By Theresia Titus
Zélie and Louis met in 1858 in a small French town called Alencon where Zélie was a successful lace maker while Louis was a watchmaker by trade.
They were married and had nine children, three of whom died during infancy and one during childhood, which left Marie, Pauline, Celine, Leonie and Thérèse.
Theirs was a family which knew what suffering meant.
Sr Deborah Sachse, Prioress of the Carmelite Monastery in Nedlands, said Zélie and Louis nurtured their children with great warmth, love and firmness.
“The children expected to be corrected when they were wrong, simply by having their faults explained to them. Their parents’ expressions of disapprovals were usually enough to correct their behaviour because of the close bond they had with their parents,” she said.
“Each child was kind of an individual, there wasn’t a one way that fits every child and the parents sought to understand each child’s needs and personality, and attend to each as needed.”
Sr Deborah also emphasised how the family devotion to their faith and God had shaped Thérèse and her teachings.
“The family was a middle-class family in a very class-conscious society and they were very devout to their faith; the parents would attend early morning Mass of the workers every day,” she explained.
“They had a devotion to Our Lady, prayed regularly, read liturgical readings as well as the Scriptures for the next day at night, and Thérèse’s love of Scriptures was fostered.
“The primary source of nourishment for her life were the Scriptures, the depth of her teaching was really rooted in Scriptures and that was certainly developed within her family,” she added.
When Thérèse was born on 2 January 1873, Zélie was already beginning to suffer symptoms of breast cancer, which prevented her from breastfeeding her daughter.
Zélie and Louis had to send Thérèse to a wet nurse named Rose, which was difficult for both the mother and daughter as they had to break the strong bond they already had.
By the time Thérèse was weaned and reunited with her mother, she was already attached to Rose, which meant she had to break her bond with her “second mother”.
She quickly bonded again with Zélie, but their time had to be cut short when Zélie died at the age of 45 when Therese was a mere four years old. It was a “shattering shock” to her.
“She developed strong problems with her attachment because she had lost maternal figures so often during those years of early childhood,” Sr Deborah said.
“After the death of her mother, she turned naturally to Our Lady, before whom they always gathered every evening for family prayers.
“She also turned to her second sister, Pauline, to whom she was close to and as she chose her to be another primary maternal figure in her life,” she continued.
However, when Pauline and Marie entered the Carmelite Monastery in Lisieux, Thérèse, who was 10 years old at the time, reached her final straw.
“She suffered a mental and emotional breakdown from the repeated loss of maternal figures, [although she was close to her father as well],” Sr Deborah said.
Thérèse’s pivotal point came when she felt the statue of Our Lady at her home was smiling at her and received her moment of grace after a midnight Christmas Mass in 1886. The strong character and personality she once had were restored.
Sr Deborah believes that the visitation of the relics of St Thérèse and her parents is “a real celebration of the family, how in the most ordinary life lived every person can attain great holiness”.
“It’s a real encouragement for people today; their faith has been assailed in so many ways and is something that Thérèse understood because she lived in great spiritual aridity and dryness,” Sr Deborah said.
“The message is that holiness and closeness to God can be obtained by everyone, simply by enjoying faith, love and being sanctified in ordinary lives. Nothing but ordinary is asked of us as ordinary events of life can bring enough challenges, for example, accepting those who wrong us and putting up with irritations of life.
“You can easily dismiss and think that everyone can do it, but how many of us are committed to do it daily? We want to avoid the person who just rubs us the wrong way while they are the ones Thérèse would deliberately befriend with, deliberately gave her loveliest smiles to.
“Thérèse is so encouraging but when we take her seriously, she is also incredibly challenging and yet, on the other side of that, every time she failed, she just turned to God and was open to God,” she concluded.
From pages 28 to 29 of Issue 24: Soul: ‘Nurturing the Spiritual Principle in Us’ of The Record Magazine