RCIA, or Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, is the process by which people who are interested in learning about the Catholic Faith can attend classes and have the opportunity to become members of the Catholic Church.

RCIA is for adults who:

· Are interested in learning about the Catholic Faith

· Have never been baptized

· Have been baptized in another Christian faith and are interested in the Catholic Faith

· Are baptized Catholics who have not yet received the Sacraments of First Communion or Confirmation

· Are married to a Catholic and attend Mass and would like to take the next step to become a member of the Catholic Church

· Are Catholic but want to learn more about their Faith

RCIA is a spiritual formation process. Our classes have started and are held on Thursday evenings in the Parish Meeting Room at 7 pm.     

Zelie developed breast cancer and “bore her cross with remarkable strength of spirit and with interior and exterior tranquility,” in the words of the Vatican decree. “She tried to console her family members and especially her young daughters.” She died at the age of 45, leaving Louis to care for their five young daughters: Marie, Pauline, Leonie, Celine, and Therese, who was only four at the time.

 Louis sold his business and moved 60 miles away to Lisieux, then a town of 17,000, so that his children could be near his brother-in-law and his family. Although Louis “enjoyed a certain wealth, he lived a simple and sober life, one estranged from riches and the vanities of the world,” in the words of the Vatican decree.

 Between 1882 and 1888, four of his five daughters entered religious life, with three of them entering the Order of Discalced Carmelites in Lisieux.

 In 1887 and 1888, Louis suffered several strokes and began to suffer from dementia. He was placed in a home for the mentally ill, but in time his brother-in-law’s family was able to care for him, as did Léonie, who had left her convent before entering another, and Céline, who would later follow in the footsteps of her other sisters and become a Carmelite. After another stroke and two heart attacks, Louis died in 1894.

One hundred years later, St. John Paul II declared that the Martins lived the virtues heroically, and following the miraculous healing of an Italian infant, Louis and Zélie were beatified in 2008. The miraculous healing of a Spanish infant paved the way for their canonization.

 The Second Vatican Council called upon spouses to “sustain one another in grace in the course of their whole life, and imbue their offspring, lovingly received from God, with Christian teachings and Gospel virtues.” Louis and Zélie Martin lived out the Church’s teaching heroically, and with their canonization in October, they will become universal examples of the grandeur of being a Christian husband and father, a wife and mother.  The end.

The Martins

Louis Martin and Zelie Guerin eventually met in Alencon, and on July 13, 1858, Louis, 34, and Zelie, 26, married and began their remarkable voyage through life. Within the next fifteen years, Zelie bore nine children, seven girls and two boys. “We lived only for them,” Zelie wrote; “they were all our happiness.”

Attending Mass each morning at 6:30 and creating an atmosphere of prayer, devotion, forgiveness, generosity to the poor and affection, the Martins found joy in Catholic family life. Working hard at their home-based businesses they experienced relative financial prosperity.

The Martins’ delight in their children turned to shock and sorrow as tragedy relentlessly and mercilessly stalked their little ones. Within three years, Zelie’s two baby boys, a five year old girl, and a six-and-a-half week old infant girl all died.

Zelie was left numb with sadness. “I haven’t a penny’s worth of courage,” she lamented. But her faith sustained her through these terrible ordeals. In a letter to her sister-in-law who had lost an infant son, Zelie remembered: “When I closed the eyes of my dear little children and buried them, I felt sorrow through and through….People said to me, ‘It would have been better never to have had them.’ I couldn’t stand such language. My children were not lost forever; life is short and full of miseries, and we shall find our little ones again up above.”

The Martins’ last child was born January 2, 1873. She was weak and frail, and doctors feared for the infant’s life. The family, so used to death, was preparing for yet another blow. Zelie wrote of her three month old girl: “I have no hope of saving her. The poor little thing suffers horribly….It breaks your heart to see her.” But the baby girl proved to be much tougher than anyone realized. She survived the illness. A year later she was a “big baby, browned by the sun.” “The baby,” Zelie noted, “is full of life, giggles a lot, and is sheer joy to everyone.” Death seemed to grant a reprieve to the Martin household. Although suffering had left its mark on mother and father, it was not the scar of bitterness. Louis and Zelie had already found relief and support in their faith.

The series of tragedies had intensified the love of Louis and Zelie Martin for each other. They poured out their affection on their five surviving daughters; Marie, 12, Pauline, 11, Leonie 9, Celine, 3, and their new-born. Louis and Zelie named their new-born; Marie-Francoise-Therese Martin. A century later people would know her as St. Therese, and call her the “Little Flower.”

…to be continued.

Pope Francis formally approved the decrees necessary for Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin –the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux – to be declared saints later this year.

The two blessed will be the first spouses in the history of the Church to be canonized as a couple at the same ceremony, which will be held on Oct. 18, 2015, in the Vatican. The event will take place fewer than three weeks after the Oct. 1 feast of their daughter, and doctor of the Church, St. Therese of the Child Jesus.

The canonizations of the married couple will coincide with the Synod on the Family, to be held on Oct. 4-25. The three-week gathering of bishops will be the second and larger of two such gatherings to take place in the course of a year. The focus of the 2015 Synod of Bishops will be the family, with the theme: “The vocation and mission of the family in the church and the modern world.”

The Watchmaker Louis Martin (1823-1894)

Born into a family of soldiers, Louis spent his early years at various French military posts. He absorbed the sense of order and discipline that army life engenders. His temperament, deeply influenced by the peculiar French connection between the mystical and the military, tended toward things of the spirit.

At 22, young Louis sought to enter an Augustinian monastery in Switzerland, but the Canons Regular at Grand-St. Bernard refused him entrance because he did not know Latin. During the next 10 months, Louis took more than 100 Latin lessons from a priest in Alençon. In the end, though, he ended these studies and moved 120 miles away to Paris, where he apprenticed as a clock and watchmaker. At 27, Louis completed his apprenticeship, returned to Alençon and opened a successful business. A lover of silence and solitude, he “diligently fulfilled his religious duties and cultivated union with God, prayer and meditation, for which he showed a special propensity,” in the words of the 1994 Vatican decree on his heroic virtues.

The Lace Maker Zelie Guerin (1831-1877)
Zelie Guerin was one of Alencon’s more talented lace makers. Born into a military family, Zelie described her childhood and youth as “dismal.” Her mother and father showed her little affection. As a young lady, she sought to enter the Daughters of Charity in Alençon but was refused admission for reasons that are no longer known. The following year, while praying to the Blessed Mother about her future, she heard an interior voice tell her to “see to the making of Alençon lace,” an aristocratic style of lace. Zelie then learned the Alencon lace-making technique and soon mastered this painstaking craft. Richly talented, creative, eager, and endowed with common sense, she started her own business and became quite successful. Notable as these achievements were, Zelie was yet to reveal the depths of the strength, faith, and courage she possessed.
To Be Continued….