A Family of Saints: Part Two
By Cara E. Ruegg
In his treatise on the beatification and canonization of the servants of God, Pope Benedict XIV said: “In order to be heroic a Christian virtue must enable its owner to perform virtuous actions with uncommon promptitude, ease, and pleasure, from supernatural motives and without human reasoning, with self-abnegation and full control over his natural inclinations.” Such heroic virtue can be seen in the Martin family, especially as Zélie Martin neared her death.
Louis Martin made countless sacrifices for his wife, one of these was letting go of his own business as a watchmaker to better help her in the running of her lacemaking business. On April, 1870, he sold his jewelry shop as well as their home in Rue du Pont Neuf to his nephew, M. Adolphe Leriche, and searched for a new home more suited to his wife’s desires. She wanted a large garden for her children to be able to play in. Because of the war going on at that time, such a move proved impossible. However, it did not stop Louis Martin from his search.
In July, 1871, Louis Martin and his family migrated to the parish of Notre-Dame and settled at a house off of Saint Blaise street.There was a garden, and while it may not have been the ideal garden Zélie had in mind, it was spacious enough to include a shed, a lumber room, and an alcove where Thérèse was wont to count her sacrifices. While the home was modest for a large family, it would prove to be the marking place for a legend, for it would be here that St. Thérèse would be born.
Once, a friend told Zélie that, "No doubt, God saw that you could never manage to bring up so many children, and so He took four to Paradise.” Zélie answered her, “I do not see the matter in that light . . . God is Master, and He has not to ask my permission. On the other hand, up till now I have borne the fatigues of motherhood very well, trusting to His providence. Moreover, what would you have? We are not on this earth to enjoy great pleasure. Those who look to do so are highly mistaken, and it is notorious that they are disappointed in their hopes.” So many in this current age, especially if faced with similar circumstances as Zélie was with her declining health and her age, would have likely gone out of their way to prevent a pregnancy. Zélie, on the other hand, was still undoubtedly and courageously open to life.
Her openness and generous spirit did not go unnoticed by God. Sure enough, she fell pregnant with Thérèse, the final jewel to crown her motherly head. Zélie noticed there was something special about this child of hers even when she was just in the womb. In a letter to her sister-in-law, Zélie recounted back to when she was pregnant with Thérèse and wrote: “While I was carrying her, I noticed something that never happened with my other children – when I sang, she would sing with me.…I’m confiding this to you. No one would believe it.”
Hell, likewise, may have been aware of this. There is an interesting event that took place during her pregnancy. Zélie was finishing up a book about the diabolical troubles the saints suffered. She told herself, “Such outrages will not happen with me. Only saints need fear them!” At that moment, she felt a heavy weight on her shoulder. She was terrified, but prayed and quickly regained her calm.
On January 2, 1873 this “little winter flower”, as Marie-Françoise-Thérèse would call herself, was born. Zélie repeated the prayer she said for every newborn child of hers, a prayer quite similar to others that saintly mothers had said before her, “Lord, grant me the grace that she may be consecrated to You, and that nothing may ever come to tarnish the purity of her soul. If ever she is to lose it, I prefer that You take her at once.”
The news had hardly been sung abroad, when a young boy knocked on the door of the Martin home and handed them a letter. In it was written a seemingly prophetic piece of poetry:
"Smile, grow up with speed.
All summons thee to joy;
Gentle care, tender love.
Yes, smile at the dawn, bud just unclosed,
Thou shalt be a rose some day."
It was a kind gesture from a man whose family the Martins had welcomed with open arms when he had found himself faced with poverty. The Martins fed them and searched for work for the impoverished father. In turn, he expressed his gratitude at the birth of the Martin’s winter rose.
Thérèse quickly became the treasure of the family. Zélie once wrote, “I believe I love her more than all the others, doubtless because she is the youngest…And my husband adores her . . . It is unbelievable all the sacrifices he makes for her by day and by night.” Her elder sisters likewise devoured her with love. In a letter to Pauline, Marie speaks of how full of admiration she is for her little sister, and how Thérèse has become so used to constantly being caressed that she now seems almost indifferent to it.
Alas, Zélie Martin’s health was assuredly deteriorating. She triumphed over her fatigue and feverish symptoms for as long as she was able in order to do her duties as wife and mother, which led to Mère Agnès describing her as "self-sacrifice personified.”
It likely helped that her mind was always on the Divine. ”Oh, talk to me of the mysteries of that world where in desire I dwell already;” she once wrote, “in the bosom of which, my soul wearied with the shadows of earth longs to bury itself. Speak to me of Him who has created it and fills it with Himself, and who alone can fill the immense void which He has created in me.”
However, likewise, scruples and temptations arose. Zélie began to worry that her business in lace-making was hindering her journey to perfection. She wrote about how it wasn’t a desire to amass more money that she continued in the business, but that she had five children she wished to see settled in life. At the same time, she announced that she was “longing for rest”, and felt the need to abandon the “worries of the world” to better recollect and work on her salvation. The longing she once had to join the convent resurfaced, and she confided, “This morning at Mass I could not pray, and told myself that were I a Visitandine I should be strictly obliged to pray…” And again: "I am doing nothing but dream of cloister and solitude…really I do not know why, with the ideas I have, it was not my vocation either to remain unmarried or shut myself up in a convent. I should like now to live to be very old, so as to retire into solitude when all my children are brought up.”
