Inspiration from the Saints, page 9
Like Our Lady and St. Joseph, Louis and Marie decided to live a life of celibacy within marriage. They persevered in this for about a year before their priest persuaded them to consummate their union. They had nine children, four of whom died in childhood. The other five all entered religious life. Anyone who has read St. Thérèse’s autobiography Story of a Soul is charmed by its glimpse into a pious Christian home overflowing with affection (though Zélie died early in St. Thérèse’s life). Interestingly, considering that saints Louis and Marie lost four children at a young age, both of the miracles approved as part of their canonization process involved the healing of newborn babies. Zélie took to motherhood; once, hearing that a woman in the neighborhood had given birth to triplets, she cried out: “What a happy mother! If I only had twins! But I shall never know that joy!”
Both of these saintly spouses rose at five a.m., and attended 5:30 Mass every morning. Louis was particularly austere; he did not smoke or drink alcohol, sit with his legs crossed, eat between meals, or sit beside the fire unless he really needed to. He was known for his spontaneous charity; once, he handed his hat around at a train station to raise funds for a homeless epileptic, adding a substantial donation himself. The collection was enough for the epileptic to afford medical treatment, for the first time ever. On another occasion, Louis brought a drunken workman, who was lying down in the street, home to his house, giving him a stern lecture in the morning.
His wife could also be stern when it was necessary. Although her daughters remember her sweetness, there were occasions when she put her foot down. Once, when a maid dressed her daughter Céline as a boy as a part of some game, Zélie—who considered this immodest—stopped the game and gave the maid a dressing-down. On another occasion, she noticed a friend who had been playing with her daughters calling one of them into the garden for a secretive talk. She reproached this friend, sent her home, and warned her daughters to be on the lookout for bad influences. Both these examples of discipline might be considered “repressive” today—yet it was this mother who raised a saint, and other holy children.
There is something especially inspiring in the thought of a saintly married couple. Jokes, fiction and casual conversation tend to paint marriage as a “ball and chain,” even if it is seen as a highly desirable ball and chain. The best that can be hoped for in marriage is that the man and woman will get along most of the time—or so we might think, from how it is spoken about. The husband and wife’s priorities and interests are assumed to clash—the stereotype is of the husband ignoring his wife while he watches football (or plays computer games), or of the wife forcing her husband to stand for hours in a clothes shop, bored out of his mind. In our age of feminism, and some of the ugly reactions against feminism on the male side, the idea that the sexes really are complementary is often difficult to believe. We might accept the saintly marriage of St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin, if we are Catholics—but then, they had a special mission from God, and presumably they were given all the grace needed to fulfill it. But when we read about a saintly married couple from the nineteenth century, it reassures us that husbands and wives really can be companions, and fellow pilgrims on the quest for holiness.
As well as this, the picture of a saintly family (as the Martins were saintly) shows that sanctity is not a freak, a mere flash in the pan. It is not the case that a saint would be impossible to live with, or would not fit in with domestic life. If a household of saints can exist, so could a society of saints, despite the frequent claim that, if Christianity were actually followed, society would fall apart. (This is how the Irish writer Anthony Cronin put it: “The truth is that Jesus Christ was a classical anarchist and, whether or not he desired an immediate transformation of society along anarchist lines, he enjoined the kind of anarchism on his followers which, if they were sufficiently numerous, would bring it about.”)2 The beatitudes of Jesus—turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, and so forth—are (such critics suggest) so radical that they would make society untenable in its current form. A household is a society in miniature; and the household of the St. Thérèse’s family seems to have worked perfectly well.
For parents raising children, or those who hope to be parents one day, Zélie’s approach to teaching her children religion may be of interest. Instead of burdening their minds with abstract theological concepts, she told them to pray and to make sacrifices for particular purposes—for instance, to get a deceased relative out of purgatory sooner. She urged them to do good deeds as “pearls in their crowns,” leading them to think of heavenly things rather than earthly things from the very start.
Louis and Zélie were not the first couple to be beatified. That distinction must go to Luigi Beltrame Quattrocchi (died 1951) and his wife Maria (died 1965), who were beatified by St. John Paul II in 2001. They were an Italian couple who were organizers in many Catholic organizations, and who were also members of the Third Order of St. Francis (a lay division of the Franciscans). Like St. Gianna Beretta Molla (died 1962), another married saint who famously sacrificed her life so that her unborn child might live, Maria went ahead with a difficult pregnancy which might have resulted in her own death. Indeed, she was told she had only a five per cent chance of living if she went ahead with the birth. However, both mother and child survived it in full health. The Quattrocchi household was consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and recited a family rosary every day. While the parents of St. Thérèse lived a celibate marriage at the beginning, and only consummated it later, Maria and Luigi had quite the opposite path; they embraced celibacy after twenty years of marriage, in a bid to draw closer to God.
