Couple Saints

Sts Zelie and Luis Martin, canonized at the Vatican in 2015.

On this Valentine’s Day I’d like to honor some couples who were canonized or beatified as we honor also World Marriage Day today. October 18, 2015 was a happy day for all couples as the first married couple was canonzied, Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower. Seven years earlier, on Oct. 19, 2008, Benedict XVI had beatified them — together. The Martins went daily to Mass, regularly to confession, regularly to Communion, and carried out corporal and spiritual works of mercy and charity, especially helping needy families and the sick. After Zélie died, Louis cared for their daughters. The couple had another four other children who died at a very young age. A few years earlier, Oct. 21, 2001, to be exact, the first married couple to be beatified together were Blessed Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi of Italy. At the beatification, St. John Paul II said in his homily: “Drawing on the word of God and the witness of the saints, the blessed couple lived an ordinary life in an extraordinary way. Among the joys and anxieties of a normal family, they knew how to live an extraordinarily rich spiritual life.” Two of their sons became priests and concelebrated their beatification Mass with John Paul II, who affirmed that “daily Communion was at the center, to which was added filial devotion to the Virgin Mary, invoked by praying the Rosary every night.” Married couples becoming saints is not a new phenomenon. In the New Testament, there are Joseph and Mary, Elizabeth and Zechariah, Joachim and Anne, and Aquila and Priscilla. Converts to Christianity, they appear in four New Testament books and were closely connected to St. Paul, who visited them and ended up staying with them since they, like himself, were tentmakers. Paul mentions this holy couple in several epistles. Writing in Romans (16:3-5), he said, “Greet Priscilla and Aquila, who work with me in Christ Jesus, and who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles have reason to be grateful to them.” May we have many more holy couples who are beatified and canonized, those who lived a holy life and in our minds and hearts are already saints, including my own parents, John and Mary. Happy Valentines Day to everyone.