Tag Archives: Family Life & Parenting

Till Death Do Us Part

The following is an excerpt from the book It Is Well: Life in the Storm by Chris Faddis, shared with permission from the author and Carmel Communications. In his book, Chris writes about finding out on Easter Sunday 2011 that his wife Angela had terminal colon cancer. She died 17 months later at age 32, leaving behind her grieving husband and two young children. It Is Well is a story of grief, love, loss, and faith.

To purchase It Is Well, please visit http://itiswellbook.com.

I sat with Angela as much as I could, holding her hand, playing music and praying many prayers, yet I would find myself feeling very restless and anxious. There is no more helpless feeling than sitting by a loved one’s side waiting for them to die. I felt as if I should be doing something. To move away from the instincts of trying to help her live, of doing everything I could to fight this disease, towards suddenly giving up was painful and heart wrenching. I had discerned our decision to move Angela home with hospice care with the help of very knowledgeable friends who walked me through the process of making this decision. It was clear that Angela’s body was in the pre-active dying process, and that there really was nothing we could do to stop it. One friend posed the decision this way: “At some point it is time to surrender to God and if she is in the pre-active dying process, it might be that time to accept death.”

I was confident that we had made the right choice, but as I sat in her room, I felt helpless and useless. I would rethink my decisions and question myself. “Am I giving up too soon?” This wasn’t helped, of course, by a few well-meaning people who voiced that they thought I was giving up hope. So in my restlessness and uneasiness I would pace, find things to do and find myself getting frustrated. As I would come back into the room, I would look at Angela’s peaceful face, and I would realize that my only job was to just be present to her and to wait patiently with her for death. When I finally surrendered to this reality, that my only job was to just be present to her, I felt an incredible peace.

hands

Chris Faddis holding his wife Angela’s hand

One particular afternoon, just a few days before she died, I sat with Angela and held her hand as I read to her. She would occasionally look up and listen or smile. I would tell her how much I loved and cherished her and she would respond with a faint response. At one point she whispered, “I always knew you would cherish me to the end.” As she fell back to sleep, I looked down at our hands and her ring was missing. It had fallen off several times, as Angela was so frail that it was now too large for her finger. She had placed it on the table next to her bed. I picked up the ring and placed it on her finger and held her hand again. I gazed upon our hands, reflecting on that ring and what it symbolized, on our hands and the symbolism of husband and wife walking hand in hand through life. I thought about the first time we held hands. It was on our first date to Cirque du Soleil. At one point Angela had moved her hand near mine and then gently touched my hand. I took her hand till the crowd erupted in applause and a standing ovation. Angela never admitted to holding my hand that night. She would say, “I did not hold your hand that night. I wasn’t ready.” I would laugh and remind her of the many things she did during that time of friendship – when she supposedly did not want to date yet – like lean on me, touch my hand, and even press her cheek against mine for a long time, as if to wait for a kiss. She would laugh at me and say, “Whatever, I was not that forward.” I then thought about when we did finally hold hands after we were “officially” dating. There is something remarkable about holding hands when you are falling in love.

Many people say it’s in the kiss that you know, or it’s love at first sight; I tend to think it’s in the hands. Holding hands was not always romantic, but holding hands was our constant connection to one another. Even when in an argument or a difficult conversation, we would often hold hands. When Angela was struggling with depression, I held her hands many times just to calm her, to soothe her, to help her feel supported. Angela, too, would hold my hand when I was having a hard day or down about my job situation or our financial hurdles. A simple touch of her hand would instantly soothe me.

Through Angela’s cancer journey, holding hands had become our primary form of intimacy. Whether Angela was receiving chemotherapy, waiting for surgery or simply resting at home, we would spend lots of time holding hands, talking, praying and simply being present. As I held her hand during this seventeen-month journey, I would often squeeze and hold her hand very tight as I thought about losing her, as if I could somehow hold her tight enough to keep her from dying. Now sitting in our room as she lie in wait for death, holding her hand was literally all I had left. She could hardly speak or even acknowledge my words; I simply had to hold her hand to communicate my love and to be sure she knew she was not alone. Indeed, I would be there till the end.

As I thought about her hands, I also thought about that ring, the one I gave her as I asked her to be my bride and the ring that stood as a symbol of this life-long Sacrament of Marriage. With that ring came our promise to love one another fully and completely until death came for one of us. The wedding ring speaks of permanence, of commitment, of an unbreakable bond between a husband and wife. Yet that ring could not bind her any longer; it could not keep her from dying, and it certainly could not keep her from heaven.

