STS. LOUIS & ZÉLIE MARTIN: HOLINESS, MARRIAGE, AND ENDURANCE
There can still be found in the French countryside not only isolated rocks of religious enthusiasm but also, as it were, great alluvial deposits, scarcely covered with sand, wherein the convictions of their forbears endure and only need a turn of the ploughshare to bring them to light. The middle-class people of Alençon were practicing Catholics. At Corpus Christi, they hung flags outside their houses, and officials regarded it as an honour to carry the canopy at the procession; the men went to the high Mass every Sunday, and most of them fulfilled their obligations at Easter. But Christians of the quality of the Martins were certainly rarer, and they were a cause of inverted scandal.
Louis Martin the Clock-maker
Martin’s father came from Athis in the department of the Orne. He fought in Napoleon’s wars and stopped on in the army after Waterloo, often changing his station. That is how the third of his children, Louis, came to be born at Bordeaux in 1824. When Captain Martin retired, he settled down at Alençon, not far from his birthplace, because it was convenient for his children’s education. He was as good a Christian as he was a soldier and never trifled about duty; everything had to be exact, and he would allow no deviation from rules. This piety that he passed on to Louis may well be called military, and with it went a soldierly bearing that his son never lost.
Louis was a tall upstanding fellow, always looking straight before him; at twenty, he was the handsomest young man in the place. But he was never a soldier. He went to some cousins at Rennes, and there he adopted Breton dress and became a clock-maker, perfecting himself under a friend of his father at Strasbourg.
When he was twenty, he set out for the Alps, traveling partly on foot and partly by stage-coach, half tourist and half pilgrim, until he came to the snow-clad solitude of the Austin canons in their monastery on the Great St. Bernard. He did not know enough Latin to be accepted there; so, with his father’s approval, he decided to take up serious studies. They were stopped by sickness.
Then, disappointed but resigned to disappointment, he went back to clock-making and, after a short residence in Paris, opened a small shop at Alençon. It was in the rue du Pont Neuf, a few yards from the river. The name Martin can still be seen on the signboard, surrounded by watches and clocks and rings and necklaces, for later he added a jewellery business to his trade. Here he lived a bachelor’s life until he was thirty-five.
People did not know what to make of this monkish watch-maker. He was good-looking, with a full well-kept beard, reticent in manner, educated; he never went outside his shop without putting on a frock coat and bowler hat. As he went about the street, he did not look at women, even out of the corner of his eye, and seemed to think as little about getting married as he did about recreation. When he found a man drunk in the gutter, he would help him up and lead him home.
He was at Mass every morning, and his house was a meeting-place for several devout old men, who discussed with him the best way of helping the needy. This haunter of churches was so well thought of by everybody that he quite upset the accepted opinion that a man “given to good works” must necessarily be sour in disposition or a hypocrite. It must be added, to place him exactly, that he was a keen angler.
Zélie Guérin the Lace-maker
At this same time, there lived in the house in the rue a certain Mademoiselle Zélie Guérin, together with her old father (a retired police officer), her brother Isidore, and a sister. She was a local girl and had been to school at the Adoration convent. An irresistible sympathy for human sufferings had prompted her to seek admission among the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, but the superior of the Hotel-Dieu had refused her. Where Louis Martin had failed, so Zélie Guérin failed, too.
Guérin had very little money, so Zélie became a lace-maker. Thenceforward she could be seen at her window, putting together squares of point d’Alençon or making charming designs on paper for the discharge of the orders that came in such marvellous numbers. She wrapped herself in contemplation, and God was always with her. She mused on the possibility of serving Him more fully by marrying a husband who would be no less concerned for his glory, and bringing many children into the world who should be consecrated to his service.
Meeting on St. Leonard’s Bridge
These two craftsmen, the clock-maker and the lace-maker, lived in different parishes, and their families were not acquainted. The two did not know one another. They waited. How they met one fine day on St. Leonard’s bridge, like Joachim and Anne at the Golden Gate; how he made way for her, and she passed him; how they looked at one another; how Zélie recognized unerringly that this was the companion intended for her by God: all this is a secret that Heaven has kept well.
