Status Updates From The Story of a Family: The ...

The evening conversation sometimes merged into a collective prayer, and it ended in that family prayer when Thérèse, taking her place close to her father, "had only to watch him to know how saints pray." This last act, crowning the day's work, took place in the room of the two elder girls. There the statue of Our Lady had been set up in the place of honor.

She seemed to sleep. Although she had nearly completed her 46th year ... the face had taken on a strikingly dignified and youthful expression. An atmosphere of dignified and supernatural calm seemed to envelop the death chamber. M. Martin and his daughters could not cease gazing upon the peaceful countenance of her who, after having travailed, knew at last rest.

Already Thérèse bore patiently the little trials of life. "Jesus has always treated me as a spoilt child," she would write shortly before her death. "It is true that His Cross has accompanied me from my cradle; but He has made me love that Cross passionately."

"I am not displeased with my Léonie. If only one could succeed in getting the better of her stubbornness, and rendering her character more flexible, we could make her a good daughter, devoted and not afraid to spend herself. ... One thought upheld Mme. Martin in this task which was always to be begun again: the child of so many prayers and so much sorrow could not perish!

My respect for Zelie Martin grows and grows! What she had to endure.