Saint Louis Martin

Louis Martin lived many peaceful years at that humble work, before the whole world came to know him as the holy father of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus.

Yet that father’s life would meet turns that the watchmaker’s skilled hands could never repair:

• a gentle wife taken far too soon by a cruel illness;
• one beloved daughter after another leaving home for the four walls of an enclosed convent;
• and finally, a harsh stroke that struck at his very memory and body.

Through all those stormy seasons, Louis Martin’s fatherly love kept shining. Sometimes it showed in the steady protection he gave as head of the family; sometimes in the humility with which he accepted the care of others, when his body had broken down.

He tried to study more Latin, but his health would not allow it, and that door closed. Louis went back to his old trade, went to Paris to complete his training, and in 1850 opened a watchmaking and jewelry shop on the rue du Pont-Neuf in the town of Alençon.

Louis did not become a monk on a snowy mountaintop, but his longing for holiness did not dry up. It soaked into every careful hour of work, into absolute honesty in business, into firmly closing his shop on Sundays even though he lost quite a few customers, into his morning and evening prayers, his solitary fishing trips in the countryside, and a generous heart open to the poor. His shop prospered. He was the kind of man who could grow wealthy honestly and stay free inside, never letting money take hold of his heart.

Two people whose dream of religious life seemed to have come to nothing now met at a new crossroads. Their love blossomed quickly and grew in deep mutual respect. They were married in the church of Notre-Dame in Alençon at midnight, as the day turned to July 13, 1858, just three months after their first meeting on that bridge.

Louis was calm, composed and fond of silence; Zélie was quick, resourceful and given to worry. Their differences did not drive them apart; they complemented each other beautifully. Seeing his wife’s lace business growing strongly, in 1870 Louis generously sold his own watchmaking shop to take charge of the accounts, the dealings and the management of his wife’s lace workshop. It was no small decision for a man of that time, when being the family’s breadwinner was usually seen as a husband’s particular honor. Their home had the heartbeat of a real working family: talk of orders, paying the workers, everyday budgeting, woven together with fervent family prayer.

Nine children were born one after another. But four of them — two boys and two girls — died very young. The five daughters who lived to adulthood were Marie, Pauline, Léonie, Céline and the youngest, Thérèse.

Each time a little child was lost, the father’s heart broke. Louis and Zélie brought that grief to God in prayer and surrendered it to Him, and went on pouring all their love into caring for the children who remained.

The Martin family had serious discipline, but the house was always full of laughter, songs, fishing outings and games the father made up for his children. Louis called his daughters by loving nicknames: Marie was his “diamond”, Pauline his “precious pearl”, Céline “the brave one”, and Thérèse his “little queen”. Behind the dignified head of the household was a deeply tender, warm father’s heart, where his children could always lay their heads when they were sad.

That love spilled out beyond the gate. Louis often took his children to visit lonely old people, and helped the beggars they met in the street with his own hands. He taught his children to pray with hands that knew how to open and share a crust of bread with the poor, not only with prayers learned by heart.

The house suddenly became empty and cold. The gentle wife who had shared every joy and hardship was gone. To give his motherless daughters a better home, Louis bravely moved the whole family from Alençon to the town of Lisieux, renting a peaceful house called Les Buissonnets on a small hill, near the family of his brother-in-law Isidore Guérin, so that the girls would have the support of their uncle and aunt.

That was the wisdom and humility of a father who knew his own limits. He did not strain to prove he could carry everything alone, but opened his heart to the help of his relatives so that his children could grow up whole.

At Les Buissonnets, the older daughters took their mother’s place caring for the younger ones, while Louis remained the steady support of the whole household. He kept a devout rhythm of life, walked with little Thérèse every day, and taught her to gaze at the beauty of creation. Evenings by the lake and fields of wildflowers became her first lessons in a loving God, through the very beauty He had made.

Then the holy partings came.

• Pauline entered the Carmelite convent in 1882;
• Marie followed in 1886;
• and then the youngest, Thérèse, pleaded to enter in 1888 when she was only fifteen — an age at which, under the usual rule of the order, she was not yet eligible.

Léonie had many emotional difficulties, a troubled temperament and several failed attempts at religious life, yet Louis never scolded or belittled her. Each time she failed and came home, he opened his arms wide to welcome her back, without a word of reproach. His children’s weaknesses never lessened his love.

The man who had once been courteous and refined, master of a whole business and respected by the whole town, now had to stay in a psychiatric ward for more than three long years. It was a painful and humiliating cross for the family. His daughters had to endure cruel gossip and looks of pity or mockery, in an age when mental illness was still seen as a shame to be hidden, not yet understood as an illness needing treatment.

In May 1892, he was brought back to Lisieux. Céline and Léonie, with their relatives, cared devotedly for their father, at every meal and through every night. His legs were completely paralyzed, and he depended on others for everything. The very man who had once spread his arms to shelter a whole household now had to learn to let others spread their arms to shelter him.

For fathers and husbands in Vietnamese families today, Saint Louis Martin is a companion close at hand. He teaches us

• to respect and support our wives’ work;
• to play with and be friends to our children;
• to open our doors wide to help those in need;
• and to accept hardships, illness and old age in peaceful surrender.