As I sat in this moment, I wanted to capture our hands one last time. I took a picture that I later shared. It is the image of us holding hands with Angela’s ring as the focal point of the image.
 A week or so earlier I had verbally told Angela that she was free to go home. My words on that day were, “You took my hand and you have loved me well. When Jesus comes and offers you his hand, you are free to go.” After taking the picture of our hands I felt I should say those words again. So I wrote them down and then read them to Angela:

“Till Death”

As if I could keep you longer, I placed this ring back on your finger today. It had fallen off a few times.

Oh, that this ring could keep you here longer. It is a mark of our commitment; it is my promise to love you with my whole heart, and yet there is a love greater than mine that will take you soon. How could this mere piece of gold compare to the love of God, which loves you completely, wholly, and perfectly?

It cannot, so I will hold your hand a little while longer. I will keep putting this ring back on your finger. But when the time comes and He asks you for your hand, you are free to go. Go to that perfect love which makes all things new. Go and be whole again. For now, till death do we part.

This Is My Body

Did you know that marriage is the one sacrament that priests do not administer?

When I married Stacey 15 years ago, the priest led the ceremony and gave us cues as to what to say, but his role, in essence, was to witness—more properly, “to receive”—our vows to love each other till death. He stood as witness with the whole community of faith to hear us say those words to each other, and in the name of the Church he received and blessed what we had done.

This means that the true ministers of the sacrament of marriage are the spouses. I minister the sacrament of marriage to Stacey, and she ministers it to me. Not only did we minister the sacrament of marriage to one another on our wedding day, but we also ministered the sacrament of marriage to one another on the day after the wedding. And the day after that.

In fact, every action and behavior of our married life together is an expression of the sacrament of marriage. When I fill a hot-water bottle to heat the bed for Stacey on a cold night, I am ministering the sacrament of marriage to her. In another 40 years of married life, God-willing, when Stacey parses the week’s medications into daily segments for me, she will be ministering the sacrament of marriage to me.

When we are talking to couples preparing for marriage, this sounds like a beautiful vision and ideal. And it does transform the way we see the life we share together. On the inside, however—in the day-to-day, boots-on-the-ground reality of family life—love takes shape in messy, demanding, frustrating ways. It often feels like death by 1,000 cuts, and that is because love is sacrifice—it means giving yourself away for the good of another.

Sometimes I envy the martyrs who could give their lives to love in one final decision. Marriage presents me with 349 decisions to sacrifice myself every single day. It makes me wonder why anyone would choose this life. It seems like a small miracle that people go on marrying and raising children at all.

Certainly our culture does not value self-denial. Our economy is built upon consumption, and advertising and media barrage us with the idea that autonomy and status are paths to happiness. Love in marriage and family life is an emptying and a binding, and it stands in stark contrast to what we see on TV.

For someone looking for freedom, emptying and binding sounds like the last thing they could want. Yet, paradoxically, generations of faithful people have given themselves away in marriage and family life and found exactly that—freedom.

Freedom is a slippery word, especially in America. True freedom is the freedom to grow in goodness, to become the people we were created to be. And because we are created in the image of God, who is love, we are most truly ourselves, happy, and free when we love.

That is to say, we experience true freedom when we discover that we are becoming holy because we are offering love to our spouses and children. Our culture twists that notion to try to fool us into thinking that freedom is about the open road with a new Chevy Silverado, but that is just silly.

The good news is that we participate in the mystery of God when we love, and this brings us new life. Marriage and family life is a way for us to give our lives over to love 349 ways every day, and it gives us glimpses of heaven every single day, too. To see our children love one another, for example, is just a miracle. There is no way that on my own I can account for the magnitude of that kind of goodness.

Now I’m not saying that every moment in our household is accompanied by a chorus of alleluias. The bulk of our experience is filled with the mundane: getting kids to school, working, making dinner, doing dishes, cleaning the house, shopping for groceries, and so on. But I don’t know of any life that isn’t full of the mundane.

God wants to be discovered within our human experience, not in some abstract ideal. Stacey and I have certainly discovered the truth that marriage is a school for love—that we are working out our salvation with one another, helping each other get to heaven.

This is the kernel of truth behind what we discerned when we decided to get married—we knew that we were at our best together. I knew that a life with Stacey would make me a better person than I could become on my own. A decade and a half later, I’m utterly convinced of this fact—Stacey calls me to growth and encourages me to continue striving for perfection. I’ll never reach that perfection in this world, but sharing a life with her gives me a concrete way to pursue holiness.

