We end and start the year with hope

When the late Pope Francis opened the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica inside Vatican on Dec. 24, 2024, it heralded the Jubilee of Hope, a tradition celebrated every 25 years by the Catholic church. Pilgrims thronged to the Eternal City to join in commemorative activities at St. Peter’s and in Rome’s three major basilicas. I count myself blessed to have participated in these events with my sisters in faith and to have visited other pilgrimage sites before heading to Rome.

After that time of refreshment and renewal, I still feel overwhelmed by the ambiguities and distractions of our fast-changing world. Yet I am infinitely grateful to my Catholic faith. While it is a struggle to model from the life of great saints, their witness and life of virtue centered on faith, hope and charity serve as inspiration from where we can anchor the things we wish for ourselves and for humanity.  They are fountains of hope – stories that are worth telling repeatedly.

In the Normandy region, northwestern side of France, about three hours away by train from Paris, is the quaint town of Alençon. Among the pilgrimage places in France, it is less popular compared to Lourdes and Lisieux.

In the quietude of Alençon sometime in the mid-19th century, the seeds of faith planted by a couple named Louis and Zelie Martin sprouted and bore fruit, eventually giving their family one of the most revered saints of the Catholic church in the person of St. Therese of the Child Jesus. As if one saint in the family is not enough, at the time of the canonization of Saints Louis and Zelie in 2015, Leonie, their little less known daughter, was declared “Servant of God,” the first stage for the cause of sainthood.

It was through the suggestion of my good friend Cindy, who arranged for that part of our trip, that I learned first-hand about the life of the Martins. We traced and walked along the footsteps of the Martins because we are both devotees of St. Therese and she has a special attachment to Leonie.

We toured the holy spouses’ home in Alençon, now known as The Louis and Zelie Shrine, a revered pilgrims’ destination suggestive of an above middle-class economic status of the family that time. Louis was a watchmaker, while Zelie was a lacemaker who managed her own business. Zelie bore nine children, but only five girls survived to adulthood. Four others died in infancy. I imagined how each tragedy took a toll on Zelie’s mental and physical health, perhaps the reason why she was eventually diagnosed with breast cancer.  She lived with frail health for 12 years.

How do you find hope and where do you draw strength from under such conditions? In between bliss and suffering they turned to God for courage, relied on relatives and a wet nurse named Rose Taille to take care of the young girls. We were delighted to have had a private visit to “maison petite,” a small farmhouse in the rustic side of Semalle (around 20 minutes’ drive from Alençon), where Rose and her family lived. For us Catholics, Rose’s modest home is a sacred space, a relic on its own because, according to our affable guide Bernard, it was on the very same tile floors where St. Therese must have crawled and have probably learned how to walk.

Rose could not live in the Martin’s home for she had her own children to take care of, so Therese had to live with them. In contrast, I think of our OFWs and caregivers who leave their young children, elderly parents and families to take care of children and families not their own. I know a good number of them who possess the constant faith of Zelie and the dedication of Rose. They who have lived and work abroad, have missed milestones and celebrations, Christmas among others, not out of choice but by force of circumstances. And we have many of them, unsung heroes, living saints whose love and sacrifice for others are beyond measure.

Zelie died when Therese was barely five years old. After the family tragedy, the widower Louis, along with the girls, relocated to Lisieux where he rented a home called Les Buissonnets or The Hedges. Les Buissonnets stands in the middle of an expansive garden of lush shrubs and a variety of vibrant flowers, roses the most abundant among them. In the backyard are a mix of lean and soaring trees that seem to guard the estate. Here, we heard the story of how Louis and his daughters started life anew and how the older girls took the role of the younger ones’ caregivers and tutors, while maintaining a life centered on learning, play, prayers and piety.

How did the girls handle the pain of losing a mother? Of being uprooted from the home they grew up in? How did Louis manage the household? Raise the girls singlehandedly?

I found answers to my questions as we explored Les Buissonnets – the gardens, its rooms, the Martin girls’ toys, memorabilia and sacred objects, which stood as mute witnesses to a life well-lived despite the tragedy. A resolute faith in God and devotion to Our Lady was the balm that soothed their unspeakable grief. As a young Carmelite nun, Therese wrote, “It is good to serve God in darkness and trial! We have only this life to live by faith.”

As we celebrate Christmas, await a new year and as the Catholic church now shepherded by Pope Leo XIV culminates the Jubilee of Hope on Jan. 6, 2026, the Feast of Epiphany, we contemplate meaningfully on the Martin family’s exceptional life. Theirs is an extraordinary story of love, gladness, trials and tragedy while their unshakeable faith exemplifies what it means to embrace a kind of “hope that does not disappoint.”