We only know that there was mutual understanding and delight, that the families met, and that the two were married. Louis Martin was careful for his own maidenhood and believed that it was his wife’s wish, too, to shelter hers under the fine veil of a purely spiritual union; and there is documentary evidence that they lived together for a year as brother and sister, like St. Valerian with St. Cecilia. This awesome and superhuman paradox might have subsisted their whole lifetime, but Thérèse would not have been born, and it would seem that, in the plan of divine providence, this marriage had no other object.
Zélie told her husband that she wanted children, that he and she should found a family of saints in accordance with his own desire. Her wishes were fulfilled: of her nine children, four went to God between the ages of six months and six years; the other five all became nuns.
For their first christening-name, all were called after our Lady, and there were successively Mary Louisa, Mary Pauline, Mary Léonie, Mary Helen, Mary Joseph Louis and Mary Joseph John Baptist, Mary Céline, Mary Melania Thérèse, and lastly she who was to be Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Helen, Melania, and those longed-for sons, the two Josephs, who they had hoped would be missionaries, died in childhood. Of the surviving daughters, Mary Louisa, who by privilege of the firstborn was called simply Mary, was not quite fourteen when the youngest, Thérèse, was born.
Faithful Endurance
Zélie Guérin’s practical aptitude was as keen as her faith, and her lace-making business, which she had continued to carry on, became so prosperous that, in 1870, her husband gave up his own shop in order to help her with the increasing work; as his father was dead, there was nothing to keep him in the rue Pont Neuf. Meanwhile, war had broken out, and they underwent the miseries of the German invasion; had it not been checked, his age would not have prevented Louis from serving with the volunteers. His father-in-law also being dead, he inherited the house in the rue Saint-Blaise, and the family settled down there, where they lived for seven years. So we come back to the birthplace of the saint.
After the death of Mary Helen, when she was five and a half, Mme. Martin’s sister, a Visitation nun at Le Mans, wrote to her with innocent simplicity: I can’t help thinking that you’re privileged to give these chosen ones to Heaven, where they will be your joy and your crown. And one day your unfailing trust and faith will have a tremendous reward . . . You may be sure that God will bless you, and the consolations that are now withheld will be the measure of your bliss. For if our good Lord is so pleased with you that He sends you the great saint that you have wanted so much to honor Him with, won’t you be well repaid?
Msgr. Laveille, one of the best writers about Thérèse, compares these words with those that Mme. Martin herself wrote to her sister-in-law at Lisieux when she had suffered a similar bereavement: When I have to close the eyes of my dear little children and follow their bodies to the grave, of course I am utterly miserable, but my sorrow has always been resigned. And I don’t regret the trouble and care that they have been to me.
Everybody says, “It would be much better if you’d never had them.” I can’t bear such talk. It doesn’t seem to me that pain and difficulties can be put into the balance against my children’s eternal happiness.
That letter shows the quality of Zélie Martin’s faith. It is alleged that she often received graces out of the ordinary, so sensitive was her spirit — foreknowledge, supernatural advice, and enlightenment. And all the time she nursed her idea of giving a “great saint” to the world.
The two elder girls went to school at their aunt’s convent in Le Mans. The third, Léonie, was delicate and a source of worry. Céline began to walk. Little Mary Melania died. There was no sign of the long-desired, perhaps promised, saint. Then, in 1872, another pregnancy raised fresh hopes, and again a daughter came to fill the empty cradle. She was born on January 3, 1873, when Mary and Pauline were home for the new-year holiday. Their mother’s suffering kept them awake, until at midnight M. Martin tapped at their door and told them that they had a baby sister.
Next day, Mary Frances Thérèse Martin was christened in the church of our Lady. It is the most beautiful church in Alençon, with a triple gothic porch, strong and delicate, a very garden of carved stone: this was her doorway into the world of grace. The font whereat she received the spirit of God is in the first chapel on the south side. Her eldest sister, Mary, was godmother, but the name Thérèse prevailed over the others.
The Death of Madame Martin
Towards the end of 1876, an old growth in her breast returns. Discovered too late, the cancer is inoperable. Despite the disappointment over a pilgrimage to Lourdes that brings no improvement for her health nor relief from the intolerable suffering she endured, Zélie maintains confidence in God through all her trials and encourages her family, and above all her husband: “I want you to not torment yourself too much [over my death]; I want you to resign yourself to the will of God.” At half past midnight on Tuesday, August 28th, 1877, she dies in Alençon. Louis is left with five children: Marie, Pauline, Léonie, Céline, and Thérèse, who is four and a half years old.
