Marie Baudouin-Croix - Leonie Martin: A Difficult Life

LONIE MARTIN

A DIFFICULT LIFE

LONIE MARTIN

A DIFFICULT LIFE

Marie Baudouin-Croix

Published 1993 by
Veritas Publications
78 Lower Abbey Street
Dublin 1
Ireland
www.veritas.ie

Reprinted 2004, 2013

French edition first published 1989 by
Les Editions du Cerf
29 bd Latour-Maubourg
France

Copyright Veritas Publications, 1993

ISBN 978 1 85390 281 9

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Translator: Mary Frances Mooney

Text editor: Tana Eils French

Cover design: Colette Dower

Photographs reproduced courtesy of Office Central de Lisieux
Printed in the Republic of Ireland by Gemini International, Dublin

Veritas books are printed on paper made from the wood pulp of managed forests. For every tree felled, at least one tree is planted, thereby renewing natural resources.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Many people will take up this book because of their interest in St Thrse of Lisieux. They will not be disappointed. This is a life of Lonie Martin, blood sister of St Thrse of Lisieux. The saint has inevitably overshadowed her older sister.

The well-loved book by Thrse was given quite an accurate title, Story of a Soul. It was an account of how God had graced her. Everything she recalled in this work was in a sense guided by this one aim: to celebrate Gods merciful love in her. When we read St Thrse we are certainly brought into her family, particularly in her childhood. We think that we know the Martin household, from which Thrse began her spiritual journey. But our knowledge of the family is really quite limited to what Thrse thought relevant; moreover, she was writing for those who knew all about her family.

In Thrses Story of a Soul and even in her correspondence, Lonie appears as a shadowy figure. This is understandable for she was not central to the task Thrse was given by her superiors, namely to write the story of Gods grace in herself. There was also a natural reticence to speak about her difficult sister. Lonie would today be described as a child with special needs: she seems to have had quite serious emotional problems, witnessed by violent outbursts; she would also seem to have had some learning problems. Her family did not know how to help this difficult child: they tried within their ability to assist her in many ways; they supported her; above all they loved her. Had she been living today Lonie would have the advantage of skilled help and special education. Her family naturally would not speak about her problems, except in intimate correspondence between their members. We are after all dealing with a closed bourgeois family in a provincial town in late nineteenth-century France.

The book opens out the Martin household and their cousins, the Gurins, whom most people know only from St Thrses Story of a Soul. The human side of the family does not really emerge in her autobiography. This book is a welcome corrective. For instance, it gives a fuller picture of the fathers illness and breakdown. We can thus understand more the pain, the worry and the embarrassment suffered by all the family, including Thrse. The story of Lonie is told from letters, to her and from her, and about her by other members of the family. Hers is a fascinating story, with an interest even independent of her canonised sister.

She tried religious life four times before she was finally professed as a Visitation Sister. There she achieved a high degree of holiness. From a most difficult childhood and adolescence she overcame her disabilities and reached a mature serenity when she finally achieved her goal of being a religious. This book tells of her struggles, her failures, her disappointments, her dogged perseverance. When we get beneath the language and culture of Thrse, we find that for all her charm, she was almost ruthless in her pursuit of holiness in her complete sacrifice to Gods merciful love. Lonie too has something of the hard steel that always lies just below the surface in Thrse. The reader will find Lonie a fascinating person in her own right, very different from her better-known sister.

This book by Marie Baudouin-Croix is to be strongly welcomed. It does not add to what has been available to specialist scholars, but it will be a revelation to so many admirers of St Thrse in the English-speaking world. I warmly compliment its author, the translator and the publishers for making this important book widely available. It is an ideal companion to the autobiography of St Thrse.

Christopher ODonnell OCarm

Milltown Institute

Dublin 6

15 August 1993

INTRODUCTION

Tell us about the Martin parents instead

It may seem strange to write a book about Lonie Martin, the least gifted of Thrses sisters. Many of the Martin familys contemporaries and, indeed, our own nicknamed Lonie, the third of the five sisters, the lame duck.

Those who have read Thrses Autobiography, and the General Correspondence between her and her family, may say, Tell us about the Martin parents instead. The exemplary lives of this Christian couple have earned the admiration of the world; and there are those who would like to see theirs recognised as a model marriage. Many families where spouses are in deep difficulty with each other, or with their children, would like the help of such an example of truly Christian parents. The gap of more than a century makes no difference: husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, face the same difficulties today as they did in the Martins time.

In the Court of Rome, however, the Informative Process for the Cause of the Martin parents is already studying their lives. On 10 October 1957 Mgr Pasquet, Bishop of Ses, signed an order for research into the writings of Zlie, St Thrses mother; on 22 March of the same year Mgr Jaquemin, Bishop of Bayeux, did the same for the Cause of Thrses father, Louis Martin. Thus their daughter, Cline Sr Genevive of the Holy Face, who lived in the Carmelite convent in Lisieux until 25 February 1959 had the joy of bearing witness to her parents exemplary lives.

Tell us about her Carmelite sisters instead

Those familiar with Thrses works may also protest, Tell us about her Carmelite sisters instead. They played the most important role in Thrses development; after all, she was only four-and-a-half when her mother died.

This is certainly true of Marie, the eldest of the Martin sisters. She was Thrses godmother; she prepared her for her First Holy Communion, and taught her in Les Buissonnets. We owe the Story of a Soul to Marie: after she had become Sr Marie of the Sacred Heart, she asked Thrse to write her memoirs, which became the Autobiographical Manuscript A. The Autobiographical Manuscript B, too, is due to Marie; it is simply a long letter which Marie asked her god-daughter to write in order to reveal to her elder sister the secrets which Jesus shared with Thrse.

Pauline Thrses little mother, whom she loved dearly also played an important role in her development; from the time of Paulines entry into the Carmelite convent in Lisieux, under the name of Sr Agnes of Jesus, Thrse wanted to follow in her sisters footsteps. Until Thrses death, her beloved Pauline gathered all of her sick little sisters sayings into the treasury which she gave us in the Last Conversations; she was, until her death in 1951, the herald of her little sisters glory.

This is true, too, of Cline. She was the last of the Martin girls to join the Carmelite Order: after M. Martins death, in 1894, she became Sr Genevieve. She died in 1959, and was buried, with Marie and Pauline, in the Carmelite chapel, beneath Thrses reliquary. Clines soul was the mirror of Thrses. Father Pichon, her spiritual director, said she had enough personality for four; she was called the thunder-child and the dauntless one; she was strong-willed, overflowing with life. She was also an artist; her deft paintbrush gave us portraits of Thrse and of the Holy Face which have been reproduced millions of times around the world.