As humans, we are tied to sense and corporeality—if we can’t see, smell, taste, touch, or hear something, it is difficult for us to grasp it. Marriage and family life allow us to experience love with our senses. Yesterday, for example, love smelled like toothpaste, steaming vegetables, strawberry-scented shampoo, and popcorn.

Though sex is a part of the physicality of love in marriage, it is a very small part. Mostly, we communicate and care for each other’s bodies—we wash children’s bodies, we feed each other’s bodies with shared meals, we transport bodies to and from school and work and activities, we nurse sick bodies back to health and help tired bodies rest. It was the same with Jesus—he made his body an instrument of love. He still does.

In fact, the Eucharist is the best way for us as spouses and parents to connect our 349 acts of love each day with the one act of love that God has given the world in his Son. We can say with the priest, who repeats these words from Jesus himself: “This is my body, given up for you.”

Married Saint: Bl. Ceferino Gimenez Malla

Born: August 26, 1861
Died: August 9, 1936 (aged 74)
Feast Day: May 4
Patronage: Romani and Sinti peoples

Born in Spain to a Catholic Romani (Gypsy) family, Ceferino Gimenez Malla (also known as “El Pele,” “the Strong One” or “the Brave One”) lived much of his early life as a nomad. As such, little is know about his upbringing.

At 18 he married Teresa Castro (also a Romani) in a traditional Roma ceremony. Their union was later validated by the Catholic Church in 1912. They were married for forty years until her death in 1922.  Though they had no children themselves, Ceferino and Teresa adopted her orphaned niece Pepita in 1912.

Ceferino and Teresa eventually settled in Barbastro where he worked as a horse trader. Known for his honesty and industriousness, he became a successful businessman and helped make peace among the Kalòs (Spanish nomads) and resolve their disputes with others. His natural goodness and virtue led him deeper into his relationship with Christ.

Although illiterate, Ceferino became a catechist, teaching the children about Christ through storytelling and exhorting them to pray daily. He became a daily communicant and was known for his special affection for the rosary. He became a member of the Franciscan Third Order, the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, and participated in night adoration.

In 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, Ceferino was arrested for defending a Catholic priest who had been arrested. Imprisoned at a local monastery and advised to give up his rosary in order to save his life, Ceferino fervently continued his prayers. On the day of his execution, As the firing squad prepared to kill him, Ceferino held his rosary and cried out, “Long live Christ the King!” He was executed for his faith along with other priests, brothers, and lay persons and buried in a mass grave.

Ceferino Gimenez Malla was beatified on May 4, 1997. In his homily for the beatification Mass, Pope St. John Paul II said

Ceferino Giménez Malla, known as “El Pelé” died for the faith in which he had lived. His life shows how Christ is present in the various peoples and races, and that all are called to holiness which is attained by keeping his commandments and remaining in his love (cf. Jn 15:11). El Pelé was generous and welcoming to the poor, despite his own poverty; honest in his activities, faithful to his people and his Gypsy race, endowed with an extraordinary natural intelligence and the gift of counsel. He was above all a man of deep religious beliefs.

Blessed Ceferino Gimenez Malla, pray for us.

On Relics and Romance

When my wife and I got married, we had the privilege of making a pilgrimage to Rome as our honeymoon trip. While in Rome, we saw a number of churches, but one in particular stood out to me: Chiesa del Gesu (The Church of Jesus; pictured right). In this beautiful old baroque church there is a unique relic: the forearm of St. Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit missionary. While visiting an altar with a body part on display may not seem too romantic for a date, let alone a honeymoon, it actually became one of the most romantic places of our honeymoon! Why? Because I realized before that altar that relics are an important cipher for understanding the vocation I embarked upon in marriage.

I admit that at the time of my visit I was “weirded out” by the presence of St. Francis Xavier’s forearm, and I was certainly not thinking at first about romance. But then as usual, God challenged my limited thoughts. As I prayed before the altar in Chiesa Gesu, I thought: “Why does the Church have altars with the body parts of the Saints? Is this some pagan ritual? Does this distract us or help us in loving Christ, to whom alone our worship is directed?” As I thought about it, I realized that this practice of venerating relics of a saint’s body is uniquely Christian, and that it does honor Christ. The key to understanding this ancient practice is to recognize that the Church honors the body – and by extension the body parts of the saints and certain items they touched – because of the Church’s belief in the Resurrection of the Body made possible by Jesus Christ’s own Resurrection. We honor the body parts of the Saints because one day their entire body will be glorified in the Resurrection of the Body. Their bodies are holy because they will give praise to God in Heaven. Thus, as I knelt before that altar in Rome, I came to understand that this practice of venerating bodily relics of the Saints is a witness to our belief in the Resurrection of Body, and that it chiefly points to Christ’s Resurrection, not away from Him.

