The next book I read in my informal study of St. Therese was a biography of her sister, Leonie Martin, who, like the other Martin sisters, became a nun and is in the process of being canonized.
The biography was subtitled “A Difficult Life” because Leonie did not have an easy path, especially in comparison to her sisters. She was expelled from school several times as a young girl, had some pretty severe behavioral issues, and was rejected from a few convents before fulfilling her dream of becoming a Visitation nun.
This “bad” behavior in Leonie could have been attributed to her parents, but in this case, it most certainly wasn’t. Some children are just different, and as I read the book, I thought it sounded like she had some kind of learning disability or even perhaps autism, neither of which would have been properly diagnosed or understood during the time she lived.
Despite all of her problems, Leonie didn’t give up and neither did her parents. From reading the book, Leonie’s mother, especially, despaired a lot over her daughter and seemed to not know what to do other than pray and hope things would turn out OK.
The Martin parents’ struggles with Leonie and eventual success (although neither of them lived to see the fruits of their labor) is inspirational for any parent. In Leonie’s case, her mother seemed to feel guilty because she was not there as much as she should have been. Both of the Martin parents worked in lace making, and those were some long hours spent doing manual labor that today would be done by machine. A line from the book rang true for me: “Sadly, all working parents suffer—as does their children’s upbringing—from their lack of availability in the home.”
Unfortunately, modern society in the United States does not allow one parent to work and the other to raise the kids, at least without a lot of extreme sacrifice or without a community that includes people like grandparents and other relatives and close friends. Very few are fortunate enough to have such a “village.” I’m not one of those idealists who thinks that the 1950s (or at least the remembrance of it that often exists in traditional circles) were perfect or an idyllic time, and I’m not saying every woman should become a housewife. But I think society could do so much better. Kids need their parents to be there for them, especially kids who are different in the ways Leonie was.
The Martin parents never stopped loving their daughter or praying for her, and in that way, they contributed to her growth as a saint. Leonie lived until age 78 and was faithful to God right until the end, just like her sister St. Therese before her.
Human language is utterly powerless to express what happens within the soul; so silence alone is fitting.
Leonie Martin
Maggie Madly Writing 