The Move to Lisieux
Louis consults with his elder daughters: “I ask your advice, my children, as it’s only for you that I make this sacrifice, I wouldn’t wish to impose one on you,” and, without thinking of himself, he decided to move to Lisieux to live close to the family of his brother-in-law, Isidore Guérin, and thus to ensure a better future for his children. Life at the Buissonnets, the new house in Lisieux, is more austere and withdrawn than at Alençon. But the most admirable work of this father, an exemplary educator, is the offering to God of all his daughters and then of himself. In his unshakable submission to the will of God, like Abraham, he places no obstacle to these vocations and considers the offering of his children to the Lord as a very special grace granted to his family. Shortly after the entry of Thérèse into the Carmel of Lisieux, during a visit to the parlour of the monastery, Louis tells his daughters that at the Church of Notre-Dame of Alençon (May 1888), as he was reconsidering his life, he had said: ‘My God, I am too happy. It’s not possible to go to Heaven like that. I want to suffer something for you.” “And,” said he, “I offered myself.” Louis doesn’t dare pronounce the word “victim,” but his daughters understand this. This confidence really strikes Thérèse, who, several years later, offered herself as a victim to the Merciful Love of God (June 9, 1895).
The Death of Monsieur Martin
The last years of the life of the patriarch, as he is affectionately called by those close to him, are marked by several health problems. He knows the humiliation of illness: a cerebral arteriosclerosis with a long hospitalization at the Bon Sauveur in Caen in 1889, where he filled those around him with admiration and respect. One day Louis said to the doctor, “I have always been accustomed to commanding, and I see myself reduced to obeying: it’s hard. But I know why the good God has given me this trial: I had never had any humiliation in my life, I needed one.” Returning to Lisieux in May 1892, from then on paralyzed and almost unable to speak, he dies peacefully at 8:15 a.m. on Sunday, July 29, 1894, at the château of his brother-in-law Isidore Guérin, near Evreux.
The Reputation for Holiness Of Louis and Zélie Martin
Louis and Zélie’s reputation for holiness is already strong during their lifetime and immediately after their death, but that did not go beyond the family circle or the close friends who knew them well. The publication of Story of a Soul, the autobiography of Thérèse, contributes to making that reputation known everywhere in the world. Their processes of beatification are called for by bishops, priests and the ordinary faithful of the entire world from 1925 on. But the opening of their processes have to wait many years. Finally, Mgr. Andre Jacquemin, Bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux, announces the opening of the process concerning the virtues of Louis Martin on March 22, 1957. Shortly after, on October 10th, 1957, Mgr. Pasquet, Bishop of Sées, the diocese where Zélie died, opens a similar procedure. The two Causes are adopted by the Office of the Postulator General of the Discalced Carmelites. Sister Geneviève of the Holy-Face (Céline), last living daughter of the Martins, has the joy of testifying at the Process of her parents. She declares: “My father was a ‘personality’; my mother was a ‘personality’; each one had a unique disposition. Neither one nor the other was non-descript. Different temperaments, but perfectly well-matched, each one completing, in perfect harmony, the deficiencies of the other, always corrected by virtue. When my sister, Mother Agnès of Jesus, and I were speaking together of our pious parents, we agreed that each was every bit the equal of the other in meriting the honors of the altar.”
The two Processes concerning the virtues were sent to Rome in 1959 and 1960 to be discussed by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. On March 17, 1971, by decree of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the Causes of Louis and Zélie Martin were sent to the Historical Office for lack of witnesses de visu. In the meantime, Pope Paul VI, for the first time in the history of the Church, decides that the two Causes went hand in hand, as it is a question of two spouses. On March 26, 1994, John Paul II, declares the individual heroic virtues of the Martin spouses. They were beatified on 19 October 2008 by José Saraiva Cardinal Martins, the legate of Pope Benedict XVI in the Basilica of Saint Thérèse, Lisieux. On 18 October 2015, Louis and Azélie-Marie Martin were canonized as saints by Pope Francis.
(This article compiled by Fr Regan D’Souza OCD, is adapted from The Truth About Therese, by Henri Gheon and the Biographical Profile of the Venerable Servants of God, from the Office of the Postulator General of the Discalced Carmelites)