Léonie Martin: strength in weakness
by Véronique Jacquier
Wednesday November 29, 2023
Sister of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Léonie, born one hundred and sixty years ago, was the enfant terrible of the Martin family. His difficult childhood, coupled with religious wandering to fulfill his vocation, makes him a character as atypical as he is endearing. Léonie’s life started off badly. As soon as he was born, the child suffered from eczema, then lung problems. Its growth is hampered by disease; his parents, Louis and Zélie Martin, noticed that his intelligence was slower to develop than that of his more gifted sisters. And then, it is not easy for her to find her place in a family of five girls. Born on June 3, 1863 in Alençon (Orne), Léonie was “stuck” between her two eldest children, Marie and Pauline, and her two youngest daughters, Céline and Thérèse. Their childhood home, Les Buissonnets, bears witness to Léonie’s solitude. Her small room, with its only bed, is between the room shared by Marie and Pauline and that of the two younger girls. A loneliness made even worse by the loss of two very young brothers and a sister, who died before turning a year old, but above all by the disappearance of Marie-Hélène, her adorable playmate who was only 16 months younger. what. At 6 and a half years old, Léonie witnessed the death of this little sister, about whom she would remain inconsolably sad.
Added to this already difficult fate is the mistreatment inflicted on him by the servant, Louise Marais. Her mother, Zélie, runs a lace-making company. He’s a workaholic. She takes care of her children very well but a servant takes care of the domestic chores, as in any bourgeois family of the time. However, Louise Marais terrorizes Léonie and keeps her under her influence, after having taken care to cut her off from her mother. Zélie Martin didn’t notice anything until her eldest daughter, Marie, told her about it. However, although she now had the keys to understanding Léonie’s ungrateful character, Zélie refused to dismiss Louise Marais. No doubt she did not see the double game of the servant… Léonie will be hurt for a long time. Two months before her death, in 1941, she spoke again to her sisters of this “cruel and wicked servant”: “What she made me endure is neither more nor less than diabolical. It’s miraculous that nothing was left of me because I lived in perpetual terror. » Léonie added, however, “having forgiven her tormentor wholeheartedly”
. The “black sheep” of the family It is her big heart that will always save her. She is certain that she was made for religious life, which seems incongruous to those around her. His school wanderings, his hypersensitivity, his physique, less pretty than that of his sisters, make him the “black sheep” of the family. Zélie, who has breast cancer – she will die from it at the age of 46 – is worried about this girl who is giving her a hard time. Her last prayers and sacrifices will be for Léonie, then barely 14 years old. After the disappearance of their mother, Céline will take Marie as her mother and little Thérèse, aged only 4, will choose Pauline to shower her with her affection. But who cared about Léonie? She had no shoulder to support her sadness as an orphaned adolescent, but she always remembered her dear aunt, Sister Marie-Dosithée Guérin, her mother’s sister, who had entered the Visitation of Le Mans. The nun had a very beneficial influence on Léonie who wrote these words to her some time before her death: “My dear aunt, when you are in Heaven, ask the Good Lord to give me the grace to become a true nun because I think about it every day. »
Source: Léonie Martin : la force dans la faiblesse – France Catholique (france-catholique.fr)