Helene Mongin - The Extraordinary Parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux: Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin

The Extraordinary Parents of St. Thrse of Lisieux

Sts. Louis and Zlie Martin

By Hlne Mongin

Translated by Marsha Daigle-Williamson, Ph.D.

Nihil Obstat

Paris, September 13, 2008

M. Dupuy

Imprimatur

Paris, September 13, 2008

M. Vidal

Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the BibleSecond Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ditions de lEmmanuel, 2008, 2015

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Published 2015.

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ISBN: 978-1-61278-964-4 (Inventory No. T1728)

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Cover design: Lindsey Riesen

Cover art: Office Central de Lisieux, Carmel de Lisieux, Lisieux sanctuary

Interior design: Dianne Nelson

P RINTED IN THE U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA

To Jean-Paul and Morina,
Stphane and Julie,
Patrick and Josphine,
the Martins of tomorrow

Table of Contents

We, the Ordinary People

God calls some people and sets them apart. But there are people he leaves in the crowd, those that he does not withdraw from the world.

These are people who do ordinary work, who have an ordinary family, or who are ordinary single people. These are people with ordinary sicknesses and ordinary sorrows. They live in ordinary houses and wear ordinary clothes. They are people with ordinary livespeople that we meet on any street.

As people on ordinary streets, we believe with our whole hearts that the street, the world that God has placed us in, is the place of our holiness.

It doesnt matter what work we do, whether we are holding a broom or a pen, speaking or being silent, repairing things or giving a lecture, taking care of a sick person, or typing on a computer.

All of that is only the shell of a splendid realitythe encounter of the soul with God, renewed each moment, growing in grace each minute, always becoming lovelier for God.

Is the doorbell ringing? Quick, lets open the door. God is coming to love us. Need information? Here it is. God is coming to love us. Is it time to eat? Lets sit down to eat because God is coming to love us.

Lets let him do it.

Madeleine Delbrl
We, the Ordinary People of the Streets
(Nous autres, gens des rues [1971])

Abbreviations

CF Louis et Zlie Martin, Correspondance familiale, 1863-1885, Editions du Cerf, 2004.

HF Father Stphane-Joseph Piat, O.F.M., Histoire dune famille, Tequi, 1997.

LT Lettres de Thrse de LEnfant-Jsus

PN Posies de Thrse de LEnfant-Jsus

(The numbering of the letters and the poems is from the centenary edition of Oeuvres compltes published in 1992.)

Preface

Since their beatification on October 19, 2008, Louis and Zlie Martin, the parents of Thrse of Lisieux, are becoming known for their originality and authenticity. We are struck by their vitality, their modernity, and their dynamism. They are connected to us by their life experience: their youth, their growth as a couple, their joy at the birth of children, their relationship with their children, changes within the family, sickness, the death of a spouseall of it the antithesis of any idealized image.

More and more people are discovering about them what their daughter Thrse so rightly described about people in heaven: The Blessed have great compassion for our sufferings; they remember that being fragile and mortal like us, they made the same mistakes and fought the same battles, and their fraternal tenderness toward us becomes even greater than it was on earth. That is why they do not stop protecting us and praying for us.

In this book, Hlne Mongin gives us a new, affectionate, and intensive look at the Martins. We can perhaps imagine that one of the Martin daughters would have liked to speak to us this way about her parents. An enthusiastic Hlne has let Thrses parents into her life after having been enthralled with their daughter. She guides us now to a relationship with Louis and Zlie, to loving them, to giving them a place in our lives and invites us to follow them.

Monsignor Bernard Lagoutte
Rector Emeritus
Shrine of Lisieux

LT 263, August 10, 1897.

Introduction

The canonization of Louis and Zlie is a historic event because, for the first time in its history, the Church is canonizing a married couple together. And not just any couple. They are the parents of Thrse of the Child Jesus, the greatest saint in modern times, according to Pope Pius XI.

Louis and Zlie have not been canonized because of their daughter, however. She, of course, revealed their faces to her readers. And in other respects this saying of Christyou will know them by their fruits (see Mt 7:17-20)can be applied to Thrse and her parents, but her role ends there. It is the very holiness of Louis and Zlie themselves that the Church is recognizing in their prophetic holiness. Their example shows us in fact that holiness, far from being an ideal reserved for elite souls, consecrated souls, or martyrs, is a choice and a grace offered to everyone.

And so the Church wants to highlight a holy family in our age and offer a hopeful response to violent attacks on the nuclear family today.

Louis and Zlie, despite the century that separates us, had lives that are surprisingly similar to those of our contemporaries. Both of them were working while they raised their children, they were always busy, they knew the joys and sorrows of ordinary families, and they died of illnesses that are familiar to us: breast cancer for Zlie and arteriosclerosis for Louis, an illness that affected his brain and put him in a psychiatric hospital for three years. The holiness of the Martin spouses doesnt come from any events themselves but from the manner in which they lived. In every aspect of their lives they had only one source and one goal: Gods love. This heart orientation, far from making them unearthly, made their ordinary lives an adventure of love in which they raised up their family, their neighbors, their friends, their employees, and even the whole Church.

I hope that the reader will share the joy I had in studying the lives of Louis and Zlie. In doing so, I made use of several documents that I recommend to those who wish to know more about the Martin couple:

Correspondance familiale (1863-1885), [Family Correspondence from 1863 to 1885] (Paris: ditions du Cerf, 2004), which contains 217 letters from Zlie, most of which were sent to her brother and sister-in-law in Lisieux from 1863 until her death in 1877. She is the family letter writer since Louis didnt like to write. All through this period, its not surprising that she takes center stage in the story since the sources for her are much more abundant. These lively letters, written in a spirit of freedom and humor, allow us to know Zlie and her family intimately. In that same book there are fifteen letters by Louis, most of them written after the death of his wife, which show him to be a tender man of depth focused on God.