A Study on the Martin Family: The Home Life that Paved Way for Saints
By Cara E. Ruegg
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| Painting done by St. Therese's sister, Celine Martin |
The home of Zélie and Louis Martin was the soil which first benefited the saint we refer to so warmly as “the little flower”. It was there her roots grew strong enough to ensure a safe uprooting and replanting in the dessert soil of Carmel. It was there a religious vocation was first fostered, a deep and utterly sacrificial love of God that prompted her to respond with generosity and heroic virtue to her Beloved’s loving call even when it entailed the cross. It was from such loving and saintly unions between husband and wife, like that of Zélie and Louis Martin, that such soil was laid down and a God-centered family unit was born.
Both Zélie and Louis Martin gave God the first say and aspired after religious life; it was not to be God’s will, but nevertheless, they both laid their entire selves at His wounded feet and, even though their vocation ended up being to marriage, this sacrifice of themselves before their crucified God was not to be retracted.
Like her daughter, St. Therese, later would, Zélie likewise struggled with scruples and lack of confidence, the latter possibly due to a relatively harsh home environment with a mother who showed her little affection. However, Zélie's heritage was highly Catholic and they were often told of the tales of their great-uncle, Guillaume, a priest during the French Revolution. This very Catholic upbringing, even if at times too harsh, shaped Zélie into the beautiful and strong woman she would prove to be, in charge of her own lace-business, and a valiant mother to the future patroness of missionaries, who never shied from the cross of her King, even when it entailed an early departure from her beloved children.
At a relatively early age, likely prompted by a zeal to help the less fortunate and give herself wholly to God, Zélie attempted to enter the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. Much to her sadness, however, she was told by the superior that she did not have a vocation. In response to such an answer, she knelt before Our Lord and said this prophetic prayer: "Lord, since, unlike my sister, I am not worthy to be your bride, I will enter the married state in order to fulfil Your holy will. I beg of You to give me many children and to let them all be consecrated to You.” Besides the children that would die in early childhood, this prayer was answered very generously by God for all her living children would, in fact, become brides of Christ, a title Zélie herself so wished for.
Like Zélie, Louis Martin also aspired to the more perfect way, and attempted to enter the monastery of St. Bernard. While the Superior was highly impressed with his zeal, when he found out Louis lacked a proper classical education, particularly in the realm of Latin, he told him he could not enter. There is evidence that Louis Martin purchased textbooks during this time, likely to make up for his deficient education, but then the studies stopped, possibly due to sickness, which he took as a sign from God that he was not called to the religious life.
Having ruled out a religious vocation, Louis Martin set about learning the trade of watchmaking, while Zélie, faced with no dowry, placed her difficulties before the Virgin Mary and on December 8, 1851, she heard an interior voice say to her: "See to the making of Point d’Alençon.” It was there she studied at a lace-making school, where she would later hone a very meticulous talent that she would continue even when married.
Around this time, Zélie’s beloved sister, Marie-Louise, who likely suffered worse health than Zélie and who would have seemed at this time to be a less desirous candidate to the religious life due to her weak constitution that had previously been subject to signs of tuberculosis, went to the Visitation Convent of Le Mans and asked entrance. Despite all of the obvious setbacks, God obtained for her the miracle she desired, and she was accepted. This was a heavy cross to poor Zélie. When asked by her sister what she would do when she left, Zélie replied she would go away as well and she did in fact do so in three months time though, as she herself would put it: “not by the same road”.
This road Zélie was destined for was to begin when crossing the bridge of St. Leonard. While walking by, she saw Louis Martin whose appearance made a deep impression on her and she heard an interior locution that said to her: “This is he whom I have prepared for you.” Their courtship did not last long; in fact, it only lasted three months from the day of their first meeting, and on July 13, 1858, in the church or Notre Dame, they were wedded.
The couple did not immediately consummate their marriage, however. Louis Martin, wishing to imitate the celibate marriage of St. Joseph and Our Lady, made an agreement with Zélie to refrain from the marital act. Their love for the virginal likely fostered in their children the same admiration for such a life, made evident in the fact that five of the nine took the vow of celibacy in the religious life. This state was not to last, however. After ten months living celibately, the two were counseled by a priest to embrace their married vocation so that it would include the begetting of children for God, and they adhered to his advice.
These children they would have would become their joy and give them a beautiful purpose. However, despite the great love these parents held for their children, God remained always at the center and Zélie continued to yearn for little Isaacs, children she could sacrifice to God completely as religious. In particular, she desired a son that would become a missionary priest. She would have her older daughters pray to St. Joseph for this intention of hers every evening. Her prayer for a missionary was answered, though not at all in a way she likely expected it to be, just as her path to sanctity was not at all the path she had first wished to tread (the path of a religious Sister), but the path of wife and mother, an indirect path to God through her spouse and children, but the path God desired for her.
Even though they did not continue to imitate St. Joseph and Our Lady in their celibacy, Zélie and Louis Martin did try to imitate them in their paternal and maternal ways, in their God-centeredness, in their sanctity, in their love. Like St. Joseph, Louis remained quite contemplative by nature. And like Our Lady, Zélie’s heart was indeed the heart of a mother.