When it comes to happily married saints, the story of St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207–1231) is particularly charming. She was the daughter of the King of Hungary, and was married in an arranged marriage to Ludwig, Count of Thuringia and Hesse (in central Germany). Though the marriage was an arranged one, it was full of love. This is how one writer describes it:
Elizabeth’s love for her husband was the natural fruit of the pure friendship which began in their childhood. Even after their marriage, they addressed each other as “dear brother” and “dear sister.” It was not, however, what one might call a purely spiritual love. Those who regard that sort of love as a necessary adjunct of sanctity should read an account of their married life. They were passionately devoted to each other. No romance could be more touching. She could scarcely bear being parted from him when he went on a journey or on a military expedition; to serve the Emperor or to make a visit to Rome. To quote from Ida Condenhove’s study of the Saint:
“Then she cannot be parted from him, follows him for days in all weathers; puts on widow’s weeds. So passionately does she cling to the sight of the beloved, so much does she hunger for him, so deeply even to the heart’s core does she know, does she feel, the bliss of remaining for work or rest, in the warm, living presence of a beloved being. And boundless is the passion of her joy, her starved longing for his tenderness, when he returns—impetuously, heedless of his retinue she throws herself into his arms and cannot let go of him, so insatiable is her joy at the sight of him.”3
Indeed, it is said that St. Elisabeth’s affection for her husband could be excessive:
According to some of her medieval biographers, the possibility that her passionate love for her husband might make her forget God was impressed upon her mind one day at Mass. She found herself gazing admiringly at her husband, who was attired in festal array. She forgot where she was, until the bell rang for the consecration. She glanced at the altar just as the priest was elevating the host, and perceived that it was bleeding! Overwhelmed with remorse, she lingered long in the Church weeping and disconsolate over the sign that had been given her.4
Even during her marriage, St. Elisabeth devoted herself to charitable works. Once she was found cutting and washing the hair of a man who had a disease of the scalp. After her husband died in the Crusades, she founded a hospital and served the poor in it, wearing the habit of a Franciscan tertiary. She died at the age of twenty-four.
What is appealing about this picture of a happy marriage is the affection to be found within it. St. Elisabeth, it would seem, was “silly” about her husband. Saints may sometimes seem inhuman in their ferocious charity towards humanity in general. It is reassuring to know that they can also feel enormous affection towards particular people.
Another instance of a saint’s happy marriage is that of St. Jeanne de Chantal (1572–1641), foundress of the Congregation of the Visitation, an order of enclosed religious women. As Ronda de Sola Chervin, author of Treasury of Women Saints, writes: “At twenty she married the Baron de Chantal and had a very happy marriage. They had four children. After just eight years of marriage, Jeanne’s beloved husband was killed in a hunting accident. The interior experiences Jeanne had at that time was to color her future. Her inordinate, prostrating grief of four month’s duration led her to realize the passing nature of things and to attach herself all the more intensely to the Lord Jesus.”5
Just like St. Marie of the Sacred Heart, St. Jane Frances de Chantal faced opposition from her teenage son when she entered religious life. Indeed, she literally had to step over his body as she left her home for the last time, as he prostrated himself in front of her. If you think that is harsh, perhaps we should remember the words of Our Lord: “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37).
There are many other examples of saints who lived happy married lives before entering religious life. St. Joaquina of Spain (1783–1854), future foundress of the Carmelite Sisters of Charity, yearned to be a nun even when she was a little girl. However, her parents arranged a marriage for her with a lawyer of noble birth named Teodoro. After they were married, Teodoro revealed to her that he, too, had wished to enter religious life. However, they embraced the marital state, and had nine children together before Teodoro died. Their marriage was a pious and contented one; they attended Mass and said the rosary together every day.
The first saint to be born in the United States of America, Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774–1821), was happily married to a partner in a merchant shipping business. They had five children, but she was left a widow at the age of twenty-nine. At this time she was an Episcopalian, but after a trip to Italy, she began to be drawn to the Catholic faith. When she finally converted, she faced bitter hostility from former friends. She went on to form the American Sisters of Charity.
So far, aside from our saintly couples, we have looked at the marriages of female saints. A male saint who enjoyed a happy marriage was St. Louis of France (1214–1270). St. Louis must have been one of the most blessed men in history; as well as becoming a saint and having a happy marriage, he was king of France. His death, though heroic, was less happy (at least from a worldly perspective); he died of dysentery in Tunisia, on the Eighth Crusade.
King Louis’s marriage was an arranged one; his mother found him a wife in Margaret of Provence, a woman of notable piety. Despite having arranged the marriage herself, the saint’s mother grew jealous of Margaret, on account of King Louis’s devotion to her. They had eleven children. It was not always an easy marriage—at one point, King Louis asked the Pope to nullify an oath his queen had persuaded their son to make, a vow of obedience to his mother until the age of thirty—but it was marked by a courtesy and deference which might be thought surprising for its time. When the King was captured, his queen became the only woman to lead a crusade when she negotiated for his release. We can see St. Louis’s courtesy in the following passage, again from Selden Delany:
Throughout their married life, Louis never entered upon any serious undertaking without first gaining the permission of his wife. Father R.P. Surin, of the Society of Jesus, writing in 1652, praises this habit of the French king as exemplifying the quality of wisdom in conjugal love: “It is reported of St. Louis that he never disposed of his person without taking the advice of Madame Marguerite of Provence, his wife; and that when in captivity in the Holy Land, when he was treating of his ransom, before giving his final word, he demanded the privilege of speaking to the queen, who had accompanied him in the voyage of the Levant. Upon the infidels expressing their surprise, he replied that he could conclude nothing without her, because she was his Lady, and as such he owed her this respect. To act and speak in that way proved the wise love of the holy king for the queen his wife.”6
Of course, not all married saints have had happy marriages.
