Hark! My lover – here he comes springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills. My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag…My lover speaks; he says to me, “Arise my beloved, my beautiful one, and come! For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth…” Song of Songs 2:8-12
Louis Martin wanted to be a monk but was turned away because he had not learned Latin. Azelie-Marie Guerin wanted to be a nun but was denied entrance due to respiratory trouble and recurring headaches. God had other plans for the young handsome watchmaker and the pretty lacemaker. Zelie was passing Louis on a bridge one night and heard a holy inner voice telling her that this was the man God wanted her to marry. Zelie’s aunt was able to introduce them in 1858. Both prayerful people, they fell deeply in love, and were married three months later. They lived in Alencon, France.
Zelie became so successful in lacemaking that Louis gave up his trade as a watchmaker and became a partner with his beloved wife in her business. It was unusual in their time for the husband to give up his trade to take on the business of his wife, but they made it work. Together they had nine children, but their love was not without great suffering. Only five daughters lived beyond infancy. The Martins lost two little boys before they saw their first birthday, and two girls died in 1870, one who was five and one who was just seven weeks old.
While the Martin family did not have money worries, they chose to live a simple lifestyle. They helped the poor and prayed together as a family every day. Zelie’s letters reveal what great joy both she and Louis found in their daughters. Still, they also show what sorrow they felt when losing a child. She wrote to her sister-in-law, “When I closed the eyes of my dear little children and buried them, I felt sorrow through and through… People said to me, ‘It would have been better never to have had them.’ I couldn’t stand such language. My children were not lost forever; life is short and full of miseries, and we shall find our little ones again up above.” Zelie and Louis trusted God’s plan always.
The youngest Martin child is probably the best known. She is St. Therese of the Child Jesus, also known as The Little Flower or St. Therese of Lisieux. The latter name applies because when Therese was only four years old, her mother died of breast cancer. Louis then sold the lacemaking business and the home in Alencon and moved the family to Lisieux. He did this so that one of Zelie’s sisters could help care for his girls. He loved Alencon and had many friends there, but he always put the needs of his children first. From Lisieux, one by one, his five daughters chose to enter religious life.
In his final years, Louis developed dementia and was placed in a caring asylum. He saw, in his lucid moments, the humiliation of his disease as a blessing, bringing him closer to the Lord. He never stopped praying and placing his life in God’s loving hands.
In 2015, Pope Francis canonized Zelie and Louis together, saying, “The holy spouses Louis Martin and Azelie-Marie Guerin practiced Christian service in the family, creating day by day an environment of faith and love which nurtured the vocations of their daughters, among whom was Saint Therese of the Child Jesus.”
Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin are today’s Ornament of Grace.
OBSERVING THE BEAUTIFUL ORNAMENTS
How can you, by example, help to teach children about the love of Jesus for them?
What are some ways that you and your spouse or you and a friend can share your faith in God each day?