Of course, then, it would make sense that the two of them would hold a particular devotion toward St. Joseph and Our Lady, seen in the fact their children always bore the name of either Mary, if a girl, or Joseph, if a boy. This devotion was especially true for Zélie who took Mother Mary as her model and fostered quite a love for her. In a letter to her brother, Isidore, written January 1, 1863, she tells him to be sure to go to the church and say a Hail Mary, assuring him that this good mother would protect him. “What I’m saying to you is not exaggerated piety and unfounded on my part,” she wrote to him, “I have reason to have trust in the Blessed Mother, I’ve received favors from her that only I know.” This devotion to Mother Mary, likely fueled also by the newly proclaimed dogma on her Immaculate Conception in 1854, spread to the whole of her family.
Around April, 1865, it would seem, the first signs of the breast cancer which would eventually be the death of this generous, Mary-like mother began to emerge. In a letter written to her brother at this time, she told him of a “glandular swelling”, which made her anxious because it was proving painful and she noticed numbness. This hardship would not end just with her own death, however, but with the death of some of her children too who she could not nurse any longer due to her condition, and who she had to give up to wet nurses. It was not necessarily the latter which led to her children’s death, but such poorer living conditions, etc. may have proven detrimental to the children’s health.
One of these children, which would die at the home of another was her son Joseph, born September 20, 1866. Zélie was overjoyed with the birth of this little boy. She talked with loving warmth and enthusiasm about how beautiful his little hands were, and how lovely it would be when he goes to the altar to perform the sacrifice of the Mass with such hands. However, not long after, while at the home of the wet nurse, Zélie was urged to come for he had come down with a case of erysipelas. The danger was averted, but the child’s health continued to decline and on February 14, 1867, Zélie and Louis had to carry one of the heaviest crosses that could befall a parent: the death of a child.
Zélie and Louis responded with heroic resignation to God’s will in the face of such loss. However, not to say there was no anxiety or sorrow. Zélie told her sister, once, of a miracle she believed to have been wrought by the intercession of this very son she had lost — a cure of her daughter, Marie-Hélène’s earache, which had become so bad she was losing her hearing, and she said, “You see, my dear sister, it’s a very good thing to have little angels in Heaven, but it’s no less painful to lose them. These are the great sorrows of our life.”
And again, in a letter to her sister-in-law, written January 2, 1868, Zélie writes, “Yesterday I received news of my little Joseph…I’m longing to see him very much because I’m in constant fear ever since the tragedy of his little brother. However, I believe that God will leave this one with me.” This little one, however, would also succumb to illness and pass away. Zélie and Louis Martin were not to have their desired priest. Two other deaths would likewise follow: the death of Marie-Hélène on February 22, 1870 and Marie-Mélanie-Thérèse October 8, 1870.
However, despite Zélie’s longing to see her “four angels”, she did not want so soon to succumb to death for, as she said, “I would rather stay with the four who remain with me and, it seems to me, to whom I can still be useful.” This death would, however, come to this dear mother much too soon for her liking and the liking of her family, and would shake St. Therese to such an extent that, as she would write in her autobiography, “my naturally happy disposition completely changed.” However, despite this, as St. Therese also attested, God awoke her intelligence very early so, as she deemed it, she could remember with clarity beyond her years this good mother He had given her, once more attesting to Zélie’s saintly qualities.
On the continuation of this topic, I would like to expound on how this saintly mother and father impacted the lives of their likewise saintly children and how such a home life paved way for religious vocations, a home life which should be the ideal for every Catholic family. Until then, let us pause to contemplate their heroic resignation to God’s will as seen in their acceptance of a vocation to marriage that they did not initially aspire to; a resignation to His will seen even in their attitudes toward the death of their children; a resignation to Zélie’s illness. This ultimate detachment to their own wants, and attachment and desire for God’s will to triumph no matter what is what ultimately led to such wonderful fruit, the most wonderful fruit of all likely being St. Therese of Lisieux, who Pius X declares, “the greatest saint of modern times”.
Sources:
Mongin, Hélène, and Marsha Daigle-Williamson. The Extraordinary Parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux: Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2015.
Piat, Stéphane Joseph. The Story of a Family: The Home of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. North Carolina. Tan Books. 2015.
The Children of Louis and Zélie Martin. http://louiszeliemartin-alencon.fr/en/la-famille-martin/the-children-of-louis-and-zelie-martin/
Louis and Zélie choice. http://louiszeliemartin-alencon.fr/en/spiritualite-et-famille/louis-and-zelie-choice/
Martin, Zélie, and Louis Martin. A Call to a Deeper Love: The Family Correspondence of the Parents of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, 1863-1885. New York: Society of St. Paul, 2011. Kindle.
A Saint for Morden Times. Accessed April 03, 2018. http://www.thelittleflower.org/MODERN TIME.htm.
location David McClamrock, comp., THE STORY OF A SOUL (L'HISTOIRE D'UNE AME): THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ST. THERESE OF LISIEUX (London: Oates and Washbourne, 1912). Kindle location: 363
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