Given this rootedness in the Resurrection, the altar enshrining St. Francis Xavier’s forearm reminded me of the purpose of my spouse’s human body – to be an everlasting temple of God. It is this recognition that helps guide marital romance: our bodies are temples of God by virtue of our baptism, and we are called to praise God in our bodies through virtue and the Sacraments (see Rom 12:1). Marital romance is called to be “romance within the Resurrection.” It is a romance that goes beyond simply asking whether or not a particular action violates a commandment given by God, like adultery or lust. It also asks every day whether or not this physical or verbal action treats my spouse’s body with the respect due to a “temple of God,” which it is in this life and the next. Therefore, far from drawing me away from Christ or the love of my spouse, the relic of St. Francis Xavier instead brought us closer by provoking the following questions: “Do I approach my spouse within the vision of God’s plan for our bodies, or do I disregard that plan because of laziness, selfishness, or ignorance? And am I treating my spouse with prayerful reverence as I would a bodily relic of a Saint?” Thus, while others were enjoying the beach on their honeymoon – which for the record we did later too – we were also blessed with romance in the most unlikely of all places, in front of a saint’s body part.

Want to strengthen your marital romance and vocation with your spouse? Then try praying before a relic of a saint! (Oftentimes a shrine to a particular saint will have a relic from that saint.) Before the relic, ask God to illumine both of your minds about the true nature of your bodies and how to treat your spouse’s body according to this divine destiny. Then keep learning about God’s divine plan for your marriage and recall this holy relic on many occasions to foster this awareness of our bodies’ destiny. Remember that we will always be learning about God’s plan for our marriage until the day we die, but let us with joy seek out this romance within the Resurrection, a romance that can even be found – nay especially found – before St. Francis Xavier’s forearm.

About the author
Daniel Meola is a PhD candidate at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Washington, DC. He and his wife Bethany were married in May 2011.

The Family in Service of Life: An Adoption Story

Early married years

We were married on June 7, 1997. Three months later, we moved into our first home, an 1800 square foot historic house in Staunton, Virginia, a city of about 25,000 located in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley. It had four bedrooms – perfect for our plans of beginning a family. Rob was working as a youth minister and part-time high school teacher and Robin was the second grade teacher in the same Catholic school as Rob. In arranging our house, we thought that it was important to keep one room set aside as a perpetual guest room, open to receive whomever Our Lord might send to us. We felt that this was a room that should be preserved as such even when we began having our own children. Little did we know how abundant God’s plans would be.

After three years of marriage, it became clear to us that we were not able to have children. Several doctors could not find any obvious biological problems. We saw fertility specialists who finally said that the only hope for conception was in vitro fertilization – an option we were not willing to consider. We wanted the gift of children, but we did not want to manipulate and attempt to force a gift that Our Lord was not going to give us willingly.

Three children in a row

Then came the rush. Some friends of ours were on the board of the local foster unit of the Department of Social Services (DSS). They had a five-month old baby boy in their care who would eventually be free for adoption, once the parental rights had been terminated. But before they asked if we were willing to take in the baby, they warned us: the previous two families who were offered this child turned him down because of the extensive intestinal and brain damage he had suffered as a result of his birth mother’s illegal drug use. They thought he would likely not talk, not walk, and may eventually end up institutionalized. On April 21, 2000, Christopher was brought to our home. We never looked back.

In late June, we were approached again. This time, there were two little girls, five years old and nine months old. Would we be willing to accept them as likely adoptive children? Of course! So on July 8, less than three months after Christopher came to us, we were joined by Lisa and Lorianne. Our permanent guest rooms were now full, and we began to look for a larger home. In the meantime, Rob moved to a full-time teacher position at the school and Robin took a year off, providing after school care in our home as she began the all-important role of being mother to our three new children.

Another baby in need of a family

We did eventually move around the corner to an old Victorian house, giving us more space. For two years we continued raising our awesome children and doing our best to form them in the ways of the Church. In July of 2002, DSS called again. This time, they had an eleven-month old baby, the youngest of three who were removed from their family. They were expecting that after 3-4 months, the children would be placed back with their birth parents, once things had settled down. Samantha came to us unable to crawl, speak, make facial expressions, hold herself up, or even reach for things. Her initial doctor visit suggested that she might be paralyzed from the waist down, since she did not respond to any stimuli there. Her two other sisters, Shelby and Sabrina, were placed with another foster family. DSS did not want to place all three with us because they were concerned about the level of care that Samantha would require. All three girls had spent their days locked in a storage facility while their parents went to work. They were fed apple juice and Twinkies. Samantha just had apple juice and had lost weight since her eight-month checkup. We could see her bones, she was so thin.

