St. Louis Martin

Louis Joseph Stanislaus Martin was born in Bordeaux (France) on August 22, 1823, the son of an officer of Norman origin. After his studies, attracted by religious life, in 1843 he asked to be admitted among the Canons Regular of the Hospitaller Congregation of the Great Saint Bernard, but his request was not accepted.

Having opened a goldsmith's and watchmaker's shop in Alençon, he met and married Maria Azelia Guérin (Zélie) on 13 July 1858, who ran a small lace business; to help his wife in business, he abandoned his business in 1870.

Nine children were born from the marriage, four of whom, however, died very early: Maria Elena (1864-1870); Maria Giuseppe Luigi (1866-1867); Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Battista (1867-1868) and Maria Melania Teresa (1870). Of the five survivors, four – Maria Luisa (1860-1940), Maria Paolina (1861-1951), Maria Celina (1869-1959) and Maria Francesca Teresa (1873-1897) – entered the Carmel of Lisieux, one – Maria Leonia (1863-1941) – entered the Visitandines of Caen.

Louis, collaborating with Zélie, educated his daughters with his life of piety and faith and with his work. An active member of the nocturnal adoration, of the Conference of St. Vincent de Paul and of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, he created in the family an atmosphere of charity, apostolic zeal and total abandonment to the will of God, being considered by all as an upright Christian.

In 1877, following the death of his wife, the family moved to Lisieux, taking up residence in the residence called “Buissonnets”, where Louis was able to dedicate himself completely to the education of his daughters, whom he generously offered to God, in an atmosphere of exceptional contemplative prayer. It is in fact known that he suffered in particular for the vocation of his youngest daughter Therese, whom he nevertheless supported without delay, happy to support her request for admission to religion with the Bishop of Bayeux and taking his daughter with him to Rome in 1887, where Therese obtained permission to enter the Carmel at the age of fifteen from Pope Leo XIII himself.

Struck by paralysis on the left side of his body in 1887 and by other attacks in 1888, he did not hesitate for a moment to offer himself as a victim to Our Lady of Alençon, considering himself too happy with the gifts with which God had wanted to favor him. Shortly after, however, humiliating and painful signs of impressionability, melancholy, lack of memory and presence of self began to manifest themselves in him, with temporary mental disturbances, interspersed with some fairly long periods of total serenity, in which his abandonment in God, his charity and his zeal emerged.

On February 12, 1889, he was admitted to the “Good Shepherd” nursing home in Caen, where he said he was well, grateful to God for the trial, happy to be able to carry out his apostolate; in fact, he worked very well there, edifying everyone. Having left the nursing home in May 1892, although completely paralyzed, he was taken for the last time to the Carmel of Lisieux, where he responded to his daughters’ “goodbye” with a “in heaven” full of faith, the virtue he demonstrated most in the fairly frequent periods of interior freedom and full conscience.

Louis Martin died on July 29, 1894 in the castle of “La Musse” (Arnières, near Evreux), where he had been taken to spend the summer, assisted by his daughter Maria Celina. The fame of sanctity of him and his wife grew to the point of pushing for the opening of their Cause of Beatification and Canonization.

St. Marie-Azélie (Zélie) Guérin

Marie Azélie Guérin (Zélie) was born on December 23, 1831 in Saint-Denis-sur-Sarthon, not far from Alençon (Orne, France), into an excellent Christian family. She studied with excellent results at the Sisters of the Adoration of the Most Holy Hearts of Picpus in Alençon and attracted – following the example of her sister Sister Marie Dositea, a Visitandine in Le Mans – by the ideal of full consecration to the Lord, she asked to be admitted among the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, but received a negative response. Believing that it was God's will to be called to marriage, she asked the Lord to have many children and that all be consecrated to Him.

On July 13, 1858, she married Louis Martin in Alençon, where she had moved in 1853 to manage a small lace company, a job in which she was considered an artist. Her wish for a large pregnancy was fulfilled with the birth of nine children, four of whom, however, almost immediately ascended to heaven, and among them two males.

The five surviving daughters were the object of Zélie's strong, delicate and personal education, as is evident from the "Story of a Soul" of her youngest daughter, Therese, in which one can appreciate the pedagogical action of a woman of profound faith and great human realism.

This is also vividly evident in the Correspondance familiale , his rich epistolary. Addressed to his family members, who kept them as relics, these letters constitute one of the most valid modern expressions for tracing the lines of a spirituality in which the sacrament of marriage finds all the fruitfulness of grace that is proper to it, in the concrete context of a rich and exuberant nature, dominated in all respects by faith, hope and charity, a stimulus for a generous gift of oneself to all, especially to the poorest.

In a context of work, family and social concerns (the Franco-Prussian War of 1870), with a life often marked by hardship and health problems, shaken by the illness and death of four of her children, Zélie's spiritual experience manifests itself with characteristics of sweetness-strength, of full abandonment to the will of God, of courageous and unwavering fidelity to her duties. A faithful Franciscan tertiary and member of the Archconfraternity of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus, she used everything to live fully her conjugal and maternal asceticism, thanks to which, also helped by her husband, a true man of God, she managed to create in the family a serene and joyful environment, full of God and the sense of the Church.

Struck in 1876 by a cancerous tumor, of which she immediately learned the nature and severity, she tried to console and support her family, especially her young daughters. In June 1877, with her three eldest daughters, she went on a pilgrimage to Lourdes and instead of being healed she obtained the gift of a greater faith and an ever more complete abandonment to God. In the midst of her pain, sometimes terrible (the disease had spread throughout her body), she relied on God, invoking his infinite mercy, in which she had always trusted.

Zélie died a saintly death on August 28, 1877, after receiving the sacraments with the greatest piety, which deeply affected the five-year-old Thérèse. The fame of her and her husband's sanctity grew to the point of pushing for the opening of their Cause of Beatification and Canonization.

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