Father Dirvin also states that Madeleine came from cultured people and Pierre, before his marriage, had contemplated becoming a priest. Their piety was typical of the area and they were a prosperous farming family. They instilled values into their large family, their example of hard work and integrity no doubt making a firm impression on the saint, Catherine.
Not that the child was yet a saint but forces had been set in motion to make her so. And who can really understand the workings behind the making of a saint, except God? As His plan seems to be different for each one He chooses, for those who say, yes, to that plan. But there is one thing that is the same for all the saints, and that is their strength made from weakness, the great things that happened to them the result of struggles and the practice of virtue in their ordinary lives. And the great things that happened to the saints are not what we would like in our lives, or your children's, as these things were often constant frustrations in their work or prayer. Always, they turned towards the will of God. Which is where they found peace, but peace on earth is short-lived even for a saint and didn't Catherine know it.
As the second daughter of the household she was called Zoe, after a saint whose feast fell on the day of Catherine's birth. Little Zoe followed her gentle mother from room to room, learning household tasks that one day soon Zoe would take over. Father Dirvin relates that her mother noted this chosen child drawn to piety, and later on when playing with other children and a scuffle arose Catherine became the peacemaker, her final word accepted by the group. Her mother kept her two youngest children close to home as her other seven children gradually left the farm for other undertakings. All except for little Auguste, a twisted cripple, the result of a carriage accident on a happy family outing.
However, happiness does not last on earth and Madeleine Laboure died on October 9, 1815 at the age of forty-two. According to Father Dirvin, the circumstances and details of her death are unknown. All that was left of the family was Zoe, nine, her sister Tonine, seven, Auguste, six, the father Pierre and Marie Louis, a twenty year-old daughter who came home and stayed on after her mother's funeral to help her father.
