How Santa Teresita’s parents can help you raise children for heaven

What the husbands Luis and Celia Martin, parents of Saint Teresita of the Child Jesus, reveal to the world is that focusing marriage and family in Jesus Christ produces immeasurable fruits for the salvation of souls.

Many offer advice on the raising of children. Online resources abound and books that promise to know the secret to educate them well. But, for Catholics, there is an incomparable guide: the testimony of the Saints. They illuminate the path we are called to travel and show what happens in our environment when we make Jesus the center of our life.

The Santos Luis and Celia Martin had nine children, of whom four died in childhood. The five daughters who survived hugged religious life and entered the order of Carmelo Barefoot. Observing your life, your words and actions can help any father or mother, regardless of the stage of their way.

What is needed to be a father or mother of one of the most beloved holy of the modern era? How to make faith so alive at home that all children consider and hug the consecrated life? The Martin shows that putting Christ in the center of marriage and the family transforms lives and yields eternal fruits.

Luis was watchmaker and jeweler. Celia directed a lace business. Santa Teresita wrote about them: “The good God gave me a father and a mother more worthy of heaven than from earth.” His daily example deeply marked Teresita and his sisters, because in the midst of ordinary life, they were pointed out.

There are many lessons that we can learn from Martin marriage, but two stand out with particular clarity: be an example of personal prayer y depend radically on God.

The example of prayer of parents

Speaking of his father, Teresita wrote: “I was enough to look at him to know how the saints pray.” After the death of his mother, when he was just four years old, Teresita stuck deeply to her father. His testimony sowed in her the desire to consecrate his life to God.

He also wrote: “Every afternoon he went out with him to walk and we were going to visit the Blessed Sacrament in one church.

These words make it clear that his father not only talked about prayer, but lived it. Teresita perceived the depth of her relationship with Jesus as something real and alive. Luis spoke naturally about faith and led his daughter to those who dedicated his life to prayer. In the Martin family, faith was not a dimension among many, but the heart of all its existence.

Depend radically on Divine Providence

As for the radical trust in God, Celia once wrote: “The good God does not do things halfway. He always gives what we need. So let’s move forward with courage.”

These words come from a woman who suffered multiple diseases and died at 45 years of breast cancer. His firm faith reminds us that, even in pain, we can rely on a God who is faithful and does not love halfway.

The Martin family approach in prayer and confidence in God is clearly reflected in the writings and in the spiritual life of Santa Teresita. As one of the great modern saints, we can say with certainty that the seeds of their “truck” were sown by their parents.

Let’s ask for the intercession of the saints Luis and Celia Martin to become parents who sow those same seeds in their children.

Because then a new generation will arise: a generation that puts Jesus in the center; A generation whose confidence in the resurrected Jesus will allow him to renew the world in his name.

Translated and adapted by ACI Press. Originally published in National Catholic Register.