Inaugural St Thérèse International Day in Knock Shrine Sun 14 July
The inaugural
St Thérèse International Day
at Knock Shrine
will be held on
Sunday 14th July 2024.
A film on St Thérèse will run on a loop
from 10am – 2.30pm.
There will be a break with a brief talk from international speaker
John Patrick Mallon
on the life of St Thérèse @ 12.30pm.
The Martin Family Reliquary
(relics of Thérèse and her parents)
will be in the Basilica from 1pm – 2.30pm.
This will be followed by the Anointing of the Sick.
Blessing with a relic of St Thérèse will take place during the
Concelebrated Mass @ 3.00pm.
There will be a ceremony of Blessing of the Roses and religious objects.
All welcome.
PEN PAL 1940-ish.
I lived a lot in my head, as a lad.
Like, I was the last in the –
brothers and sisters well ahead of me.
They were stretching their wings
while I was still in the nest –
if – if y’know what I mean…
I didn’t know them. I didn’t really know them.
And my Dad was away a lot and my mother
working the pub during the war years,
trying to make ends meet.
So I – I lived in a world of me own…
Well, like, you won’t believe this
but I used to write letters.
To, to the Little Flower. ‘God’s truth.
Saint Teresa of, of Lisieux.
‘Every few nights. Two, three pages.
With the fountain pen I got for Christmas.
No matter how cold it was in that bedroom.
And I’d leave them folded
under her statue on the tallboy
before getting under the blankets…
God only knows what became of them.
Dumped, I suppose, like a lot of stuff
when the family home was sold off…
And here’s a thing:
whenever now I go into a Church
she’s nearly always there,
to one side or another,
standing with the bunch of roses…
And I wonder does she still remember
the lad that wrote to her
many’s the winter night
all those years ago?..
Sure, how could she forget?!
And I think, maybe, she might
just get me into Heaven
by a side door… when…
when the time comes.
– from my latest… work in progress.