What were your reactions to this? I'm curious because I was fairly neutral about the idea of relics, but some people I have talked to before and since have expressed a fair degree of antipathy to the whole concept.

I found this article interesting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/14/relics-saint-therese

In particular, the quote from the auxiliary Bishop of Westminster:

"I find it very curious, because it isn't really a 21st-century thing," he admits. "But what I find so engaging about this is St Thérèse herself, who is extraordinary because she was so ordinary. She was 24 years old when she died, having spent her whole adult life in a convent; she didn't have much of an education, wasn't an intellect, wasn't a great organiser or reformer. She simply did the little things of life – which we all have to deal with – very well. And her simplicity has caught the imagination of any number of people."

That summed up an aspect of it nicely I thought. While I didn't really come to it with anything like a deep sense of awe at the presence of the relics, I felt that the proximity of something historic and physical like that did give something of a sense of continuity of our Universal Church. There is something inspiring in the story of someone like Thérèse becoming so well-known, rather than her life just passing by relatively unnoticed.