Brother Martin and the Mice
A bedtime story about Saint Martin de Porres, the kind brother with the broom, who made peace between a convent full of friars and a convent full of mice. For ages 3 to 8, about ten minutes read aloud. His feast day is the 3rd of November.
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A long time ago, in a city called Lima, in a country called Peru, where the mountains come down to meet the sea, there lived a man named Martin.
Martin had a broom.
Every morning, before the sun was up, Martin swept. He swept the long stone halls of the big house where the brothers lived. He swept the kitchen, and the chapel, and the courtyard with the orange trees in it. Sweep, sweep, sweep, went the broom, and the floors were clean, and the brothers woke up and walked on them and did not even notice, which is how you know a floor has been swept very well.
Martin's mother's family had come from Africa, far across the sea, and his father came from Spain, and so Martin's skin was a warm dark brown. Some people in Lima said unkind things to him because of that. Martin did not say unkind things back. He said, "God bless you," and went on sweeping. And because he was always kind, after a while some of the unkind people stopped being unkind, and some of them even came to ask for his help.
Because Martin was a helper. That was what he was for.
When people were sick, Martin knew which plants and medicines would help them, and he sat with them and held their hands. When people were hungry, he found them bread. When people were sad, he listened. And when animals were hurt, a dog with a sore paw, a cat that had been in a fight, a bird with a broken wing, Martin helped them too. "God made them," he said. "So they are my brothers and sisters as well."
Now, one year, the big house had a problem.
The problem was small and grey, and it had whiskers, and a long pink tail.
The problem was mice.
There were mice in the kitchen. There were mice in the cupboards. And worst of all, there were mice in the room where the brothers kept their clean white robes and the soft white cloths for the chapel, and the mice were nibbling little holes in all of them.
Nibble, nibble, nibble.
The brother in charge, who was called the Prior, held up a robe with seventeen holes in it.
"This will not do," said the Prior. "Brother Martin! Bring the poison. We must get rid of the mice."
Martin looked at the robe. He looked at the little holes. And he thought about the mice, who were only hungry, and only small, and did not know anything about robes.
"Father," he said, "may I try something first?"
The Prior sighed. He knew Martin. "One day," he said. "You may have one day."
That night, when the big house was quiet and the moon was shining on the orange trees, Martin went to the linen room with a little candle. He sat down on the floor. He waited.
After a while, a mouse peeked out from behind a pile of cloths. It was a very small mouse, with very round ears.
"Hello, little brother," said Martin softly. "Please don't run away. I need to talk to you."
The mouse did not run away. (Perhaps it had heard about Martin.)
"You and your family are eating the brothers' robes," Martin said, "and the Prior is very upset. If you stay here, something bad will happen to you. But I know you are only hungry. So here is what we will do. Tell all the other mice to follow you out to the end of the garden, to the little shed by the wall. I will bring you food there every day. You will not be hungry, and the robes will be safe, and nobody will be hurt. Will you do that?"
The little mouse looked at Martin for a long moment, with its bright black eyes.
Then it turned around and squeaked.
And out of the cupboards, and out from under the shelves, and out from behind the piles of white cloth, came the mice. Big mice and small mice. Grandmother mice and baby mice. Mice with long tails and mice with short tails. They lined up behind the little mouse with the round ears, and Martin opened the door, and with his candle he walked them all down the long dark hall, pitter, patter, pitter, patter, out into the moonlit garden, past the orange trees, all the way to the little shed by the wall.
"Here you are," said Martin. "Goodnight, little brothers. I will see you in the morning."
And in the morning, the Prior went to the linen room, and there was not one mouse in it. Not one. And there were no new holes in anything.
And at the end of the garden, Martin was kneeling by the little shed with a bowl of breadcrumbs and cheese, and all the mice were having breakfast.
People say that after that, Martin had a dog, and a cat, and a mouse, and that the three of them would eat their dinner out of the same bowl, side by side, and nobody chased anybody. People who saw it could hardly believe it. A dog and a cat and a mouse, all at peace, because Martin had asked them to be.
Martin just smiled. He thought that was how God wanted it to be all along: everybody fed, and nobody chased, and everybody safe.
Then he picked up his broom.
Sweep, sweep, sweep.
Martin lived for a long time in that big house in Lima, helping, and sweeping, and praying. He became a brother there himself, in the white and black robes of the Dominicans. When he died, the whole city came to say goodbye, the rich people and the poor people, the people with light skin and the people with dark skin, the sick people he had cared for and the children he had fed. And now he is in heaven, and we call him Saint Martin de Porres.
His special day is the third of November. People ask him to pray for them when they need help, and especially when they are treated unkindly, or when they are sick, or when they want to learn to be kind to everyone, the way he was.
Even mice.
Goodnight.
A prayer to say together
Saint Martin de Porres,
you swept the floors and fed the hungry
and were kind to everyone God made.
Help me to be a helper too.
Help me to be kind when people are not kind to me.
And please watch over all the little creatures tonight,
and over me, and everyone I love.
Amen.
For grown-ups: what is true in this story
The facts of Martin's life are well recorded. Saint Martin de Porres was born in Lima on 9 December 1579, the son of Juan de Porres, a Spaniard, and Ana Velázquez, a freed woman of African descent from Panama. Because he was of mixed race he faced real prejudice, including from within the Church. He trained with a barber-surgeon, which in his day meant learning practical medicine, and as a teenager he joined the Dominican Convent of the Holy Rosary in Lima as a lay helper, later making his profession as a lay brother. He spent his life caring for the sick and the poor, founded a home for orphans and abandoned children, and was famous for his care for animals. He was a friend of Saint Rose of Lima and Saint John Macías. He died on 3 November 1639 and was canonised by Pope Saint John XXIII in 1962. He is a patron of people of mixed race, of barbers and of public-health workers, and is often invoked for racial harmony and social justice. He is usually shown holding a broom.
The mice are a traditional story, told about him since soon after his death and found in many of his biographies, along with the dog, cat and mouse sharing one bowl. We can't check them the way we check a date, so we have told them here as a story people tell, which is what they are. What they say about him, that his kindness reached even the smallest and least welcome creatures, matches everything else we know.
This story was written by Claude, an AI made by Anthropic, for the Little Lamps collection. It is not an official Church text. Parents and catechists are warmly encouraged to read it first and adapt it for their own children.