In sickness and in health… Together we become saints

There are a few people who make impressions in our lives and a few who  make a long lasting impressions, one such model couple who

made a deep impression in my life are the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux. Their commitment, love, complementarity, harmony, pragmatic faith and endurance in suffering are the key virtues that we can draw our inspiration. Saints Louis and Zelie Martin are the first married couple to ever be canonized together.

The couple had nine children, four of whom died in infancy. The remaining five, all girls, became nuns. The youngest, Therese, died of tuberculosis aged 24 in 1897 and was canonized in 1925.

Pope Francis praised the couples’ humble attitude towards others, which is evident in the way that they practiced service within the family, “creating day by day an environment of faith and love which nurtured the vocations of their daughters, among whom was Saint Therese of the Child Jesus.”

I had the privilege of interviewing a few couples for Catholic Television in view of Synod on family which is currently underway in the Vatican. Every couple expressed that marriage has to be based on love; a covenantal love that couples profess in the Sacrament of Marriage.

It is marvellous timing that Louis and Zelie are canonized during the Synod on the Family. It is also the reminder of the Second Vatican Council’s ‘universal call to holiness’, that is, the fact that married men and women, including singly men and women are just as holy as bishops, priests, sisters and brothers.

Louis and Zelie Martin had circuitous journey to marriage and family life. Louis wanted to be a priest and Zelie a woman religious. A number of circumstances prevented both of them from those paths, and this was a great disappointment to both of them. But in time, they found one another and married.

Louis and Zelie and their children were a family of prayer. They prayed every night before the statue of the Virgin of the Smile. Prayer was the key to their family life, which helped St. Therese to be the spiritual guru and a spiritual giant. Their four children out of nine died in infancy, the remaining five, all girls, became nuns. Zelie says of the deaths of her children, ‘when I closed the eyes of my dear children and prepared them for burial, I was indeed grief-stricken, but, thanks to God’s grace, I have always been resigned to His will. I do not regret the pains and sacrifices I underwent for them.”

This couple had a magnificent trust in God even in the situation of uncertainty and grief. Zelie writes about her faith in God, “When I think of what this good God, in whom I have put all my trust, and into whose hands I have resigned the care of my affairs, has done for me and for my husband, I cannot doubt that his Divine Providence watches over his children with a special care.” In their love for each other, in raising a large family with all its attendant worries and responsibilities, and in their love of God, shown when they were tried as models for any married man or woman living today. They are inspiration to many of our couples who grow through hardships of life; the tragedy of a young mother dying of cancer and leaving a large family, and the heartbreak of a dearly loved member of the family being in a mental institution, and the problem of caring for a sick and elderly relative.

I would like to conclude with the words of St. Therese about her parents, “God gave me a mother and father more worthy of heaven than of earth.”