Louis Martin (lay brother)

Saint Louis Martin
Layman and Confessor
Born	Louis Joseph Aloys Stanislaus Martin (1823-08-22)22 August 1823 Bordeaux, Gironde, France
Died	29 July 1894(1894-07-29) (aged 70) Arnières-sur-Iton, Eure, France
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church
Beatified	19 October 2008, Basilique de Sainte-Thérèse, France by Pope Benedict XVI
Canonized	18 October 2015, Saint Peter's Square, Vatican City by Pope Francis
Feast	12 July
Patronage	Fathers Families

Saint Louis Martin (22 August 1823 – 29 July 1894) was a French layman and the father of Saint Thérèse de Lisieux. His wife was Saint Marie-Azélie Guérin.

He was canonized as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church alongside his wife on 18 October 2015.

Biography

Early life

Louis Joseph Aloys Stanislaus Martin was the third of five children of Pierre-François Martin and Marie-Anne-Fanie Boureau. All his siblings died before reaching age 30.

Although Louis intended to become a monk, wishing to enter the Augustinian Monastery of the Great St Bernard, he was rejected because he did not know Latin. Later he decided to become a watchmaker, and studied his craft in Rennes and in Strasbourg.

Marriage and family

He later fell in love with Marie-Azélie Guérin, a lacemaker, in 1858 and they married just three months later in the Basilica of Our Lady of the Assumption in Alençon, Orne. Her business was so successful that Louis sold his watchmaking business to go into partnership with her.

"Alongside this strong, tender, but undeniably domineering woman Louis Martin seems to have been made of much softer stuff. He was a dreamer, brooder, and romantic. He loved nature with a deep sentimental enthusiasm. From him Thérèse inherited her passion for flowers and meadows, for her native landscape, for clouds, thunderstorms , the sea and the stars. There was too..wanderlust...He made pilgrimages to Chartres and Lourdes, went to Germany and Austria, travelled twice to Rome and even to Constantinople, and planned but did not live to carry out a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. " Along with this desire for adventure was an impulse towards withdrawal; in Lisieux he arranged a little den for himself high up in the attic, a true monastic cell for praying, reading and meditation. Even his daughters were allowed to enter it only if they wished spiritual converse and self-examination. As in a monastery, he divided the day into worship, garden work and relaxation.

Although the couple lived as brother and sister for ten months after their wedding, they decided to have children. They would later have nine children, though only five daughters would survive infancy:

• Marie-Louise (22 February 1860 – 19 January 1940), as a nun, Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart, Carmelite at Lisieux.
• Marie-Pauline (7 September 1861 – 28 July 1951), as a nun, Mother Agnès of Jesus, Carmelite at Lisieux.
• Marie-Léonie (3 June 1863 – 16 June 1941), as a nun, Sister Françoise-Thérèse, Visitandine at Caen.
• Marie-Hélène (3 October 1864 – 22 February 1870)
• Marie Joseph Louis (20 September 1866 – 14 February 1867)
• Marie Joseph Jean-Baptiste (19 December 1867 – 24 August 1868)
• Marie-Céline (28 April 1869 – 25 February 1959), as a nun, Sister Geneviève of the Holy Face, Carmelite at Lisieux.
• Marie-Mélanie Thérèse (16 August 1870 – 8 October 1870)
• Marie-Françoise Thérèse (2 January 1873 – 30 September 1897), as a nun, Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face, Carmelite at Lisieux, canonised in 1925.

As a jeweller and watchmaker he loved the precious things with which he dealt. To his daughters he gave touching and naïve pet names : Marie was his diamond, Pauline his noble pearl, Céline the bold one, and the guardian angel – Thérèse was his little queen, petite reine, to whom all treasures belonged.

On 28 August 1877, Zélie died from breast cancer in Alençon, and her funeral was held in the basilica where she had married Louis. A few weeks later, Louis sold her lacemaking business and their house along Saint Blaise Street, and moved to Lisieux, Normandy, where Zélie's brother Isidore Guérin, a pharmacist, lived with his wife and two daughters.

Death

Portrait of Thérèse's father at the Basilica of St. Thérèse (Lisieux).

In 1889 Louis suffered two paralyzing strokes followed by cerebral arteriosclerosis, and was hospitalised for three years at the Bon Sauveur asylum in Caen. In 1892 he returned to Lisieux, where his daughters Céline and Léonie looked after him devotedly until his death on 29 July 1894 at Chateau La Musse near Évreux.

Beatification

Relics of Louis and Marie-Azélie Guérin Martin at Saint Patrick Church in Columbus, Ohio

Louis and Marie-Azélie Martin were declared "venerable" on 26 March 1994 by Pope John Paul II. They were beatified on 19 October 2008; Jose Cardinal Saraiva Martins, the legate of Pope Benedict XVI, presided at the Mass of Beatification in the Basilique de Sainte-Thérèse, Lisieux.

Sainthood

On 7 January 2013, Carlos Osoro Serra, Archbishop of Valencia, presided at the opening of the canonical process to inquire into the healing in 2008 of a little girl named Carmen, who was born in Valencia four days before Louis and Zélie were beatified. Eight doctors testified that there was no scientific explanation for her cure. The diocesan tribunal held its closing session on 21 May 2013, and the file was sent to Rome for review by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, who may recommend to the Pope that Louis and Zélie Martin be canonized.

On March 3, 2015 Cardinal Angelo Amato announced informally that Louis and Zellie Martin would be declared saints during the Synod of Bishops. The Congregation accepted and promulgated the miracle on March 18, 2015.

On June 26, 2015, a film produced by the Archdiocese of Valencia about the canonization miracle was released online in English. On June 27, 2015, at a consistory of cardinals in Rome, Pope Francis approved the decree for the canonization of Louis and Zélie Martin and announced that the ceremony would take place in October in Rome.

On 18 October 2015, Louis Martin was canonized as a saint by Pope Francis, along with his wife Zélie.

Publications

In 2011 the letters of Blessed Zélie and Louis Martin were published in English as A Call to a Deeper Love: The Family Correspondence of the Parents of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, 1863–1885 translated by Ann Connors Hess and edited by Dr. Frances Renda (Staten Island, N.Y.: Alba House). Only 16 letters from Louis survive, but many of Zélie's 216 letters give vivid details about Louis as husband and father.

References

• Shrine Louis and Zelie Martin of Alençon