Blessed Zelie and Louis Martin
By Louise Medeiros
In 1850 at the age
of twenty-seven, Mr. Louis Martin set up shop as a watchmaker and jeweler.
Then in 1858 he
married Zelie Guerin who bore him two sons and seven daughters. Unfortunately, four of those children
died in infancy.
Their family was
devoted to the Blessed Virgin, as she was the patron saint of France. A statue of the Virgin Mary always
presided over the family prayers.
One of their
daughters (Leonie), who was born in 1863, was a special needs child and had
serious emotional problems. They
tried to assist her in many ways by supporting her but most of all they loved
her. When she was born they were
concerned about her health. She
was very weak and had a chronic cough, but Mr. Martin knew that God sends only
what one can bear and, being a devout Christian, went on a pilgrimage to Our
Lady of Sees on foot to pray for the health of his frail youngest daughter.
In 1871 the Martin
family moved to a house that the Guerin grandparents had bought. Mr. Martin gave his watch making and
jewelry shop to his nephew in order to help his wife with her lace-making
business.
Mrs. Martin, who
had been constantly suffering with a sore throat, was diagnosed with breast
cancer in 1875. She was overburdened
with work in her lace-making business and more and more weakened by her
illness; she could not pay constant attention to her troubled child. Her husband was heavily involved in the
commercial side of the business and travelled often to Paris.
Sadly, all parents
suffer, as do their children’s upbringing, from their lack of availability in
the home.
In January of 1877,
Zelie visited her sister, Sister Marie-Dosithee, in the Visitation convent and
found her quite ill. She told her
sister “as soon as you are in Paradise go and find the Blessed Virgin and say
to her ‘my dear Mother, you played quite a trick on my sister (Zelie) when you
sent her poor Leonie; that is not
the kind of child she asked for! You must sort that out’.” Sister
Marie-Dosithee died February 24, 1877.
Mrs. Martin, who
was in increasing pain from her cancer, decided to go on a pilgrimage to
Lourdes with her three eldest daughters.
“If the Blessed Virgin doesn’t cure me I shall implore her to cure my
child [Leonie] to develop her mind and to make her a saint.” Zelie was not cured but she returned
from Lourdes at peace, confident that after her death God would take care of
her children, the youngest of whom, Therese, was only four-and-a-half years
old.
On August 28, 1877
in the early hours of the day, Zelie Martin died. She was forty-six years old. In the morning a tearful Mr. Martin, surrounded by his
daughters, took four-and-a-half year old Therese in his arms and brought her to
her mother’s deathbed. Later in
“The Story of a Soul” Therese would write: “Without a word I touched my lips to my beloved mother’s
forehead!”
In November of that
year, Mr. Guerin (Zelie’s brother) brought his nieces from Alencon to live at
Les Buissonnets, a lovely villa surrounded by a garden in the hills of Lisieux,
to be near Zelie’s family. Mr.
Martin stayed behind in Alencon to settle his business.
In February of 1889
one of the Martin family’s greatest trials began in a fresh attack of Mr. Martin’s
illness (amnesia.) He was
committed to the Bon-Sauveur asylum in Caen where he would spend more than
three years. In 1892 Mr. Martin
was now nearly sixty-nine years old and both of his legs had become
paralyzed. There was therefore no
longer any danger that he would wander away; and so on May 10, 1892 Mr. Guerin
brought him from Caen to Lisieux to live with him and his wife and also Celine
and Leonie.
Two days after his
return to Lisieux he was brought to the Carmelite visiting room. It was to be his last meeting with his
three Carmelite daughters. As he
left them he raised his eyes to the sky, pointed upwards and said tearfully,
“Until we meet in heaven.”
Mr. Martin was
severely disabled and spoke very little.
Sometimes he gave way to terrible outbursts of tears. His daughters Celine and Leonie pushed
his wheelchair around the little garden and made every effort to make him
happy.
Mr. Martin had
suffered several setbacks that left him weaker and weaker and worried those
around him.
On July 28, 1894
Mr. Martin had another heart attack and the next day, a Sunday, his daughter
Celine was alone with him.
Suddenly he opened his eyes and looked at her with great tenderness;
then he closed them forever.
Peacefully, he went
to meet the God whom he loved and the loved ones who had gone before him, in
Eternity. He was seventy-one years
old. A telegram was sent to the
Carmelites at once and Celine wrote to them “Papa is in heaven. I heard his last breath; I closed his
eyes. His beautiful face took on an expression of bliss, of the deepest calm.”
Zelie and Louis
Martin’s was a closed bourgeois family in a provincial town in the late
nineteenth century. The exemplary
lives of this Christian couple have earned them the admiration of the world. Theirs
was a model marriage. Families face the same problems today as the Martins did
more than a century ago.
The family’s
devotion to the Blessed Virgin and their love for Jesus and one another
certainly brought them peace in their lives. It would definitely be worth
bringing that kind of devotion into our lives; perhaps the world would see
peace as they did.
Many families with
deep difficulties with each other or with their children seek the intercession
of these holy persons.
In the Court of Rome
the Informative Process for the Cause of the Martin parents is already studying
their lives.
NOTE: Their union produced four Carmelite nuns
and one nun in the Visitandine Order.
Saint Therese of Lisieux was their youngest child.
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