Welcome to our daily Rosary meditation. Let's begin in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Let's call to mind all those we've promised to pray for.

Louis Martin, the Father of St. Terres, the Little Flower, and Doctor of the Church was also the father of four other

daughters who became religious sisters. That's pretty amazing. Have five daughters become

nuns? One, one of the greatest saints in the church? Lewis was a highly intelligent man with a strong work ethic and he was a devout Catholic

and that made him an excellent husband, father, and provider for the family.

Sadly, his wife Zellie died when Little Terez was just four years old,

but Lewis cared for his daughters

wonderfully in her absence. However, when the five daughters were just

teenagers and shortly after T had entered religious life at 15 years of age,

Lewis suffered a series of strokes and then full-blown dementia. Only Saline and Leony were left to care for their

father and they did their best but he had the habit of escaping late at night.

So finally as a last resort they had to place him in an old monastery that had been transformed into a place for care

for people in his condition.

The suffering of the family was increased by the friends and neighbors who said that

the daughters had confined him just to be rid of him.

This was a great trial for the whole family, but neither Lewis nor his

daughters viewed his dementia with bitterness or anger toward God. Rather, they understood it as a mission that God had entrusted

to Lewis to be united to the suffering of Christ for his own spiritual purification and for the

salvation of many souls. Through his suffering he had become a co-redeemer with Christ, as

St Paul says in Colosians 124. Still, this was a tremendous trial for the family. In her autobiography, Torres writes,

I did not foresee then the trial awaiting us. I did not know that on February 12th, one month after I had received the religious habit,

...