Two more makes six

The next two years brought with them quite a trial. It was during that time that Christopher’s birth parents’ parental rights were terminated through a series of lengthy court hearings. Likewise, the legal process for Lisa and Lorianne came to a close. This allowed us to have the three kids baptized. Up until that time, we were not the permanent parents of them. Therefore, we could not reasonably promise (as is required at an infant baptism) to raise the children Catholic. Only after the adoption was finalized, were there no longer any obstacles to the responsibilities of Baptism. During these two years, it also became more and more evident that Samantha’s birth parents were not able to care for their children. The goal changed from returning the girls to their biological parents to moving them to a permanent placement. That permanent placement was with us. In the summer of 2004, then, our family welcomed Shelby and Sabrina, bringing us to a total of six children. Two years later, feeling a call to move to Robin’s hometown and wanting to start over as a forever family, we moved to Omaha, Nebraska. As we write this article, Lisa (18) is a freshman in college. Lorianne (14), Shelby (13), and Sabrina (12) attend a Catholic school here in Omaha. Christopher (13) and Samantha (11) attend a Catholic special needs school in town. Rob is actually the principal of this school, and Robin works for the Family Life Office of the Archdiocese of Omaha.

Lessons from adoption: difficulties and blessings

Along the way, we have had some trials and some great joys. One question we decided to settle very early on was about communicating the facts of their adoption to our children. From the time they entered our home, they knew that we were their “forever parents” (adoptive parents) and they came from their birth parents. We worked hard to make it clear that their birth parents loved them, but were not able to care for them. We taught them that God brings tremendous good out of bad situations, and that is how we became a family: a family that God put together from painful situations, a family called to bring healing and joy to one another and everyone we meet. As the kids would age, we disclosed more and more information about their previous situations to the extent that they could understand. About twice a year we do Google searches for their birth parents. Twice, these searches revealed deaths: Christopher’s birth mother had committed suicide in an overdose, and Samantha, Sabrina, and Shelby’s birth mother had died of an illness. We told our children and worked through the grief and conflicting emotions with them. We have remained very open about their respective situations. At first, we had a fear that if we told our children too much, perhaps they would want their birth parents instead of us. This fear faded over the years, as the love and trust in our family deepened.

The difficulties that come from adopting out of foster care are certainly present. When children are ripped from their birth parents (even if the birth parents are not doing their job well), they are hurt in the process. There is no doubt about it. That pain enters into the adoptive family, and God is calling on the new family to be the method of healing. For us, this meant helping our children deal with permanent brain damage, severe learning difficulties, epilepsy, attachment issues, major depression, and even suicide attempts. If you would have asked us back in 1997 if were ready for all that, we would have said, “No way!” But Our Lord provided the grace, the people to help, and the love to bring healing not only to our children, but to us as a couple as well.

The joys of adopting, however, far outweigh any difficulties. These joys are no different, perhaps, than any other family who gave birth to their children. We will say, though, that our children, maybe because of their origin and adoptions, have a tremendous heart for anyone who is downtrodden, suffering, or poor in any way. They are very quick to reach out and want to help those in need – those who stand in the same position they once stood. Seeing this is for us one of the greatest joys of adopting: our own children seeking to show the generosity that they were shown.

The family is called to serve life

In his apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio (The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World), Bl. Pope John Paul II named “serving life” as the second of four tasks of the family. God did not give the Lairds the ability to serve life through procreation and birth. Instead, He gave us the gift of serving the lives of those children He placed before us, and we are ever grateful for this gift. It has created our family and has transformed us as persons.

For families considering adoption, we have this to say: If Our Lord places the desire in your hearts, then go for it! All the difficulties begin to fade away when your brain damaged son throws a touchdown pass in the Special Olympics, or your daughters give money for less fortunate classmates to buy snacks after school, or your oldest daughter seeks a profession to help those who struggle to overcome the difficulties she once faced. Our family is not perfect, far from it. But in the end, the family that God put together has helped each of us follow Him more closely. And isn’t that the mission of the family?

