In her profound distress, but in her great faith, Madame Martin wrote to her sister, a Visitation nun at the monastery in Le Mans.  Sister Marie-Dosithée began a novena to Sister Margaret Mary at the monastery of Paray-le-Monial, the one to whom Jesus had shown all his love. [St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690) was a nun at the Visitation convent of Paray-le-Monial. It was to her that Jesus said, in showing her his heart, “Behold this heart which has so loved humans and which is so little loved!”]  And . . . voilà, the baby was cured!  Three months later, her mother wrote to her sister:  “Léonie, now, is running about like a little rabbit.”
Nonetheless, the little girl would feel the effects of these illnesses all her life.
Léonie was also consistently in opposition to her parents; obedience was practically unknown to her.  And her poor mother wrote that “she has lost her Latin” and that her daughter “is the greatest suffering of my life.”  Conflict between parents and children is not new, as we see.
Already fragile and unstable, the child was completely taken in hand by a servant (who perhaps thought she was doing good) who even threatened to beat her if she went to her mother.  How can we explain how these goings-on could have lasted several months without her parents realizing it?  It was Marie who, one day, discovered the painful pressure to which Léonie had been submitted.  She told her mother, and the maid was forbidden to speak to Léonie, who then submitted in everything to her mother!  “In everything” is perhaps a little exaggerated, for the teenager remained somewhat capricious and careless.

She herself admitted much later, perhaps with some exaggeration, to having had “a detestable childhood!”

Only her aunt, the Visitation nun, remained hopeful, and she turned out to be a good prophet, writing one day “She’s a difficult child, but I believe that later she will be worth as much as her sisters. 

She has a heart of gold, and, if her intelligence is slow, I find in her good judgment.”  And Madame Martin, too, often pointed out in her letters what a good heart Léonie has.
This aunt added in another letter:  “I can very well see her as a little Visitandine!”

The future will prove her right!

But, before that, one trial followed another in the family:  Hélène, born a year after Léonie, died at the age of five.  She was the sister nearest Léonie in age.  So this “departure” probably made Léonie’s difficulties worse.  Two little boys, very much wanted, lived barely a year, and a little girl, born in 1870, lived only seven weeks.

Madame Martin, exhausted by her many pregnancies and her lace work, was increasingly wasted by cancer.  Despite her courageous energy sustained by her deep faith, she died on August 28, 1877.

Monsieur Martin, although very much attached to Alençon, left that city and settled in Lisieux to be closer to his brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Monsieur and Madame Guérin.  He leased a house, “les Buissonnets,” now known all over the world!
Peaceful years passed in this place.

Léonie, mellowed (perhaps thanks to the prayers of her mother), displayed all the tenderness in her heart to surround her sisters and her Papa: did he not say, in speaking of his daughter, “My good Léonie !”
In 1882, Pauline entered Carmel.  In 1886, it was Marie’s turn, and, two years later, Thérèse, the little Thérèse, in her turn crossed the threshold of the cloister.

The cloister of the Carmel of Lisieux






 

Léonie and Céline would oversee the management of the increasingly poor health of their dear Papa, who was affected by a degenerative brain disease.  In 1889, after M. Martin had run away several times, it was considered necessary to admit Monsieur Martin to the psychiatric hospital of the Bon Sauveur (the Good Savior) at Caen. 

To make their visits easier, the two sisters settled for several months near the hospital, and Léonie renewed contact with the Monastery of the Visitation, which was on the way from the temporary lodgings of the two sisters to the hospital.  Céline could write a little mischievously, “When Léonie is free, she goes to pray at the chapel of the Visitation,” the monastery where she had made a brief stay.
But, you may ask, the Visitation?  What is it?  It is mentioned in the Gospel . . . the story about the Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, but, no, Céline did not refer to this episode in the Gospel but to a religious order founded in 1610 in Annecy, France by Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal.

This name “Visitation” was given by the founder to honor this hidden mystery . . . . Mary, learning from the angel Gabriel that her cousin Elizabeth was also expecting a child, did not hesitate to go to see her to help her, for this cousin was older!  and this spontaneously, without thinking of herself and without ostentation.  Is this not the mission desired by Francis de Sales for the religious of the Visitation?  He wanted them to live their life in simplicity, transforming the realities of daily life with ever-fuller joy, offering this hidden life for those who do not know or who refuse to know God.

In this new religious order, to “counterbalance” the relaxation of the excessive austerities which were not lacking in other monasteries at the time, Francis de Sales did not want visible or extraordinary penances.  But here one would “do all through Love and nothing through force.”  “Love obedience more than you fear disobedience.”

This can be summarized by another remark of the holy Bishop:  “See all as coming from God, and in everything go to God!”

Let’s get acquainted with the Monastery of the Visitation at Caen!

On the other hand, Léonie showed her humor one day when a priest, ringing the doorbell of the monastery, asked her whether he might see the sister of Saint Thérèse.  She answered:  “I will ask, but I don’t believe it will be possible.”