Saints Louis and Zélie Martin

St. Louis Martin was born at Bordeaux on August 22, 1823 AD, the son of an army captain. In December 1830 AD his father retired and settled the family at Alençon, in Normandy. St. Louis trained as a watchmaker at Rennes, Strasbourg and Paris, and in those years he came to want to give his life to God.

He travelled, mostly on foot, to the monastery of the Great St Bernard in the Swiss Alps to ask to join its canons, but the Prior found that he had not finished his Latin. Back home at Alençon, he studied Latin and Greek for more than a year, until an illness stopped him. He came to see that his life was to be given to God in another way, and in 1850 AD he opened a watch and jewellery shop at Alençon.

St. Zélie Martin was born at Gandelain, near Alençon, on December 23, 1831 AD. Her father had been a soldier and was then serving in the gendarmerie. At about nineteen she asked to join the Daughters of Charity at Alençon, and she was refused. Believing that God was calling her to marriage instead, she asked Him for many children, all of them consecrated to Him.

In her own account, an inner voice told her on December 8, 1851 AD, at the end of a novena to the Immaculate Conception, to make Alençon lace. She then learned the trade and mastered point d'Alençon, the town's famous needle lace. By the end of 1853 AD she was a lace manufacturer at 36 rue Saint-Blaise, giving work to lacemakers who worked at home.

St. Louis kept his shop closed on Sundays and lived for about eight years as a settled bachelor, with no wish to marry, to his mother's dismay. His mother had learned lacemaking alongside St. Zélie, and she told St. Louis about the young lacemaker. In April 1858 AD St. Zélie passed him on the Saint-Léonard bridge over the Sarthe.

St. Zélie later recalled that as she passed him, an inner voice she took to be Our Lady's told her this was the man prepared for her. They married about three months later, at the town hall at ten at night on July 12, 1858 AD, and at midnight in the church of Notre-Dame. At first St. Zélie agreed to St. Louis's proposal that they live as brother and sister, until a better understanding of Christian marriage changed their choice.

Nine children were born to St. Louis and St. Zélie at Alençon, and four of them died very young. The five who lived were all daughters, and the youngest, St. Thérèse, was born on January 2, 1873 AD. Both sons died as babies: Joseph-Louis at five months, and Joseph-Jean-Baptiste on August 24, 1868 AD.

Their daughter Hélène, born in October 1864 AD, died in St. Zélie's arms on February 22, 1870 AD. St. Zélie dressed Hélène and laid her in the coffin, and would not let anyone else touch her. That autumn the baby Mélanie-Thérèse died too, on October 8, 1870 AD.

In 1876 AD St. Zélie was found to have breast cancer, and she understood at once how grave it was. In June 1877 AD, though she did not like pilgrimages, she went to Lourdes to ask Our Lady's mercy for herself and for her daughter, the Servant of God Léonie Martin, and took Marie and Pauline with her. She was not cured there, and the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints writes that she received a greater faith instead.

She died at Alençon on August 28, 1877 AD, with St. Louis and her younger brother, Isidore Guérin, beside her. The next day St. Louis took four-year-old St. Thérèse in his arms so she could kiss her mother for the last time.

From November 15, 1877 AD St. Louis lived with his five daughters at Les Buissonnets in Lisieux, to be near St. Zélie's brother, Isidore Guérin, and his wife. Pauline entered the Carmel of Lisieux on October 2, 1882 AD, the first of his daughters to enter the cloister. Marie followed her, and losing a second daughter was a hard blow for St. Louis.

He had barely recovered from an attack of paralysis that spring when, on Pentecost Sunday 1887 AD, fourteen-year-old St. Thérèse asked him in the garden for permission to enter the Carmel at fifteen. He gave it, and he took her to the Bishop of Bayeux and then to Rome, where she put her request to Pope Leo XIII. On April 9, 1888 AD she entered the Carmel, and at the cloister door St. Louis knelt with her and blessed her through his tears.

After more attacks in 1888 AD, on February 12, 1889 AD St. Louis took up his revolver to defend his daughters against attackers who did not exist. That day he was admitted to the Bon Sauveur, a psychiatric hospital at Caen, where he stayed until May 10, 1892 AD. There he refused the private room he was offered and shared his family's treats with the other patients.

Two days after he came home, completely paralysed, he was brought to the Carmel's visiting room and saw his three daughters who were nuns there for the last time. In July 1892 AD his daughter Céline and the Servant of God Léonie Martin rented a house in the rue Labbey at Lisieux and cared for him there. He died on the morning of July 29, 1894 AD at La Musse, the Guérins' château near Évreux, with Céline beside him.

St. Louis was buried at Lisieux, and on October 10, 1894 AD Isidore Guérin had the remains of St. Zélie and the four children who died young brought to lie in the same tomb. The Church examined each of them in a separate cause for beatification and canonization until Pope Paul VI joined the two causes into one in 1971 AD. Pope St. John Paul II declared them Venerable on March 26, 1994 AD.

They were beatified together at Lisieux on October 19, 2008 AD. On February 14, 2015 AD the cardinals and bishops who judge the causes of saints at Rome found that the healing of a premature baby at Valencia was a miracle obtained through their intercession. Pope Francis canonized them in St. Peter's Square on October 18, 2015 AD.