Canonization of a model couple
Louis and Zélie Martin won’t be canonized because they are the parents of St. Therese, of which Pope Pius X said she was “the greatest saint of modern times”.
They became saints because they made their ordinary lives something extraordinary.
This is what the process of beatification and canonization demonstrated, as well as detailed studies of the two miracles of Pietro and Carmen.
If today the Church canonized, it is because they are an example to us. Indeed, for the first time in history, the spouses will be canonized together and not separately.
The Church proposes this model for couples and families.
But what have they done? Nothing that is not exceptional if not they experienced holiness in their daily life.
They put God above all others and it is in Him that they drew their strength from, to live each day to the Gospel.
Zélie wrote in one of his letters:
“I want to become a saint, it will not be easy, there is much to stake and wood is hard as a rock. It would have been better to go about it earlier, while it was less difficult, but finally ‘better late than never’.”
They knew they were weak, sinners, that’s why they need to get God’s help. Their life was rooted in prayer, the family did daily Mass at 5:30 am, – confession, love of neighbour and the poorest…
One might think that this bourgeois couple of the nineteenth century lived a life unhindered, easily opening them the way of holiness.
It was instead a grieving family, who knew the suffering and offered it to God. They had 9 children, four died in infancy. On the death of Helen, aged 5, the mother wrote in a letter:
“When Louis came back and saw his poor little dead girl, he started sobbing, crying ‘my little Helen, my little Helen! ‘Then we prayed together to God”
In all their difficulties, they tried to trust and rely on God.
Thus just as well in educational problems raised their Leonie, that in work or proof of the disease: “The best is to put everything in the hands of God and wait for the events in quiet and surrender to His will. This is what I will try to do. “
