| |
Thérèse, the youngest child of Louis and Azelie-Marie (Guerin) Martin, was born on January 2, 1873. She was not a strong baby, and the doctors feared she would not survive. The baby was christened Marie Francoise Thérèse Martin. A century later, she would be called Saint Thérèse.
The Martin family's faith in God was the focus of their lives, which revolved around the liturgical year, pilgrimages and a scrupulous regard for fast and abstinence. Their children were taught to respect poor people and to help those in need: abandoned children, the elderly and beggars.
The five sisters—Marie, Pauline, Leonie, Céline and Thérèse—created a lively household. Little Thérèse was blonde, blue eyed, affectionate, mischievous and precocious, yet capable of outbursts of temper and stubbornness.
Thérèse was a spiritual prodigy. At age three, she began to "refuse nothing of what God asks of me." Recalling an ocean sunset observed at age five, Thérèse wrote in her autobiography, "In the evening, at that moment when the sun seems to bathe itself in the immensity of the waves, leaving a luminous trail behind, I went and sat on a huge rock with Pauline. I contemplated this luminous trail for a long time. It was, to me, the image of God's grace shedding its light across the path the little white-sailed vessel [Thérèse herself] had to travel ... I made the resolution never to wander far away from the path of Jesus in order to travel peacefully toward the eternal shore."
|
