Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin

Who they were

Louis was a watchmaker in Alencon, Zelie a lacemaker whose business grew successful enough that Louis eventually sold his shop to manage hers. Both had tried religious life and been turned away. They married instead, and out of that instead came nine children and four small graves.

Zelie's letters, hundreds of which survive, are the real treasure. They are funny, exhausted, commercially sharp, and shattering on the deaths of her children: grief written down by a working mother in real time, with her faith bending and not breaking. She died of breast cancer at forty five, leaving Louis five daughters. He raised them, gave every one to religious life, and then endured his own long diminishment, with strokes, confusion, and three years in an institution. All five daughters became nuns. The youngest was Therese of Lisieux. Louis and Zelie were canonized together in 2015.

Why people turn to Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin

Married couples who want a marriage that is itself the holy thing, and, tenderly, parents who have buried a child. Zelie has stood where they stand and wrote it down. Small business owners have two working patrons who ran the numbers on faith and on lace alike.

How to ask their intercession

Couples: one rosary prayed together, asking the Martins' prayers for your actual marriage rather than an idealized one. Theirs was not idealized either. If you have lost a child, there is nothing you need to say well. Sit with them, and let Zelie's own words do the asking.