Saints Louis and Zelie Martin: Real Love in Real Life
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St. Louis and Zelie Martin loved each other with the kind of devotion other people envy.
Even their ordinary letters closed with extraordinary affection:
"I embrace you with all my heart. I am so happy that today I will welcome you back home that I can hardly work for the joy of it. Your wife who loves you more than her own life!" -Zelie
"Your husband and true friend who loves you for life." -Louis
Yet the road to true love did not run smoothly for them.
Does this surprise you? I mean, they seem so perfect. Didn't they produce St. Therese, the perfect child? Didn't all four of their other daughters also become nuns and by all accounts, probable saints in their own right?
Yes. There is no question that they had what we all want, a happy holy family. I believe there will come a day when the entire family will have been canonized. You know what else? Materially they were well off—which is another thing you don't expect when it comes to saints. One look around their charming home in Lisieux and it's obvious that they lived the American Dream—except in French.
Inside is the cozy parlor is where the family gathered after supper for games and stories. It is just as they left it, the quality furniture, Therese's play tea set and dolls, the fine dress she wore on her First Communion day. The spacious yard is landscaped with peaceful pathways bordered by natural shrubbery. As you wind your way back towards the large brick house, you see that there is a cross over the door...
And then you know. All this joy we know they had was won through many trials.
To begin with, how would you like to spend your wedding day crying? That's what Zelie did. She had had her heart set on being a contemplative nun, like her sister. She knew it was not her calling but she wept like a waterfall anyway. Her plan—such a noble ideal—was not God's plan.
God had told her his plan, quite directly. On the day she first met Louis she heard a voice inside her say, "This is the one whom I have prepared for you!" It was Our Lady and it wasn't the first time she had spoken clearly to Zelie.
Three months later, Louis and Zelie were married. When you know, you know!
The wedding took place on July 13, 1858 at midnight. It was a Tuesday and few guests were present. They chose this kind of wedding so they could concentrate fully on the sacrament.
Then came the honeymoon... of sorts.
You know the expression—the honeymoon is over? Theirs was over before it even started. Zelie simply had no clue about marital intimacy—which was the case with lots of nice Catholic girls from sheltered homes. Most shy brides would find out for better or worse on their wedding night.
Most shy brides did not have a groom like Louis. He was as chaste as a monk and in fact, had spent time in a monastery. He figured they couldn't go wrong if they tried to imitate St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin, and lived as brother and sister. Children? Zelie wanted lots of them. So they took in a child whose mother had died.
Finally, after many months, Zelie's confessor set her straight.
Yes, contrary to popular prejudice, it was a celibate who told her that God had designed marital intimacy and sanctified it and blessed it with children.
Then the children came—nine of them in thirteen years. Later, Zelie would write a letter to her daughter Pauline saying that she and Louis had never known such joy.
"They were our happiness; and we would never have found happiness had it not been for them. To sum it up, everything came easy for us; the world ceased being a burden. For me, they were a huge compensation, and so I wanted to have many children, in order to nurture them for Heaven."
Everything was easy? So speaks a loving heart.
Childbearing was not easy; Zelie's health was bad. She had the beginnings of breast cancer which also meant she had to send her babies away from home to be fed by someone else. Imagine life as a new mother without your baby! Zelie had to trek out to the countryside every time she wanted to visit.
That was the least of it. Not one of the Martin's three boys survived infancy; one in fact died from the neglect of his nurse, a woman physically robust but simple-minded. Hardest of all was when the Martin's five-year-old girl, Helene, took sick and after only a day, died.
"Neither I nor my husband expected this sudden end. When he came in and saw his poor little daughter dead, he burst out sobbing, and crying, 'My little Hélène, My little Hélène!' Then we offered her to God together... Sometimes I imagine myself slipping away very gently, like my little Hélène. I assure you I scarcely cling to life since I lost that child."
In those days infant mortality was a common experience. That didn't make it any easier.
But Louis and Zelie lived on for their children and trusted God's plan for their lives.
They went into business together. Zelie's lace handiwork was the finest in France. She did the intricate work from home, supervising a number of assistants. Louis saw to the marketing and delivery of the product, selling to the high fashion houses of Paris.
They earned a comfortable income and purchased a stately home. There was even enough money for a housekeeper, which a working mom needs especially in the days before appliances that do the work for you. From the outside looking in they finally seemed to have it made.
...Except the housekeeper was abusing their child.
Leonie, the middle child between two sets of charming, intelligent, and obedient daughters, was inexplicably "a problem child." She did not obey. She didn't confide in her mother. She didn't even play. Zelie wrung her hands. What kind of child refuses to go out and play but stays in to do housework?! Well, the maid wanted help with the housework so she terrorized Leonie into obeying only her.
When the truth came out, it was like the floodgates opened.
Mother and daughter hugged and cried and Leonie didn't leave her side for hours. Zelie would have fired the maid on the spot but Louis allowed her to stay—fearing that she'd fall worse on the streets—on condition that she never speak to Leonie again. Zelie gave in, but it was one word and you're out.
The thing that gets me about the story of Saints Louis and Zelie is how real it is.
How unlike you might expect the lives of the saints to be. How much they endured, how much they prayed about, how they disagreed but stuck together anyway, trusting in the other's goodness and God's.
The charming home they left behind is the place where flesh and blood like ours worked out their salvation. They didn't know what God's plan was. They didn't know how things would turn out.
Five beautiful healthy daughters, all brides of Christ; Zelie's early death from cancer; Louis's long years as a single dad, and his final days with a form of dementia that made that gentle soul subject to violent outbursts. There was a veil over all of it.
But they never stopped cooperating with God's plan even when they didn't understand it. Because of this one virtue, Zelie's sister would foretell how it would all end.
"One day your faith and trust that never flinch will have a magnificent reward. Be sure that God will bless you, and that the measure of your sorrows will be that of the consolations reserved for you. For after all, if God is pleased with you and wills to give you the great saint you have so desired for His glory, will you not be well repaid?"
The great saint foretold was Therese, now a Doctor of the Church. Her little way of salvation simply consists in offering up everything—good and bad—for the love of God.
Is that not what she learned from her parents?
Not far from that gracious home in Lisieux is a basilica dedicated to the honor of these great married saints. Downstairs, their bones are interred together in a large shining reliquary. It is not like any coffin you've ever seen, which speak of nothing but death and finality.
On one side is a portrait of husband and wife. On the other is the whole family. It's like looking at a Christmas card! There's Mom, Dad, Marie, Pauline, Leonie, Celine, and Therese, and also the three baby boys—all named Joseph, and little Helene. They are together again and forever. Even the faithful dog, Tom, who once ran away from home and turned up at Therese's convent, is in the picture.
It is a portrait of a happy family, in a world where every tear is wiped away.
"You will soon find again those you mourn," wrote Zelie's sister. "Yes, your crown will be beautiful—very beautiful. Just now your heart is broken but by your acquiescence in all that God wills, there will come a fragrance which will delight the Heart of God!"
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