PRESS RELEASE
Venerable Louis and Zélie Martin
Parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux
to be beatified on Mission Sunday, October 19, 2008
The Venerable Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus
of the Holy Face, will be beatified on Mission Sunday, October 19, in the basilica
dedicated to their daughter at Lisieux in France. The first parents of a saint to
be beatified, they are the first spouses in the history of the Church to be proposed
for sainthood as a couple and the second to be beatified together.
Zélie and Louis are an inspiration to the families of today. Each owned a small
business and worked hard while raising a large family. In the 19th century this
two-career couple faced the challenges we face in the 21st: finding good child care;
achieving professional excellence; operating a profitable business; caring for aging
parents; educating a special-needs child; forming their children in the faith; finding
time to pray and to be active in their parish. Devout Catholics, they saw Christ in
the poor and worked for a just society. In 1877 Zélie died of breast cancer, leaving
Louis a single parent with five minor daughters to bring up. Later Louis was
diagnosed with cerebral arteriosclerosis and spent three years in a psychiatric
hospital.
Like us, Louis and Zélie could not control their circumstances. Life came at them
unexpectedly, just as it comes at us. They could not prevent their tragedies: the
Franco-Prussian war, when they had to house nine German soldiers; the infant deaths
of four of their nine children, one from abuse by a wet-nurse; their painful diseases;
Zélie’s premature death. Nor could they escape their responsibilities as business
owners, caregivers, spouses, and parents. Their genius lay in how they accepted what
happened to them: they accepted their own powerlessness, that God might be
all-powerful in their lives.
They taught the same radical openness to their youngest daughter, Thérèse, now a
doctor of the Church. Zélie and Louis were not declared “blessed” because of Thérèse.
She became a saint because of them. They created an environment that invited her to
holiness, and she responded freely to the invitation they offered her.
They offer the same invitation to us. We know many “married saints,” but most
canonized saints have not been married. In recognizing Louis and Zélie as a blessed
couple, the Church points to the mystery of the vocation of marriage, the way of life
in which most people are called to reach the common goal of all Christians: sainthood.
Engaged unreservedly in the responsibilities of daily life, Zélie and Louis became
saints in the fabric of their marriage. They epitomize the words of Pope John Paul
II: “Heroism must become daily, and the daily must become heroic.” They are the
heroes of the everyday.
Jose Cardinal Saraiva Martins will preside at the Beatification Mass at the Basilica
of Saint Thérèse in Lisieux on Mission Sunday, October 19.
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