Each time I visit Lisieux and Alençon, as I did again on my summer holiday, I am struck by the mysterious workings of God’s providence and grace in the lives of the Martin family, who have already had three members raised to the altars and may, God willing, have others. Their heroic lives and witness come into their own more than ever in a world where the family is under threat and the Gospel thought to be too demanding.
On this occasion it was the middle sister who somehow became the focus of my attention, Léonie Martin. It seemed her fate to be the ‘‘ugly duckling’’ of the family: rather plain, backward educationally, suffering from ill-health and bad temper. She became the classic middle child, adrift between two gifted older siblings and two needy younger ones. In her mother Zélie’s letters she invariably has the epithet ‘‘poor’’ coupled with her name.
