Happy Mother's Day! On a day when we cherish all the moms in our lives, we can acknowledge that motherhood is not always an easy path. And one mom in particular, St. Zélie Martin, happily shared the joys and struggles of being a mom to nine children.
Despite the untimely deaths of four of her children, dealing with the sometimes unruly Little Flower, and battling her own terminal illness, Zélie was able to find comfort in God, and along with her saintly husband, Louis, managed to raise her five surviving daughters to become nuns.
So for some motherly and saintly inspiration, take a look at just some of her quotes below. In them, we see that even though she was a woman of "heroic virtue," there were days and moments that seemed unbearable:
“The good Lord does not do things by halves; He always gives what we need. Let us then carry on bravely."
When we had our children, our ideas changed somewhat. We lived only for them. They were all our happiness and we never found any except in them. In short, nothing was too difficult and the world was no longer a burden for us. For me, our children were a great compensation, so I wanted to have a lot of them in order to raise them for Heaven.”
“I want to become a saint; it will not be easy at all. I have a lot of wood to chop and it is as hard as stone. I should have started sooner, while it was not so difficult; but in any case ‘better late than never.’”
“It is over little things that I worry most. Whenever a real misfortune happens, I am quite resigned, and I await with confidence the help of God.”
It is necessary that the heroic becomes daily and that the daily becomes heroic.”
“I long for rest. I have not even the courage to struggle on. I feel the need of quiet reflection to think of salvation, which the complications of this world have made me neglect."
“Oh well, that’s the day so far, and it’s still only noon. If this continues I will be dead by this evening! You see, at the moment, life seems so heavy for me to bear, and I don’t have the courage because everything looks black to me.”