About the authors
Rob and Robin Laird, pictured above with their children, were married on June 7, 1997. Rob is the Principal of Madonna School, a Catholic school serving students with special needs, and Robin is the Coordinator of Marriage and Family Ministries for the Archdiocese of Omaha. They currently reside in Omaha, Nebraska with their six children, Lisa, Lorianne, Christopher, Shelby, Sabrina, and Samantha.

Married Saint: St. Elizabeth of Hungary

ElizabethofHungary Born: 1207
Died: 1231
Feast Day: November 17
Patronage: Bakers, beggars, brides, charities, dying children, Secular Third Order of Saint Francis

St. Elizabeth of Hungary was born in 1207 to King Andrew II, King of Hungary, and Gertrude of Merania. The daughter of royalty, she was soon arranged to be married to Lugwig IV of Thuringia and was sent for education at the court of the Landgrave of Thuringia. She was four at the time, and Ludwig was eleven.

Two years later, in 1213, Elizabeth’s mother was murdered. Though this was a difficult time in her young life, she turned to prayer and found support in her future mother-in-law, Countess Sophia. Sophia instilled in Elizabeth religious values and deep personal piety.

At age 14, in 1221, Elizabeth and Louis were married. Their marriage was an exceptionally happy union that produced three children. One biographer wrote that Elizabeth “was an extremely warm, affectionate person…From a very early date there was between them a love more intimate than that experienced by many couples who have been married for a long time.”

Louis understood his wife’s piety and placed no obstacles in her way. The two spouses, says the biographer, “were in agreement with respect to the most profound things that can unite human beings, that is, the things of God.” Elizabeth’s acts of charity were already well-known, as she distributed alms throughout the territory and established a hospital near the castle.

After six years of marriage, Elizabeth’s world was shattered when Louis died of the plague en route to the Sixth Crusade. On hearing the news, Elizabeth was reported to have said, “It is to me as if the whole world died today.”

During her brief widowhood, Elizabeth came under the influence of the Franciscans and learned to love voluntary poverty. In 1228 she joined the Third Order of St. Francis, also known as the Secular Franciscan Order, the lay branch of the Franciscan order. St. Francis of Assisi sent her a personal message shortly before his death. In his spirit, Elizabeth gave her dowry proceeds to the poor and ministered with the sick and needy.

She died in 1231 at the age of 24. She was canonized in 1235.

St. Elizabeth of Hungary, pray for us. 

Two Great Feasts: All Saints and All Souls

On the first two days of November each year, the Church commemorates two linked feast days: All Saints (November 1) and All Souls (November 2). All Saints is easy to understand: We remember all those who have lived lives of heroic holiness, whether the Church has canonized them or not. On All Souls, we remember all those who have died, not just the spiritual superstars.

From the earliest days the church has prayed for the deceased. Their judgment is in the hands of God, and we trust in God’s mercy. But we also believe the God cares about us and our concerns, so prayers for our deceased loved ones are appropriate.

The feast day itself is rooted in the second century. In the 10th century, St. Odilo of Cliny established a memorial of all the faithful departed. Rome added the feast to the church’s calendar in the 13th century. In many parts of the world the celebration of this feast day is marked with particular energy, such as el Dia del los Muertos in Mexico.

It’s appropriate to commemorate All Souls Day by praying for those who have gone before us in faith. Some people also visit the graves of their loved ones to pray for them.

The feast of All Souls reminds us of our mortality. We are all finite, mortal creatures. We are all loved by God, who has endowed us with an immortal soul. Our ultimate destiny lies in God’s hands, and even death does not separate us from his love.

Married Saints: Sts. Louis & Zelie Martin

St. Louis: August 22, 1823 – July 29, 1894
St. Zelie: December 23, 1831 – August 28, 1877
Feast Day: July 12
Patronage: Illness, Marriage, Parenting, Widowers

This couple is best known as the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux (the Little Flower), but they are models of holiness in their own right. They are only the second married couple to be canonized.

Louis was born in 1823 in Bordeaux. When his hope of entering religious life was thwarted he became a watchmaker. Zelie Guerin was born in 1831. She, too, hoped to become a religious, but eventually understood that it was not God’s will. She became a successful lace-maker.

Louis and Zelie met in Alencon and were married in 1858 after a three-month courtship. For almost a year the couple lived as celibates, but the advice of a confessor changed their minds and they decided to raise as many children as possible for the glory of God. Zelie gave birth to nine children, five of whom entered religious life.

The family lived a comfortable lifestyle, but they also suffered the loss of four children at an early age and had to deal with a rebellious daughter. Their devotion never wavered, however. The couple lived modestly, reached out to the poor and the needy, and led daily prayers in the household. St. Therese would later write: “God gave me a father and a mother who were more worthy of heaven than of earth.”

