In the middle of the summer of 1858, Louis Martin and Zélie Guerin wed. They had not followed the usual course of meeting and marrying in the early years of adulthood. In fact, Louis was 35 and Zélie 27 when they married which might seem more normal these days but was less common at the time. Louis desired to become a monk but could not succeed in his Latin. Zélie desired to be a Sister of Charity, but could not keep up with the lifestyle due to health concerns. After leaving the dream of the monastery Louis became a watchmaker. After leaving the hope of the convent Zélie dedicated herself to the craft of lacemaking. They met on a bridge in Alençon, where divine intervention enlightened Zélie that she had just passed by her future husband. Little did they know what their married life would bring, though they clearly were devoted to God and desired to do his will. 

Part of the married vocation is the call to bring children into the world, and the Martins were able to fulfill this call amply. Many know of their youngest child, St. Thérèse, the Little Flower and Doctor of the Church, but the Martins actually had nine children in total. Only five girls survived childhood. This is part of their story of extraordinary virtue in the midst of an ordinary life: the loss of four beloved children. Although the death of children was pretty common in the course of human history before the last century, Louis and Zélie bore the loss of their little ones with great courage and hope in divine providence. Three of the four died from illness. The last child who died was the baby born to them before Thérèse – another little girl called Marie-Melanie-Thérèse who died essentially from starvation. Zélie had been unable to breastfeed several of her previous children (she was already having complications with the breast cancer that would ultimately kill her) and had to give her little ones to a wet nurse who lived a distance from them. Unfortunately, this wet nurse was an alcoholic and was neglecting the baby. They brought her home in hopes of saving her, but the baby died of malnutrition. Marie-Françoise-Thérèse, who we know as St. Thérèse, would be born three years later. From A Call to a Deeper Love (the letters of Zélie and Louis Martin) Zélie wrote about the torment of handing over her daughter Thérèse to a wet nurse after her last baby had died of malnutrition. She had tried feeding Thérèse herself for a couple of months, but she was quickly sick, “I quickly knelt at the feet of Saint Joseph and asked him for mercy, that the little one be cured, resigning myself completely to the will of God if He wanted to take her. I don’t cry often, but I cried while I was praying…What consoles me is knowing that God wants it this way, since I did everything I could to raise her myself. So I have nothing to reproach myself for in this regard.”

What else we can see of Zélie and Louis’ virtues in their letters comes through in their descriptions of normal family life – the funny antics their children devised, the Masses and holy conferences they attended, their devotion to their family rising above their devotion to their work, and the many illnesses each endured and offered to the Lord. We also get a glimpse into the tenderness of their married love. In a letter written while Zélie visited relatives in another city she wrote, “I’m longing to be near you, my dear Louis. I love you with all of my heart, and I feel my affection so much more when you’re not here with me. It would be impossible for me to live apart from you.” Though we only have a handful of extant letters from Louis, those we have are largely from the years following Zélie’s death. One such letter summarizes his insight into how their family was indeed hugely blessed by the Lord, “I want to tell you, my dear children, that I have the urgent desire to thank God and to make you thank God because I feel that our family, though very humble, has the honor of being among the privileged of our adorable Creator.” 

The virtue that truly seems to characterize Zélie and Louis is one of detachment – detachment from the things of the world and detachment to their own ideas of what their lives ought to look like. Though they prayed to God for certain things, though they longed for all their children to be healthy and well, and though they longed and prayed for Zélie to be cured of her breast cancer, they abandoned themselves to divine providence at the end of the day. The final letters of Zélie’s life really bring out her resignation to do whatever it is that God asks of her, even if it means dying and leaving her beloved Louis and their daughters. They made several pilgrimages to holy Marian shrines around France to beg Our Lady’s intercession for Zélie, but in a letter dated a couple months before her death Zélie wrote to her sister-in-law, “If the Blessed Mother doesn’t cure me it’s because my time is at an end, and God wants me to rest elsewhere other than on earth.”

For most of us, holiness is to be found in the ordinary. Most of us will not encounter extraordinary opportunities for a single moment of extraordinary virtue: martyrdom, saving someone else’s life, accepting the stigmata, or receiving visions. The extraordinary experiences of the mystics are beautiful and profound and really call us to wonder at God’s amazing providence and power. But God also works among the ordinary. He came into the world in the ordinary way (excepting the virginal conception) after all. He became a child and by his presence in a family, he sanctified the ordinariness of family life. Family life became the primary place of growing in virtue. We are all born into some kind of family or another, whether or not it is broken or whole or whether we live with our families or not. But it is the first experience of the human person in learning how to be and interact with others, how to strive for or reject the life of virtue. 

It is therefore in the obedience to our daily duty that we are sanctified. It is following the will of God for our life, no matter what joys or sufferings arise, that we are made holy. This was true of Zélie and Louis. People might say they endured extraordinary hardship through losing four children or in Zélie’s struggle with breast cancer or in Louis slowly losing his faculties as he aged, but these are in fact ordinary sufferings. We will all die. Most of us have known someone who has had cancer. Most of us know someone who has lost a child or has struggled with infertility. Many have had a grandparent or elderly relative who has lost their faculties. These are great sufferings but are actually rather ordinary parts of living in a fallen world. What makes Zélie and Louis extraordinary is how they conducted themselves no matter what it is they were experiencing as a family. They rejoiced over small happinesses with their children. They celebrated the liturgical year with care. They looked forward to time spent with extended family. They did not deny their sorrows but begged the Lord for mercy. At the end of the day, no matter what it brought, they abandoned themselves to divine providence. They continued praying. They went on pilgrimages. They taught their children to love Christ and his Church, so much so that all five surviving daughters became nuns. They loved one another in such a way that all who knew them knew of their tenderness for each other. They lived their lives completely dedicated to accepting whatever the Lord allowed for them to experience. And they blessed him in joy and in sorrow. They were faithful in the small things, and this in such a way that one daughter became known as the saint of the “Little Way,” a doctor of the Church, and the “greatest saint of modern times.” If that is not encouragement enough for spouses and parents to be devoted to growing in holiness together I do not know what is! May we look to Zélie and Louis as models of love, fortitude, and, above all, joyful resignation to the will of God for ourselves and our families.

A version of this blog post originally appeared in the Summer 2022 Edition of the Ember Journal. Used with permission.