Zelie developed breast cancer and “bore her cross with remarkable strength of spirit and with interior and exterior tranquility,” in the words of the Vatican decree. “She tried to console her family members and especially her young daughters.” She died at the age of 45, leaving Louis to care for their five young daughters: Marie, Pauline, Leonie, Celine, and Therese, who was only four at the time.

 Louis sold his business and moved 60 miles away to Lisieux, then a town of 17,000, so that his children could be near his brother-in-law and his family. Although Louis “enjoyed a certain wealth, he lived a simple and sober life, one estranged from riches and the vanities of the world,” in the words of the Vatican decree.

 Between 1882 and 1888, four of his five daughters entered religious life, with three of them entering the Order of Discalced Carmelites in Lisieux.

 In 1887 and 1888, Louis suffered several strokes and began to suffer from dementia. He was placed in a home for the mentally ill, but in time his brother-in-law’s family was able to care for him, as did Léonie, who had left her convent before entering another, and Céline, who would later follow in the footsteps of her other sisters and become a Carmelite. After another stroke and two heart attacks, Louis died in 1894.

One hundred years later, St. John Paul II declared that the Martins lived the virtues heroically, and following the miraculous healing of an Italian infant, Louis and Zélie were beatified in 2008. The miraculous healing of a Spanish infant paved the way for their canonization.

 The Second Vatican Council called upon spouses to “sustain one another in grace in the course of their whole life, and imbue their offspring, lovingly received from God, with Christian teachings and Gospel virtues.” Louis and Zélie Martin lived out the Church’s teaching heroically, and with their canonization in October, they will become universal examples of the grandeur of being a Christian husband and father, a wife and mother.  The end.