In 1877, at age 45, Zelie Martin died of breast cancer. Louis and his daughters moved to Lisieux. Gradually his daughters left to enter the convent. Despite his loneliness he said: “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.” Louis died in 1894 after suffering greatly, including a three-year stay in a psychiatric hospital.

Louis and Zelie Martin were beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008 and canonized by Pope Francis in 2015. Their feast day is July 12, though a liturgical celebration in their honor is not included in the current General Roman Calendar.

Sts. Louis and Zelie, pray for us.

For further reflection:

  • Read Call to a Deeper Love: The Family Correspondence of the Parents of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus (1864-1885)
  • Pray a novena to Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin

Life Matters: Explaining the Reality of Marriage to Family And Friends

The following is the full text of a pamphlet from the 2013-2014 Respect Life Program. See all seven pamphlets here.

The true meaning and purpose of marriage has become clouded over the last 40 years. This confusion has influenced why and whether young people marry. While we understand marriage as a sacrament, it’s critical we learn to use non-religious language to explain it to our children and friends in ways that properly convey its truth and beauty.

Polls show most people think marriage is merely the recognition of a committed loving relationship principally for the benefit of the spouses. However, marriage is much more. Responsible negative influences include no-fault divorce, which makes marriage conditional on the happiness and fulfillment of adults and the separation of sex from procreation and marriage.

The breakdown of marriage has reached crisis mode. Today more than 50 percent of births to women under 30 occur outside marriage. According to sociologists, the increased numbers of children in poverty, in fatherless homes, and who experience abuse and neglect all relate to changing attitudes about marriage. The phenomenon of the breakdown of marriage has spread rapidly into the segment known as Middle America and is now touching nearly every extended family.

Efforts to reverse these current trends should be an imperative of social justice for every citizen, and a primary concern of every parent. Who would choose that their grandchildren should be deprived of mothers and fathers united in marriage, or that their own children should grow up to be single parents?

Rebuilding a Christian culture – and in this case, a marriage culture – does not start with judging others but with our own conversion. Conversion is a journey, not a destination. That journey is essential to the New Evangelization and the reason Pope Benedict XVI declared the Year of Faith. To evangelize the culture, starting in our own families, it is crucial to study and transmit the teachings of the Church about love, marriage, and sexuality to our children, but to also present them in non-religious terms that reveal their truth, beauty and goodness. No matter how well they know the Catechism, young people are vulnerable to accepting conflicting ideas that seem reasonable and appealing.

Many now only accept Church teaching that correlates with their own experience. Building a deeper faith and increasing confidence requires testing and verifying what she teaches.1

Verifying the Reality of Marriage

Remember, things aren’t true because they are in the Catechism. They are in the Catechism because they are first true. Church teaching does not create reality; it gives us a deeper understanding of it. Marriage as an integral part of God’s plan for creation is a reality that can be verified without the benefit of revelation.

“Father… for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike,” Jesus said (Lk 10:21). Looking at marriage from the perspective of the child within us reveals its truth.

The child has the right to be … brought up within marriage: it is through the secure and recognized relationship to his own parents that the child can discover his own identity and achieve his own proper human development. The parents find in their child . . . the permanent sign of their conjugal union, the living and indissoluble concrete expression of their paternity and maternity. (Donum Vitae, no. 1)

Why do adopted people wonder about their biological origins, or children created from sperm donors search out the person who engendered them, as well as their half-siblings? Rather than merely biological artifacts, moms, dads and siblings are part of our identity. Every person has a right to be part of a family, to be born to a mother and father united in marriage.2 Our own experience informs us. We all have a desire to know, be connected with, and loved by our own mother and father regardless of our relationship with them. This experience of God’s plan for creation has been stamped into our very nature.

Marriage Defined

Due to the confusion about marriage today, many struggle with expressing marriage so that its truth and goodness are evident. This is what marriage is and does:

Marriage unites a man and a woman with each other and any children born from their union.

This fact can only be recognized and not changed (Catechism §1601-1603). It expresses procreation, complementarity, motherhood and fatherhood, irreplaceability, kinship, and the good of the spouses and children. It even includes the potential for the heartbreak of infertility. Not every married man and woman has children, but every child has a mother and father.

This reveals why marriage has been recognized by every culture, society, and religion, each within its own sphere of interest or knowledge. In law, marriage creates the sole civil institution that unites children with their mothers and fathers and provides the only authority to promote it for the common good. The Church provides a deeper understanding of this same reality which was elevated to a sacrament by Christ’s total self-gift to us on the cross, and by the understanding of His relationship with His bride, the Church.

