Seven-year-old Carmen has an extraordinary story.
The little girl was born prematurely in Spain in 2008 at just six months into pregnancy.
She was fighting for her life for several weeks because of a cerebral haemorrhage and other severe ailments.
However, it is because of her that the parents of St Therese of Lisieux – Blessed Louis Martin and Marie-Azelie Guerin – were last weekend canonised at St Peter’s Square.
In his homily for the occasion, Pope Francis said the married couple practised Christian service in the family, “creating day by day an environment of faith and love which nurtured the vocations of their daughters, among whom was St Therese of the Child Jesus”.
“The radiant witness of these new saints inspires us to persevere in joyful service to our brothers and sisters, trusting in the help of God and the maternal protection of Mary. From heaven may they now watch over us and sustain us by their powerful intercession,” he said.
Perth Carmelite Father Tadgh Tierney spoke to the eRecord about the canonisation, saying that the holiness of Louis and Marie-Azélie Martin can be said to be extremely well attested.
“Their daughter Thérèse is one of the great figures of the modern Church, has been proclaimed a ‘Doctor of the Church’ for her profound insights into the spiritual journey.
“Because of Thérèse, her parents, and indeed her whole family, especially her elder sisters Pauline and Céline – Mother Agnes and Sr Geneviève respectively – have become well-known figures in the Catholic world also,” Fr Tierney said.
“Thérèse herself led the movement to recognise the holiness of her parents’ lives when she wrote in her autobiography: ‘I was blessed in having saints for parents’. Again she wrote, “I have only to look at my father to see how the saints pray’.”
Fr Tierney went on to say this latest model of Christian family life might be beyond our reach.
“In the canonisation of Louis and Marie-Azelie Martin, the Church is putting before us the ideal of strong Christian family life,” Fr Tierney said.
“It’s a high standard, yet we can reflect that, if athletes never raised the bar above a certain height, no records would ever be broken and mediocrity would prevail all-round.
The miracle that led to sainthood
In an interview with Catholic News Agency, little Carmen’s parents, mother Carmen and her father Santos, have told their story about what led to the miracle that led to the Vatican’s approval of Louis Martin and Marie-Azelie Guerin as saints.
“We’re just another family who received this miracle with open arms, as you’d expect. But we and Carmen are normal people like anybody else,” Santos said.
Carmen is now seven years old.
“Our daughter was born at hardly six months’ gestation, after a pregnancy with many complications, and her organs were very underdeveloped. Complications set in right away: cerebral hAemorrhage, bacterial infection… her situation was getting worse to the point we were extremely worried,” Santos explained.
Both parents were both going through “a terrible situation”.
“For some parents, dealing with such a dramatic situation, it would stir up feelings of helplessness, grief, guilt and despair… on top of that we had a five-year-old son and we were trying to keep this situation from affecting him,” Santos said.
The doctors told them to prepare for the worst. Every day had major significance.
“Carmen was getting worse and worse,” her father said. She was so weak that, for 35 days, her parents could not even so much as touch their daughter in order to avoid infecting her.
“The doctors thought there was no longer anything more they could do for her and after that they let us touch her,” Santos and Carmen said, adding “during this whole process, we never lost faith, we clung to our faith and it helped us very much.”
“For us, faith is the foundation of our family and, as they say: without faith, there is no hope.
“We saw our answer come to us through prayer. Carmen was still alive – even though she was still very sick – so we were determined to look for a place even harder,” Santos said.
Santos commenced going to the monastery of St Joseph and St Teresa in the town of Serra in Valencia Province, telling one of the Carmelite sisters what was going on with Carmen.
After four or five Sundays, the Carmelite sisters became close to the parents of the sick baby. This was how the parents of St Therese of Lisieux came fully into their lives.
Louis Martin and Marie-Azelie Guerin married in 1858, just three months after they met. They lived in celibacy for nearly a year, but went on to have nine children. Four died in infancy, while the remaining five daughters entered religious life.
The Martins were known for living an exemplary life of holiness, of prayer, fasting and charity. The couple frequently visited the elderly and invited poor people to dine with them in their home.
Their daughter, St Terese of Lisieux, became a Carmelite nun known as the Little Flower. She authored the deeply influential spiritual autobiography, Story of a Soul.
She was canonised in 1925 and named a Doctor of the Church in 1997. The Martins were beatified in 2008.
“St Therese’s parents were beatified on 19 October, four days before Carmen was born,” Santos said.
The Carmelite sisters gave little Carmen’s parents some pictures of the Martins, a prayer and a short biography of the married couple.
“The prioress told us that perhaps these blesseds, who had miraculously cured a child, could also help us,” Santos said.
“That very same night we began to pray to them,” he said. Other sisters in other convents also joined in prayer for the suffering baby.
“Beginning the next day, there were a series of changes in Carmen’s state,” Santos said.
The next day, Carmen was transferred to another hospital and she began to noticeably recuperate. She began to breathe without a machine and her infections began to subside. On the third day, she left the intensive care unit, though it took several years to know whether she suffered side-effects from the haemorrhage.
Carmen was finally released from the hospital on 2 January 2009 the same day as the birthday of St Therese of Lisieux.
Fifteen days later, the relics of Blessed Louis and Marie-Azelie came to Lerida, Spain. The Carmelite sisters encouraged the family to go.
There, they met the postulator for the Martins’ cause for sainthood and explained their daughter’s healing. The postulator pursued the case, and the investigation for the Martins’ possible canonisation began in November 2009.
It was not until March 2015 that investigators approved Carmen’s miracle that would raise the Martins to the altars.
The family received the news on 18 March during the popular Fallas de Valencia festival.
“Our whole family was going down San Vicente Street in Valencia right in the middle of the Offering of Flowers to the Virgin of the Defenceless to give her our bouquet. All of a sudden our cell phone went off and, after six years, they gave us the big news.”
“For us, it was always a miracle, and even more when we could see she was responding to everything and recuperating,” her parents said. “It’s different to experience something like this than when somebody tells you about it. When it happens to you, your faith is re-affirmed.”
Information courtesy Catholic News Agency and Zenit.