News
Top Stories
-
FEAST DAY OF ST. TERESA’S PARENTS: JULY 12TH
Saint Louis Martin (d. 1894)
Saint Zélie Martin (d. 1877)
Louis and Zélie Martin were joined in marriage on July 13, 1858. Beforehand, each had tested a religious vocation, and, at first, they were determined to live in mutual continence. Nine months in, a wise priest friend urged them to open their marriage to children.
And so their communion came in the raising and educating of five daughters—and the shared grief borne when four more little ones, two boys and two girls, died in childhood. Years later, their daughter Céline testified that each of her parents was a “personality”: “Different temperaments, but perfectly well matched, each one completing, in perfect harmony, the deficiencies of the other, always corrected by virtue.” Zélie succumbed to breast cancer when her youngest, little Thérèse, was only four and a half. Louis would live to see Thérèse join the same convent that had received three of her sisters (his other daughter would go to the Visitandines). In May 1888, moved with gratitude for the spiritual fruitfulness of his family, he “offered himself” to God. His last six years were marked by almost continual physical and mental suffering.
Thérèse was canonized in 1925. On July 13, 1927, sixty-nine years to the day of her parents’ wedding, her feast day was extended to the universal Church. Louis and Zélie were canonized together in 2015 by Pope Francis.
Loving Father, through the intercession of Saints Louis and Zélie Martin, take my every little act of love and increase it beyond measure. -
THIS WEEK IN AMERICAN HISTORY
- July 16, 1769 Franciscan missionary Father Junípero Serra founds San Diego de Alcala, the first mission in upper California and first of a series built by the Franciscans. (Father Serra was canonized a saint in 2015.)
- July 16, 1936 (85 years ago) Father Charles Coughlin, the anti-Semitic radio priest whose broadcasts have attracted a following of New Deal haters, is cheered when he calls the president a “great betrayer and liar” at a convention of supporters of the Townsend Plan, a scheme to end the Depression by giving monthly payments of $200 to everyone over sixty. (Nothing new under the sun!)
- July 16, 1945 The first atomic bomb is exploded in a test at Alamogordo, New Mexico. (Later that summer, atomic bombs will kill many thousands in Japan.) -
COMMUNION WHILE LIVE-STREAMING MASS
While watching mass from home, this prayer may be used to make an act of spiritual communion:
My Jesus, I believe that You are present in the Most Holy Sacrament
I love you above all things and I desire to receive You into my soul.
Since I cannot at this moment receive You
sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart.
I embrace You as if You were already there and unite myself wholly to You.
Never permit me to be separated from You. Amen -
Choir Concert Spring 2015 Video
To access the video click on the following link: !Video Gallery! -
Saint Teresa Photo Gallery
Saint Teresa now has a photo gallery of the events held throughout the year. To access the gallery click on the following link: !Photo Gallery!