The Beauty of Marriage Revealed

In marriage, a man and woman freely choose to become irreplaceable to each other. This choice prepares them to receive the gift of a new life that has the same value and dignity as their own. The child is irreplaceable to them and both are irreplaceable to the child. Marriage begins the circle of irreplaceability we call the family.

The same is true for adoption. Marriage prepares the man and woman to receive that child into their circle of irreplaceability, permanently substituting for the mother and father the child lost.

When considered through the eyes of the child, marriage is beautiful. To rebuild a marriage culture, the truth about marriage must be restored and promoted so that more men and women choose to enter into the marital union as the foundation for their families.

As an imperative of social justice, public policy, education, entertainment and media all need to promote the importance of men and women marrying before having children.

More resources

About the Author
William B. May is author of Getting the Marriage Conversation Right, a Guide for Effective Dialogue and President of Catholics for the Common Good, an apostolate for evangelization of culture (www.ccgaction.org).

Notes
[1] Dwight Longenecker, “The Risk of Faith,” The Veritas Series (New Haven, CT: Knights of Columbus Supreme Council, 2008),http://www.kofc.org/un/en/resources/cis/cis332.pdf (accessed May 17, 2013).
[2] Donum Vitae (Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation), Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1987).

About the document
Reprinted with permission from:

Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
3211 Fourth Street NE • Washington, DC 20017-1194
Tel: (202) 541-3070 • Fax: (202) 541-3054
Website: www.usccb.org/prolife

Copyright © 2013, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, D.C.

Married Saint: Bl. Frédéric Ozanam

Born: April 23, 1813
Died: September 8, 1853
Feast Day: September 9
Patronage: Society of St. Vincent de Paul

Frédéric Ozanam was born on April 23, 1813 in Milan to Jean and Marie Ozanam. He was the fifth child of fourteen, but one of only three children who would live to adulthood.

During his teenage years, Ozanam experienced a time of great doubts about the Catholic faith he had been raised in. He turned to reading and prayer, neither of which seemed to help, but found great clarity in long discussions with Fr. Noirot, a priest and professor at Lyons College. The challenge to live out the faith captivated him. He said, “Let us not talk so much about charity! Instead we ought to practice it and really help the poor!”

In 1831, Ozanam left for Paris to begin his studies in law at the University of the Sorbonne. During his time at the Sorbonne, Ozanam organized a discussion club for students to debate the issues of the day. During one of these meetings, a member of the club challenged him to demonstrate his faith in a way other than words, to prove that the faith Ozanam spoke highly of was alive in him.

Struck by this challenge, Ozanam and a few of his friends met and founded the “Conference of Charity” to assist the poor in Paris. This organization was the beginning of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, which today provides direct services to the poor in 148 countries.

Ozanam graduated from the Sorbonne in 1836 and went on to teach and practice law, also pursuing a degree in literature. the Society continued to grow and spread throughout Europe, with dozens of chapters forming in Paris and around the continent.

Frédéric knew that he wanted to marry. In his humility he prayed that his future wife would be “a pure soul, quite different from me.” On June 23, 1841 he married Amelie Soulacroix. Before the wedding he wrote to her: “I give you the will of a man, an upright and honest will, the will to be good so as to make you happy.” In remembrance of their wedding, he gave his wife a bouquet of flowers on the 23rd of each month. After two miscarriages, they were blessed with a daughter, Marie, in 1845.

In 1848 another revolution broke out in France and the government asked Ozanam’s organization to supervise government aid to the poor. Frédéric became an outspoken proponent of Christian democracy; he also started a newspaper dedicated to securing justice for the poor and the working classes. Fellow Catholics often took issue with his political stands.

Poor health forced Frédéric to resign his professorate. He died on September 8, 1853 in Marseilles at the age of 40.

In his homily for the beatification of Frédéric Ozanam in 1997, Pope St. John Paul II said:

Frédéric Ozanam believed in love, the love of God for every individual. He felt himself called to love, giving the example of a great love for God and others. He went to all those who needed to be loved more than others, those to whom the love of God could not be revealed effectively except through the love of another person. There Ozanam discovered his vocation, the path to which Christ called him. He found his road to sanctity. And he followed it with determination… Today the Church confirms the kind of Christian life which Ozanam chose, as well as the path which he undertook. She tells him: Frédéric, your path has truly been the path of holiness.

Blessed Frédéric Ozanam, pray for us.