Today I want to tell you stories about two different married couples. The first story involves a young married couple named Ali and Chris. They were out to eat with their children when they noticed an elderly gentleman at a nearby table eating alone. They sent their kids over to ask if he wanted some company, and then they spent the rest of the meal sharing a table with him and telling stories. The old man spoke to them about his wife who was now in a nursing home. At the end of their meal, Ali and Chris were getting ready to pay for their meal and the older man’s, when they learned that someone else in the restaurant noticed what they had done and had paid for all of their meals.
There are so many layers to this beautiful story. On one hand, Ali and Chris clearly get it when it comes to marriage. How beautiful for them to teach their children the lesson of respect for their elders. And when this young family took the time to eat with this older man, he gave a beautiful example of marital love that endures even when husband and wife aren’t able to be together in their frailty. How awesome! On top of that, almost as if to give them encouragement, God blessed them by providing for their dinner through another person at the restaurant!
There is so much power in married love. When we see spousal love lived out well, it can and should capture our hearts. Today Jesus speaks about the importance of married love and gives a hard teaching in order to safeguard the Sacrament of Marriage which He would institute. On a human level, marriage is the coming together of two persons in love. From the very beginning, as we saw in the first reading, God designed man and woman to be complementary, making them fit to be spouses and to come together in the one-flesh union of marriage. When that love is lived out well, it can inspire us. I heard the story of Ali and Chris through social media, so I’m not sure if they or their benefactor are Christian, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they are. What Jesus does with marriage is he elevates that great human relationship and makes it a metaphor for expressing His unfailing love for His Bride, the Church. In the Sacrament of Marriage, what began as a human gift blessed by God from the beginning, now takes on more depth and power. The grace of Christian marriage is something that blesses spouses, any children God may give them, and all those around them.
Louis and Zelie Martin are a great example of that overflowing blessing coming from the Sacrament of Matrimony. Louis and Zelie met and wed in 1858. They lived a celibate married life together for a year until a priest convinced them to embrace God’s invitation to be open to new life. Together they welcomed 9 children into the world, four of whom died in infancy. Their five surviving daughters each ended up answering God’s call to religious life, which might have come as a burden to some parents, but not the Martins. Louis would later say, “It is a great, great honor for me that the Good Lord desires to take all of my children. If I had anything better, I would not hesitate to offer it to him.” He lost his wife to breast cancer and lived a solitary life after all of his daughters entered the convent, but never stopped trusting in the Lord. Louis even spent some time in a psychiatric hospital because of the difficulties he faced in life, but never lost hope.
The love and sacrifice of Louis and Zelie bore great fruit. Their daughter Therese entered the convent at the unusually young age of 15 after interceding to the pope himself. She later went on to write her spiritual autobiography, “Story of a Soul,” now considered a spiritual classic. You may know Therese under the title, “the Little Flower.” She was canonized St. Therese of Lisieux in 1925 by Pope Pius XI and is now recognized as a doctor of the Church, meaning that her writings and example have made a significant contribution to the church. We just celebrated her feast day a few days ago on October 1st. St. Therese once wrote: “God gave me a father and a mother who were more worthy of heaven than of earth.” She didn’t realize how right she was.
In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI beatified Louis and Zelie Martin, and Pope Francis canonized them in 2015. Saints Louis and Zelie show us what happens when God’s grace flows out through a married couple both to their children and to all those they meet. They remind us that holiness is a call not just for priests and religious brothers and sisters, but for all of us.
This call to holiness can at times be daunting. We live in a world where all too often, married people come under attack from so many sources. But just because there are temptations, difficulties and falls, this doesn’t mean we should give up. Jesus invites us to lean into His grace. The grace of the Sacrament of Marriage is a lasting grace meant to help couples live out their promise to be true in good times and bad, sickness and health. Married couples like Louis and Zelie, and Ali and Chris in the restaurant, give us living images of what the grace of the Sacrament can do! And when we fall short of that grace, Jesus waits for us in the Sacrament of Reconciliation to heal us, bind up our wounds, and strengthen us to live out His call more fully in this difficult world.
I know that some of us are all too familiar with the pain of divorce. Jesus speaks out against divorce and remarriage because He wants to defend that Sacramental bond that only death can break. Sometimes, in the broken world in which we live, a civil divorce is the necessary means of separating spouses who can no longer share a common life together. If this is the case, Jesus has grace for those spouses to continue to love each other from a distance, even perpetually. And it may be the case that sometimes there were blocks to the Sacramental grace of marriage taking hold from the very beginning. Going through the Catholic annulment process can help to discern if that was the case. An annulment can help bring healing and a path forward for those who outwardly had a Catholic wedding, but had impediments, interior blocks to that wedding bringing a Sacramental bond into effect. If you are in that situation of divorce, exploring the annulment process can help to bring clarity and closure to what may not have been a sacramental marriage from the start.
The Lord sets a high standard for marriage because of its power to bring about great good in the Church and the world, both for spouses, their children and others. Think about how many married couples have had a positive impact on your life. There are probably many. Praise God for them! Marriage is an incredible Sacrament that has the power to manifest Jesus’ spousal love for the Church in a concrete way. Your marriage can do that, too. It can bring the light of Christ’s love from the Cross to the darkness that so many struggle with in the world. Your marriage can be the one to bring the world the next St. Therese of Lisieux! How awesome would that be?
+ Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of marriage that You established at the beginning of human history and raised to a Sacrament through your Son. Jesus, please bless and protect married spouses in the Church. Help them with your grace to be faithful to the vows of their marriage and make them shining examples of love and service in the world. Holy Spirit, enkindle the fire of Your love deep in the hearts of those called to marriage so that their holiness can inspire the children they may have, their friends, family members and all those they will encounter. Help them to reveal to others the spousal love in the Heart of Jesus, their divine Bridegroom. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen. +