The sister who nursed St. Thérèse waits to give evidence on oath

LISIEUX, September 3, 1910 AD — Sister Geneviève of St Teresa is Céline Martin, the fourth of the five Martin daughters and the sister nearest in age to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. She entered this monastery on September 14, 1894 AD, six years behind her sister, and brought a camera in with her. Two other sisters appear below: Mother Agnès of Jesus — Pauline Martin — who wrote down day by day what St. Thérèse said in her last months, and Léonie Martin, who was outside these walls.

St. Thérèse died in this house on the evening of September 30, 1897 AD, of tuberculosis, at twenty-four. The book made from her manuscripts, Histoire d’une âme (The Story of a Soul), went out from Lisieux the next year. The letters about her that the court must sift and classify come from every country in Europe and from many other parts of the world. On August 3, 1910 AD a diocesan court opened at Bayeux under Bishop Lemonnier of Bayeux and Lisieux. It hears witnesses one at a time, on oath, on four subjects: her life, her virtues, her reputation for holiness, and the miracles. A copy of everything it records goes to Rome, to the Sacred Congregation of Rites. It has started with the three Martin sisters of this Carmel, heard through August and September.

In three days, on September 6, the tribunal will have St. Thérèse’s coffin raised from the town cemetery to make sure the remains are preserved. It was meant to be private; the news is out, and hundreds are expected. Sister Geneviève received me in the parlour, through the grating.

The court has been sitting a month. Mother Agnès has been on the stand since the middle of August, and yesterday she handed the judges a copy of the notes she kept day by day at your sister’s bed. Your own turn is still to come. Before a witness may say a word she is put on oath. What will that bind you to?

The oath binds a witness, under grave obligation, to tell the truth and to leave nothing out. Excommunication is held in reserve, and the witness is bound to secrecy. The questions are not the judges’ own. Monsignor de Teil, the vice-postulator — the priest presenting the case for St. Thérèse — drew up a list of questions in April 1910 AD under those same four headings. Monsignor Dubosq, the promoter of the faith, puts his questions from that list. The sisters were told not to copy from a neighbour or talk their depositions over with one another.

Almost every face the world has of your sister is your work. What did she make of being photographed?

Forty-one of the forty-seven preserved photographs of St. Thérèse are hers. Shown one of them on May 20, 1897 AD, St. Thérèse said, smiling: “Yes, but… that is the envelope. When shall we see the letter?.. Oh! how I should like to see that letter!”

Take me back to July 8, 1897 AD, the day she was carried down to the infirmary. Your own cell was moved next door to it. What was that room, and what were the nights like?

Everyone in the house knew that sisters went down to the infirmary to die. A canopy of homespun cloth boxed the bed in to hold the heat through the night, and St. Thérèse, lying under it, looked up at that dark cloth. She was glad of the room. When they set her down in it she said: “I fear only one thing — that all this may change.”

“I slept in an adjoining cell and only left it for office hours and some care to be given to other patients,” Sister Geneviève said. St. Thérèse coughed for hours at a time, and the coughing gave her severe headaches. On August 27, 1897 AD she said: “I make this poor little Sister Geneviève spend sleepless nights!” The same day Mother Agnès complained, “You’ve taken nothing since this morning!”, and St. Thérèse answered: “Taken nothing! But I took two cups of milk; I’m stuffed.”

Mother Agnès was writing down what your sister said, several hundred sayings in all. You began a notebook of your own some weeks after her, and it is a much smaller thing. What went into it?

Léonie Martin asked her to write everything down. From July 21, 1897 AD Sister Geneviève kept a notebook of her own, and she kept in it only what she called “those that are completely personal to me” — dozens of sayings, against Mother Agnès’s several hundred.

One thing plainly. In those last weeks, when she could not pray, what did she say to you about God?

Her notebook keeps the answer, from August 16, 1897 AD, after a night of anguish. St. Thérèse said: “The demon is around me, I do not see it, but I feel it… it torments me, it holds me as with an iron fist […], he increases my pains so that I despair…And I cannot pray…”

The bishop and the tribunal will be standing at the graveside when the coffin comes up. What do you expect them to find?

St. Thérèse had already answered that question. She said nothing would be found of her but bones, and she refused to ask for more: “That would be to stray away from my little path of humility, and little souls must not find anything in me to be envied.”

On the eve of her death, Sister Geneviève asked her sister for a word of farewell. St. Thérèse said: “I have said all… all is accomplished!.. It is love alone that counts.”