By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Not only is it unusual for three members of the same immediate family to be canonized saints, but also for two of those members to fail to gain admission to the formal religious life, demonstrating that life outside a vowed institution needn’t discourage a heroic virtuous existence.
Moreover, “Their life is not some pious little prayer card. . . . They were a normal family, with lots of drama. . . . Their goal was Heaven,” a speaker told a session of the Institute of Catholic Theology (ICT) here on April 4, livestreamed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christina Strafaci said that French husband and wife Louis and Zelie Martin previously had unsuccessfully tried to join a monastery and a convent, then didn’t feel drawn to married life but noticed each other one day when walking across a small bridge in Alencon, France.
These two future saints were to be the parents of nine children, four of whom died very young, and one of whom, their last baby, became the canonized nun St. Therese of Lisieux. The five children who survived were all girls, who were to enter the convent.
Therese was declared a saint in 1925 by Pope Pius XI. Her parents became the first Catholic spouses with children who were canonized jointly, 90 years later, in 2015 by Pope Francis.
“The Church wasn’t saying that a household is holy all the time, or the children always well-behaved,” Strafaci said.
Strafaci holds a Masters of Theological Studies degree from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family and graduate degrees in French literature from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She teaches French at St. Mary’s High School in Phoenix.
Her ICT background information says Strafaci writes “about the mission of the domestic church in building a culture of life.”
Appearing through Skype on April 4, Strafaci noted problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic, with “a lot of people under one roof right now” because of stay-at-home orders.
St. Therese of Lisieux is probably better known than her parents, so Strafaci reviewed the elders’ lives, both before and after marriage.
Louis’ birth family “moved around a lot” because his father was an army captain, she said. He was “an avid reader” who loved the classics, and also was athletic, attracted to the outdoors, hiking and fishing. “He was both gentleman and mystic, and did not fail to impress,” she said.
He was turned away from entering a monastic community because he didn’t know Latin, Strafaci said, but after beginning to study the language, he stopped after a period of illness and studied watchmaking.
Louis worked hard and his watch business thrived, but, unlike other businesses in his town, he closed on Sundays, she said. He divided his time between prayer, work, and leisure, and began doing charity activity with the St. Vincent de Paul Society.
“For eight years Louis lived a pretty contented life as a bachelor. . . . He’s busy,” she said, and understood that God didn’t want him to be a monk or priest.
Marie Zelie Guerin had “a lively and cultivated spirit. . . . She had a great capacity for work,” Strafaci said, adding that her father was a retired military man while her mother was “pretty strict” and a bit cold.
Strafaci quoted Zelie saying, “My youth was sad. . . . I suffered a lot from the heart.”
Zelie did advanced studies at a convent and presented herself to an order of nuns for admission but was turned down, Strafaci said, adding that she wasn’t sure why, but perhaps because of her health.
The young woman learned to make Alencon lace, whose design was rich and beautiful but “very tedious” to create, Strafaci said. She was so successful at the work that she set up her own shop.
Both Louis’ watchmaking and Zelie’s lacemaking were “very detail-oriented,” requiring “patience and humility” to do this every day, she said, “giving their best” and “constantly abandoning themselves” to God — qualities they would bring into their married life.
Zelie said, “My only desire is to be a saint,” Strafaci said.
“Remember, initially they weren’t drawn to married life. . . . They didn’t quite know” God’s plan for them, she said.
As the couple passed each other on the small bridge, Zelie heard a voice, which she later thought was the Blessed Mother’s, saying, “This is he whom I have prepared for you,” Strafaci said. Louis noticed the young woman as well.
They were married in 1858, when the Blessed Mother was appearing to Bernadette Soubirous, another future saint, in Lourdes, France, she said.
Zelie signed her letters to Louis, “Your wife who loves you more than her life,” Strafaci said, adding that Zelie asked the Lord for many children, in order to dedicate them to Him.
“We lived only for” the children, Zelie said, Strafaci recounted.
The morning started with daily Mass at 5:30, and the family went to markets and fairs and had parties, while “Louis was very good” at doing imitations, she said, adding that the children were raised in “a school of prayer,” learning how important it was to be in a relationship with Jesus.
They went to Confession as a family, and sometimes took the homeless under their roof, she said. They also “knew a lot of suffering,” but offered it to God.
On one hard day, Zelie said, “I love children madly,” but “if this continues, I will be dead by this evening,” Strafaci said, adding that for them, being a saint meant being holy “in the vocation that God has chosen for you.”
This didn’t mean that the girls didn’t misbehave, or that the parents didn’t have problems with them, but the household didn’t tolerate selfishness or stubbornness, she said.
As a small child the future St. Therese would have rages and roll about on the floor, she said.
Zelie said it’s best to put everything in God’s hands. When some people said it would have been better if Zelie’s young children who died would never have been born, Zelie said she wouldn’t tolerate that kind of talk, Strafaci said. She looked forward to seeing them again in Heaven.
“They rested in the knowledge that accepting the Lord’s will was better than resisting it or being angry at it,” she said.
By this point Zelie had 15 women working in their own homes for her lacemaking business, so she was running a home, raising children, and engaged in the lace enterprise, she said.
Doctors “eventually discover breast cancer,” Strafaci said, and Zelie suffered for several years, even going to Lourdes in hope of a cure, but she was resigned to death and leaving her husband and children if that was her fate.
Born in December 1831, she died in August 1877.
Louis becomes “a widower with five daughters” who sells Zelie’s business, moves from Alencon to Lisieux, goes to daily Mass, establishes night adoration at his parish, and thanks the Lord for the honor of all his daughters’ religious vocations, Strafaci said.
He eventually develops dementia and leg paralysis and enters a mental hospital where, during some “moments of lucidity,” he tries to evangelize others there, she said, before he returns home and later dies, in 1894.
The Martins “were very conscious of who they were called to be on Earth,” she said, but also for eternity.
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