Saint Thérèse's sister Céline enters the Carmel weeks after their father's death

LISIEUX, Normandy, September 14, 1894 AD — Céline Martin crossed into the enclosure of the Carmel of Lisieux today, less than seven weeks after her father died. She is twenty-five. To get through that door she had turned down more than one offer of marriage. She is the fourth Martin daughter to enter this house, and from today she is Sister Marie of the Holy Face.

Two people could have kept her out, and both had said no. Canon Delatroëtte, the parish priest of Saint-Jacques, is this Carmel’s ecclesiastical superior: no woman is let into this house without his word. Sister Aimée de Jésus is one of the nuns whose votes decide who is admitted, and the formal objection she had lodged stood as a veto of its own, like his. Their ground was the same: the Rule caps the number of women this house may hold, and a fourth from one family was too many. On Céline’s side was the prioress — her own sister Pauline, Mother Agnes of Jesus — who wanted her in.

Inside the house, the youngest of the five had been asking God for this for years. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux is twenty-one, and has been a Carmelite here since she was fifteen. She wrote of that desire afterwards: “But one desire, the dearest of all, and for many reasons the most difficult, remained unfulfilled. It was to see Céline enter the Carmel of Lisieux.”

What had kept Céline in the world was her father. Saint Louis Martin was taken to the Bon Sauveur asylum at Caen in February 1889 AD, and Céline moved to Caen to be near him, allowed in to see him once a week. He came back to Lisieux in May 1892 AD completely paralysed, and his brother-in-law Isidore Guérin took him in; Céline ran that house and nursed him there for two years. On July 29 Céline was at his bedside when he died, reciting aloud over him the prayer “Jesus, Mary, Joseph”. Céline wrote to her sisters at the Carmel that her father’s eyes were full of life and gratitude. For an instant, she told them, Saint Louis Martin was the man he had been five years earlier.

His death left Céline free, and another man wanted her elsewhere. Father Almire Pichon of the Society of Jesus was the family’s old confessor. He was writing from Canada to ask Céline to take charge of the Bethany houses, a lay charitable foundation of his, instead of entering the Carmel. St. Thérèse was told of it in August, inside the enclosure. The news made her cry more than she had ever cried, and gave her violent headaches. Céline wrote to Father Pichon to ask what she should do. On August 20 he gave up his claim on her and told her to go into the convent: “Go and hide in the desert as quickly as possible, take your place among the victims that Jesus chose for himself. I do not doubt. I no longer hesitate. The will of God seems manifest to me.”

Céline then went to see Canon Delatroëtte. He was moved, and he gave his consent; Bishop Hugonin of Bayeux confirmed it without delay.

That left Sister Aimée de Jésus, and matters were getting worse. One day after Communion, St. Thérèse asked God for a sign: “Thou knowest, dear Jesus, how earnestly I have desired that the trials my Father endured should serve as his purgatory… Thou knowest how much opposed is Sister N. to Céline’s entering; if she withdraw her opposition, I shall regard it as an answer from Thee, and in this way I shall know that my Father went straight to Heaven.” The first person St. Thérèse met after her thanksgiving was Sister Aimée. Sister Aimée spoke of Céline’s entrance in tears and said she now wanted Céline in the house. With that, the entrance was set for September 14, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

Yesterday Céline carried the family’s statue of the Virgin of the Smile up to the monastery, where it was put in the antechamber of her sister’s cell. Mother Agnes also gave her permission to bring in her camera.

Her last nights in the world were bad. She had nightmares, and the habit suddenly revolted her: the dress out of another century, the veil wrapped round the head, the stiff way the nuns walked. She went in anyway: Mother Agnes opened the doors of the Carmel to her, and she went through them without hesitating. “All my temptations vanished,” Céline wrote; “the storm gave way to calm and the deepest serenity. I felt that at last I had found my place of rest.”

Then Mother Agnes took her to the cell she was to have. There St. Thérèse took her hand and pointed at a piece of paper laid on the pillow. It was a poem, and it ended: “Come to us! Come to us!” “What was my emotion,” Céline wrote, “when, approaching me to read this poem, I recognized dad’s handwriting… It was he who received me in this house where the love of Jesus had reserved a place… At this sight, waves of gratitude rushed into my heart, and tenderness caused tears to spring up which grief and anguish had not been able to make flow.”