Lisiex & Caen France

Monday, April 20, 2009
By 9 AM we were on our way to Caen with a stop in Lisieux to view the Sanctuaires of Sainte-Therese De Lisieux. She was born in 1873 into a profoundly Christian family. She was the youngest of five daughters (all who entered the convent when they became of age) to Louis and Zelie Martin. Her parents are in the process of being canonized by the Catholic Church and were beatified on October 19, 2008. Therese entered the Carmel Cloister at the age of 15 in 1888. She died on September 30, 1897. On May 17, 1925 Sister Therese was declared a saint by Pope Pius XI. While in Lisieux we first visited St. Peter’s Cathedral, the local parish of St. Therese, that was built during the 12th century.

From there we drove to “Les Buissonnets” the childhood home of the Martin family.
The Carmel Sister’s operate a tour of the quaint 2 storied home. As we toured the home a taped story (in English) told us about her life. The garden area in back of her home was a particular delight to us as it included a WC that we could use. The past hour we had been looking for one and had found all the public WC’s locked and were about to give up when the kind sister who spoke “a little English” showed us the garden area.

On the other side of Lisieux we found the Basilica of Saint Therese that was constructed in 1929 the walls are covered with mosaics that illustrate the message of Saint Therese. The relics of St. Therese are placed under the dome of this Basilica. While there I took special time to light a candle and request help for a small child named Emma who is very ill and needs all the help that St. Therese can give her…… we pray she was listening today and will send the help that is so desperately needed by this family.

As we approach the city of Caen we missed our turn so ended up taking a side trip through the city…….yes, we were lost…..but, we knew our Formule One was located near the WW 2 Memorial so…… we followed the signs that said “Memorial” which led us out of the city and back to our missed road……. By 2:30 we were checked in. After driving all morning in fog I was sure that Martha would agree with me that we needed to take some down time but she was ready to go out again without any rest. So off we went to the “Cite De L’ Histoire Memorial of Caen-Normandie for a 2 hour tour of this massive display of photos, equipment, movies and stories of World War II . We could have spent another couple of hours and not seen the whole thing but after 2 hours we elected to leave, we may go back in the morning to finish our tour as the tickets are good for 24 hours. We then made a stop at the supermart next to our hotel for groceries and now its computer time before we turn in for the night.