Another foundress of a religious order, the Canadian St. Margaret D’Youville (1701–1771), had a disastrous marriage. (She was educated at a school founded by St. Marie of the Incarnation, about whom we have read already.) This marriage is described by her biographer, Mother Mary G. Dufin:
Among the many suitors who disputed her hand, Marguerite favored Mr. Francois Madeleine D’Youville, a handsome, fascinating gentleman from Montreal. Their courtship was short.... She soon found that her husband was minus all the qualities necessary to ensure a livelihood for her children and to make a home for a family. He was extravagant, vain and spent his fortune in gambling and dissipation. He became hard and cruel and abandoned his sweet young wife to loneliness and the vexations of an irritable, jealous mother-in-law. Though anguish and fear for the future of her little ones filled Marguerite’s soul, still her mother’s heart found comfort in the caresses of the five little darlings God had set her. The clouds hung heavy and black over her lonely home, but soon a ray of divine light pierced the darkness, revealing to her generous soul the boundless love of the Eternal Father for his earthly children and the inexhaustible treasures His Providence has in store for those who trust Him alone.... Eight years of married life had elapsed when her husband, still in the prime of his thirty years, was suddenly stricken, and after a few days’ illness succumbed on July 4, 1730. It was at this trying moment that Madame D’Youville gave proof of her wonderful virtue. Far from rejoicing that the cross was lifted from her weary shoulders, she sincerely grieved for the husband to whom she had vowed her love and fidelity but who, alas, had proved himself so unworthy. 7
When St. Marie was widowed in 1730, she had to open a shop to support her two sons—she had lost four other children in infancy. Despite all this, she soldiered on, and God reaped an abundant harvest from her adversities; both of her sons eventually became priests, and she herself went on to found the order of the Grey Nuns, whose various offshoots now operate in four countries, operating hospitals, women’s shelters, and other institutions.
The married life of Blessed Paola Gambera-Costa (1473–1515) is a combination of suffering and redemption. This Italian noblewoman longed to be a nun, but her parents arranged a marriage to a nobleman who lived a lavish lifestyle. He later acquired a mistress, even inviting her to live in their castle with them. He ridiculed Paola for her charitable works, which led the couples’ servants to ridicule her as well. Paola—who had joined the Third Order of St. Francis—showed her forgiveness by nursing her husband’s mistress when she fell ill and died. This led to her husband’s conversion, and for the last four years of his life the couple lived in harmony. Early in her marriage, Blessed Paola vowed never to criticize her husband, and she kept to her vow through all their difficulties.
Marriage for the saints, then, seems to have been not so different from marriage for the rest of us—joyous for some, tragic for others, a mixed bag for yet others. Perhaps this chapter will inspire married people to believe that they, too, can seek sanctity—whether their marriage is happy, unhappy, or a combination of the two.
1 Selden Delany, Married Saints (Westminster: Ayer Co. Pub., 1935), 1.
2 Anthony Cronin, An Irish Eye (Dingle: Brandon Book Publishers, 1985), 73.
3 Selden Delany, Married Saints (Westminster: Ayer Co. Pub., 1935), 95–96.
4 Ibid., 96–97.
5 Ronda de Sola Chervin, Treasury of Woman Saints (Cork: The Mercier Press, 1991), 77.
6 Selden Delany, Married Saints (Westminster: Ayer Co. Pub., 1935), 113.
7 Mother Mary G. Duffin, A Heroine of Charity: Venerable Mother d’Youville: Foundress of the Sisters of Charity Grey Nuns, Montreal, 1701–1777 (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1938), 34–36.
Family
St. Pappin of Ballymun
St. Benedict and St. Scholastica • St. Francis of Assisi
St. Thomas Aquinas • St. Rose of Lima
St. Germaine de Pibrac • Blessed Laura Vicuña
St. Thomas More
You think your family is bad? Wait till you hear about the saints’ families!
Actually, the experience of the saints with their families is very similar to the experience of the saints with marriage—good, bad and everything in between. However, there does seem to be a surprising number of cases in which saints have faced strong hostility and opposition from their own families. But perhaps this is not so surprising, after all. The Holy Spirit often calls saints to take radical steps, steps which are (sometimes understandably) opposed by their parents, spouses, siblings, children and other relatives. Saints do extraordinary things, and this can often appear to be attention-seeking, or even a symptom of mental illness. The goodness of a saint can make others all-too-conscious of their sins and imperfections—something which often leads to jealousy and resentment. And (although it is not fashionable to mention this) we must take into account that Satan and his demons are always working to take advantage of family tensions and conflicts.
Jesus himself warned his followers that his demands might cause domestic upheaval: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:34–37).