Zélie’s failing health was invoking a lot of worry in her husband. He urged her to see a doctor in Alençon. She obeyed. The visit did not offer her any consolation, however. The doctor diagnosed it as a “fibrous tumor”, but likewise gave no hope, discouraging surgery after discourse with Zélie who likewise didn’t want to go through it, since it would prove ineffective. Upon returning home, she gave the news to her family, except for Pauline who had not returned home yet from boarding school. She writes of this to her Sister in law, saying, “I regret it now because it was a grief-filled scene…everyone was crying…”
Louis Martin did not give up hope though. He was inconsolable at the thought of losing his beloved wife, as she attests, making note of his loss of interest in hobbies he once loved, saying, “It’s as if he’s shattered”. Louis continued to consult others, hoping to find someone with a differing, more hopeful view than the doctor Zélie had seen. Zélie writes of this to her sister in law. She also tells her not to worry and to resign herself to God’s will, saying, “If He found me useful on earth, certainly He wouldn’t permit me to have this illness because I’ve prayed so much that He not take me from this world as long as I’m necessary to my children.” And then she asks her if she would take her children into her home if they had the misfortune of likewise losing their father.
In her letters, she continues to make light of her sufferings, and even goes so far as to inform her brother that she is fasting since “You know that it’s a period of fasting, and I’m fasting because I’m not sick enough to exempt myself.” She likewise consoles and uplifts her loved ones. In a letter to Louis, she endearingly tells him, “I’m only happy when I’m with you, my dear Louis.” and likewise tells him not to worry and that she intends to visit Lourdes to ask for a cure. Throughout, however, one can see this heroic resignation to God’s holy will. Upon reflecting on her daughter, Leonie’s message to Zélie’s sister, Sister Marie-Dosithée, where she expresses a desire to enter the religious life, Zélie confides that, due to her daughter’s temperament, she would need a miracle, but that such words console her and “if it only took the sacrifice of my life for her to become a saint, I would give it willingly.”
As Zélie was approaching her end, so was her sister. Zélie neglected to tell her the news since it seemed pointless to trouble her with that when she was likewise nearing death. However, she beseeched her to bring messages to heaven, jokingly saying to her: “As soon as you are in Paradise, go and find Our Lady and tell her, "My good Mother, you played a trick on my sister when you gave her that poor Léonie; that was not the sort of child she asked you for, and you must mend the matter.”
Sister Marie-Dosithée died on February 24, 1877. She was filled with such confidence toward her end that she said to her superior, “Oh, Mother, I can only love and trust and surrender myself. Help me to thank God for it.” Zélie felt this loss keenly, but did not lose confidence in her sister’s likely salvation and attributed many things to her intercession. One of these revolved around Leonie, who was, more than any of her other children, the reason Zélie wished to stay alive since Leonie was by nature much more behaviorally problematic. Shortly after her sister’s death, the reason for Leonie’s misbehavior toward her parents became apparent. Zélie found out that the maid had apparently been underhandedly disciplining Leonie, invoking in her intense fear to obey, and also telling her that she would be punished if she obeyed her parents. Zélie was angry at this finding and immediately dealt with the maid.
Even though battling with illness, Zélie began all over to instruct Leonie and mend the emotional wounds that were inflicted on her by the maid. She and Louis dealt with her in a very gentle manner, to the point that some criticized their parenting, but Zélie kept true the maxim she held and expressed in one of her letters: “Brutality never reformed anyone; it only makes slaves, and that is what has happened to this poor child.” Slowly but surely, Leonie began to amend her ways and follow in line with her other pious sisters.
Zélie did go on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, but it did not bring about the cure that was desired. It actually made her illness progressively worse. Being the good mother that she was, she attributes a lot of her trials during the trip to having to care for her children, prioritizing their pains of hunger, fatigue and sore feet. However, Zélie said, “I don’t regret having gone to Lourdes, although the fatigue has made me sicker. At least I won’t blame myself for anything if I’m not cured. Meanwhile, let us hope.”
As the days went by, the pain intensified. Zélie still tried to go to Mass, even when in so much pain she was at a risk of screaming out during it. Soon, her terrible condition got the better of her. In one of her last letters to her brother, August 16, 1877, she writes, “I can’t write any longer, my strength is at an end…What can you do? If the Blessed Mother doesn’t cure me it’s because my time is at an end…”
On August 25, 1877, Louis found himself spending his feast day kneeling anxiously at the bedside of his wife who had had a hemorrhage. The next day, he fetched a priest, who administered extreme unction. Thérèse, though still very young, recalls the memory very vividly. “I still see the spot where they made me kneel. I still hear our poor father's sobs.” On August 28, 1877, Zélie gave up her spirit. Her last glance before death, however, did not fall on her husband or any of her children, but on her sister in law. “I believed I understood that look, which nothing can ever make me forget,” recounted Mme. Guérin to St. Thérèse, “Ever since that day, I have endeavored to replace her whom God has taken from you but, alas! nothing can replace such a mother…Ah, my little Thérèse, the truth is that your parents are of those who may be called saints, and who deserve to beget saints.”
Mme. Guérin’s words would prove to be true. Thérèse may never have become the saint she did if not born into the saintly family that she was. Even though Zélie Martin died before most children are reckoned to reach the age of reason, God granted Thérèse the gift to remember her vividly who, like the Virgin Mary, did not stop her motherly care over the children she left behind in the vale of tears, but continued to shower her blessings on her garden of saints.
Sources:
"Heroic Virtue - Encyclopedia Volume - Catholic Encyclopedia." Catholic Online. Accessed May 14, 2018. https://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=5724.
Piat, Rev. Fr. Stephane-Joseph. The Story of a Family: The Home of St. Thérèse of Lisieux
Martin, Zélie. A Call to a Deeper Love: The Family Correspondence of the Parents of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, 1864-1885
ST PAULS / Alba House. Kindle Edition.
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