St. Zélie Martin

After celebrating St. Monica as a valiant mother here a few weeks ago, let’s look at the life of another “Mother Saint”—St. Zélie Martin, mother of the Little Flower. In addition to raising her daughters and running the household, St. Zelie made Alençon lace, a trade which required patience, attention to detail, and love. She brought these same qualities to every task in life. When sorrows and crosses appeared, and there were many, she heroically turned them into victories which bore such beautiful fruit in the form of her daughters’ vocations. Zélie’s childhood was not the happiest. She was born in Normandy, France in 1831. Her parents were good Catholics who raised their children in the Faith and saw to it that they received a good education, but they were both quite strict and never showed their affection to Zélie and her sister and brother. When Zélie was old enough she wanted to join the Sisters of Charity, but she was denied, probably due to her poor health—chronic headaches and respiratory problems. Her sister, Marie Louise, later became a Visitation Sister, and her brother Isidore studied medicine and got a job as a pharmacist in Lisieux.

If she could not become a religious herself, Zélie prayed that she could marry and raise her children to be priests and religious. She went to a school to learn to make Alençon lace, an extremely delicate and complicated type of lace. (It took seven hours to complete a piece the size of a postage stamp!) She started her own business and soon had saved enough money for a dowry which would allow her to marry. In 1858, the same year that Our Lady appeared to St. Bernadette in Lourdes, she met and married Louis Martin, a successful master watchmaker. Like Zélie, he had been denied entrance to a religious community and so he, too, cherished the hope of a family of nuns and priests.

Every morning Zélie and Louis attended the workers’ Mass at 5:30 in the morning and they frequently received Communion during the week, an uncommon practice at the time. Then they would return to their home and their respective employments. Zélie’s lace-making business was a successful one, and she even employed fifteen other women who would bring her their completed bits of lace every week for her to stitch together. Her business was so successful that eventually Louis closed his shop to help with the running of Zélie’s lace business.

Soon their lives were blessed with children. The first four born were Marie Louise (who was always called simply “Marie”), Marie Pauline, Marie Léonie, and Marie Hélène. Pauline and Léonie caused their mother great concern due to their poor health, but in time they both grew stronger. By the time Hélène was born, Zélie’s own health was beginning to decline and she was unable to nurse her baby. They found a suitable wet nurse, but she lived five miles away from the Martin home. Zélie was devastated that not only would she be unable to experience the sweetness of nursing her own child, but that her baby would not even be living in her own home until she was weaned. Zélie walked every day to visit her daughter, little knowing that this would become the routine with all of her children from then on. It’s interesting to note that while wet nurses and sending one’s children away were common practice at the time, to Zélie they were a reluctant last-resort.

 
Of the next five children Zélie bore, only two survived, Marie Céline and Marie Francoise Thérèse. Two little boys and one little girl died in infancy. Then, shortly after Céline was born, Hélène died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of five. Zélie took some comfort knowing that these children were all now in Heaven, but their deaths were some of the most difficult crosses she ever had to bear. She held her daughters closer, and prayed all the more fervently for them to become saints and to follow their brothers and sisters to Heaven.

Zélie took great care in teaching her daughters to pray and training them in virtue. She and Louis were excellent models of generosity and self-denial, often performing works of mercy and acts of charity for those less fortunate. In The Story of a Soul, St. Thérèse credits her mother and father with correcting her pride: “With tendencies like these, had I not been brought up by such wonderful parents, I am quite sure I should have got from bad to worse and probably ended up by losing my soul.” Léonie was an especially difficult child to raise. She had a rebellious nature and was not as sweet-tempered or gifted as her sisters. She was expelled from school four times. But with the constantly loving correction by her parents, as well as the encouragement from her sisters, she softened over time and eventually found her place in life as a Visitandine nun. (Léonie may even become the next Saint in the Martin family, as there is currently a cause open for her beatification and canonization!)

In 1876, Zélie finally consulted a doctor about a painful swelling in her breast. It was cancer. An operation had almost no chance of success, and medicinal remedies would have been of no use to her. For the next year, as the disease continued to worsen and affect other parts of her body, Zélie suffered greatly, but in spite of all of the pain, she still observed all the rigidity of the Lenten fast, went to daily morning Mass, and continued to cheerfully fulfill her duties as a wife and mother. She made a pilgrimage to Lourdes with her three older daughters, braving the difficulties of the journey in hopes of a cure. Though her daughters were greatly disappointed that she was not cured, Zélie herself found great comfort in Our Lady’s promise to St. Bernadette: “I cannot promise to make you happy in this world, but in the next.” Zélie meditated often on these words during the next few months, her final months in this world.

Zélie died on August 28, 1877, only 45 years old. Her youngest daughter Thérèse was only four and a half years old. Louis had the difficult task of raising his five daughters alone, though the older girls acted as new “mamas” for Céline and Thérèse. He lived to see four of them fulfill their mother’s dearest wish and consecrate their lives to God. Céline joined her three sisters in the Carmel after their father joined their mother in Heaven.

St. Zélie is a shining example of valiant womanhood. She was a model wife and mother, and even though her children did not start out as perfect angels, she patiently and lovingly raised them to be saints. She was a working mother, who was able to find the balance between her work and family duties, always finding time for her husband and daughters, and more especially, for her Faith. She carried her crosses of illness, pain, and bereavement without hesitation or complaint, knowing that it was all for her sanctification. May she intercede for us that we may imitate her virtues!

St. Zélie, pray for us!