July 8--Sts. Priscilla and Aquila, Holy Married Couple

Sts. Aquila and Priscilla

Pope Benedict XVI gave a General Audience on Saints Priscilla and Aquila, spouses, in February of 2007:

“Based on the information in our possession, this married couple played a very active role in the post-Paschal origins of the Church.

“When Paul wrote the First Letter to the Corinthians from Ephesus, together with his own greeting he explicitly sent those of ‘Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house’ (16: 19).

“Hence, we come to know the most important role that this couple played in the environment of the primitive Church: that of welcoming in their own house the group of local Christians when they gathered to listen to the Word of God and to celebrate the Eucharist.

“In the house of Aquila and Priscilla, therefore, the Church gathered, the convocation of Christ, which celebrates here the Sacred Mysteries.

“This couple in particular demonstrates how important the action of Christian spouses is. When they are supported by the faith and by a strong spirituality, their courageous commitment for the Church and in the Church becomes natural. The daily sharing of their life prolongs and in some way is sublimated in the assuming of a common responsibility in favour of the Mystical Body of Christ, even if just a little part of it. Thus it was in the first generation and thus it will often be.

“A further lesson we cannot neglect to draw from their example: every home can transform itself into a little church. Not only in the sense that in them must reign the typical Christian love made of altruism and of reciprocal care, but still more in the sense that the whole of family life, based on faith, is called to revolve around the singular lordship of Jesus Christ.”

Sts. Priscilla and Aquila, pray for us!

July 12—Sts. Louis Martin and Azélie-Marie “Zélie” Guérin, Holy Man and Holy Woman

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They are the only married couple canonized together.  Both tried to enter religious life but were rejected.  They married three months after meeting each other.  Both entered marriage with the intention of living as St. Joseph and St. Mary did.  Nonetheless, they did want children and their confessor guided them.  So, they became parents to nine children with five daughters surviving and eventually entering religious life, one of whom is St. Thérèse of Lisieux.  They were successful in business; Louis being a watchmaker who quit his career to manage his wife’s more successful lace-making business.  St. Zelie died of breast cancer at the age of 45, while St. Louis died from a heart attack after a lengthy illness brought about by strokes when he was 70, surviving his wife by 17 years.  

However, there was more to their lives than just living, working, raising a family, and dying.  They were holy and devoted their lives to God through living, working, raising a family, and dying.  We know quite a bit about them from his 16 letters and her 216 letters.  She wrote to one daughter:  “As for me, I wished to have many children so that I could raise them for Heaven.”  She had great love and affection for her husband as well:  “I always get what I want without a fight; there's still a month before you go (on retreat); that's enough time for me to change your father's mind ten times.”  The years after her death were hard on him, especially after the strokes, when he suffered delirium.  When he could, he would repeat:  “Everything for the greater glory of God,” and “I have never been humiliated in my life, I need to be humiliated.”  Here are models for modern families!  Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin, pray for us.

*https://www.ncregister.com/blog/the-holy-lives-and-passions-of-sts-louis-and-zelie-martin