Читать книгу The Extraordinary Parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux - Helene Mongin - Страница 8

Preface

Since their beatification on October 19, 2008, Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of Thérèse of Lisieux, are becoming known for their originality and authenticity. We are struck by their vitality, their modernity, and their dynamism. They are connected to us by their life experience: their youth, their growth as a couple, their joy at the birth of children, their relationship with their children, changes within the family, sickness, the death of a spouse—all of it the antithesis of any idealized image.

More and more people are discovering about them what their daughter Thérèse so rightly described about people in heaven: “The Blessed have great compassion for our sufferings; they remember that being fragile and mortal like us, they made the same mistakes and fought the same battles, and their fraternal tenderness toward us becomes even greater than it was on earth. That is why they do not stop protecting us and praying for us.”¹

In this book, Hélène Mongin gives us a new, affectionate, and intensive look at the Martins. We can perhaps imagine that one of the Martin daughters would have liked to speak to us this way about her parents. An enthusiastic Hélène has let Thérèse’s parents into her life after having been enthralled with their daughter. She guides us now to a relationship with Louis and Zélie, to loving them, to giving them a place in our lives … and invites us to follow them.

Monsignor Bernard Lagoutte

Rector Emeritus

Shrine of Lisieux

¹ LT 263, August 10, 1897.