“Above the clouds, the sky is always blue. One touches the shores where God reigns.”

This simple, hopeful and quietly powerful verse features in St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s poem “Abandonment is the Sweet Fruit of Love,” written six months before her death on Sept. 30, 1897.

At the end of her brief, remarkable and ultimately sainted 24 years on Earth, the Little Flower of Jesus joined her Lord and Saviour. 

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A group of 11 Canadian Catholic pilgrims concluded a one-week familiarization tour of the Normandy region of France on Feb. 9 as guests at the Hermitage Sainte Thérèse reception house overseen by the Sisters Servants of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus. During a welcoming lunch, a team member told the pilgrims that Thérèse always looked towards the sky. 

The French Carmelite nun believed “prayer is a simple look turned towards Heaven.”

Not only did the author of Story of a Soul care deeply about her own eternal destination, but she also passionately prayed for everyone to experience heavenly splendour. Famously, Thérèse prayed for the conversion and salvation of a notorious triple murderer named Henri Pranzini. It appeared that he would remain unrepentant as he headed up the scaffold for his execution on Aug. 31, 1887. However, the following day, when Thérèse opened the paper, she saw that her prayer had been answered, as Pranzini was pictured seizing a crucifix from a nearby priest and kissing the sacred wounds of Christ. 

Remembering, praying for and safeguarding souls emerged as the thematic through line of the spiritual sojourn that commenced Feb. 4 at the Notre-Dame de Montligeon Sanctuary in La-Chapelle-Montligeon. 

Both clerical and lay members of the group learned about this place’s unique mission to pray for the deliverance of souls in purgatory — especially the forgotten — every day. 

Fr. Efren Alvarez Pelayo, currently in residence at St. Norbert Parish in Toronto, hailed the basilica’s purposefulness and organization, and said it was a comfort to him as his aunt passed away the night before the departure flight from Toronto. 

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“Going to this place became really unique for me,” said Pelayo. “It was about learning how grieving is an opportunity for hope and an opportunity to keep moving as opposed to becoming debilitated and disabled.”

A designated prayer display for miscarried little souls at the sanctuary was touching, and the importance of praying for children who pass away in the womb or early into their earthly life was reinforced the following day in Alençon during a visit to the home where Thérèse lived for the first four years of her life. Pilgrims learned how her parents, Louis and Zellie Martin, lost four of their nine children in infancy. 

Visiting the Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey atop the rocky tidal island called St. Michael’s Mount on Feb. 7 aligned with the overall theme as praying to the archangel is viewed as a way to safeguard one’s soul from Satan, who seeks the ruin of souls. During a private Mass in the Church of Saint-Pierre on the island, the pilgrims uttered the prayer to St. Michael. They also listened to a reading of Revelation 12, the scriptural passage detailing how Michael and his angels cast Satan and his followers from the heavenly realm. 

Visiting Juno Beach, where many Canadians sacrificed their lives on D-Day — June 6, 1944 — weightily underscored the need to remember brave, deceased souls. The visit resonated deeply with Fr. David Wynen, the rector of the Cathedral Basilica of Christ the King in Hamilton, Ont.

“I was very moved by Juno Beach,” said Wynen. “I wasn't sure what to expect. Especially the phrase ‘they walk with you’ because that says so much to us about the communion of saints. They walk with us, and even though we're separated by death, the bond of love is never destroyed.”

For the pilgrims, the final day in Lisieux was illuminating, as they learned how Thérèse became a vessel of love who prayed for everyone she knew and didn't know to be welcomed into the heavenly paradise. They visited Les Buissonnets, the childhood home of Thérèse and her family after they moved from Alençon after Zellie’s passing, and where she lived for 11 years before entering the convent (closed to the public the day the pilgrims visited) at age 15. And the group also walked the same path Thérèse took to attend Mass at the Saint-Pierre Cathedral, a Norman Gothic architectural feat first established nearly 1,000 years ago. 

The city tour culminated in a visit to the Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse, which broke ground in 1929, four years after the canonization, and was completed in 1954. Art gracing the pillars, walls and ceiling showed Thérèse as an intercessor standing beside Christ. 

Thérèse wants to help answer intentions. She once famously said, “I will spend my Heaven doing good on Earth. I will let fall a shower of roses.”

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Yes, she gazed upward toward the sky, but truly she was always peering beyond.

Or, in other words, as the Thérèse sanctuary’s director general of Communication and Pastoral Development, Olivier Valentin, extemporaneously exclaimed to this reporter, “the sky is not the limit!”