanish Civil War.
John Perry, 69, is a parishioner at the Shrine of St. Therese. A Rhode Island native who has lived in Fresno for 53 years, Perry said he has attended the church since 1960 and has prayed to the saint for help on many occasions and received strength.
Also called “St. Thérèse of the Baby Jesus” because of her devotion to the Christ Child, and “The Little Flower” because of her love of gardening, Thérèse has a way of letting the faithful know she will intercede for them before God, Iguain said.
“If your request is going to be granted, you are going to smell a rose,” he said. “Or if someone gives you a rose or a rosary, that’s an indication that your prayer is going to be answered.”
Not surprisingly, Thérèse is the patron saint of gardeners and florists.
Learn more about St. Thérèse de Lisieux
• Visit www.shrineofsttherese.com
• Visit the actual Shrine of St. Therese at 855 East Floradora Ave. in Fresno. Call 559-268-6388 to find out about times when the shrine is open.
• Read “The Story of a Soul,” the spiritual musings of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, which is also known as her autobiography. A search on amazon.com using the saint’s name or the name of the book will yield it and several other titles of works written by or about the saint.
• Watch “Thérèse,” a 2004 movie about the life of the saint. The writing and acting in the film, which is available on DVD, leave a lot to be desired, but the costumes and sets of this period piece are wonderful. It is rated PG — possibly because of the graphic scenes showing Thérèse’s tuberculosis, which caused her to cough out blood — but it really is a movie the family can watch.
St. Thérèse is also the patron saint of:
• Missionaries because she prayed for missions daily and herself was invited to go on an overseas mission to French Indochina (present-day Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) but was prevented from doing so by the tuberculosis that killed her.
• Those suffering from severe illnesses, including tuberculosis and AIDS.
• Pilots and air crews.
• Loss of parents — she lost her mother when she was only 4.
• The nations of France, Australia and Russia, and also the restoration of religious freedom in Russia.
• In the United States, besides the diocese of Fresno, the archdiocese of Anchorage, Alaska, and the dioceses of Fairbanks and Juneau, Alaska; Cheyenne, Wyo.; and Pueblo, Colo.
• Diocese of Kisumu, Kenya.
• Diocese of Witbank, South Africa.
Source: www.catholic-forum.com, www.wikipedia.org and Californian research.