Marriage Matters: Enter the Wounds of Christ Crucified

“Unless there is a Good Friday in your life, there can be no Easter Sunday.”

My beloved Tony and I experienced 2020 as a year that helped us have our own Good Friday experience and enter the wounds of Christ crucified in a very personal way when he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. Amid a worldwide pandemic, we were also given this opportunity by Divine Providence, to enter the wounds of our Lord as we had never truly experienced before and to remember, as St. Zelie said, that our ultimate happiness isn’t here on earth.


Tony and I have not only survived these trials; we are thriving in our spiritual growth toward holiness as a married couple. Our bodies may grow weaker, but our spirit soars toward our shared goal of helping each other to our eternal reward in Heaven.

Lent this year will offer us another grand opportunity to take time to meditate on the pages of the Gospel and enter the scenes of the life of Christ, as one more character, and thus will help us to feel and contemplate with love the true suffering Jesus felt as St. Josemaria Escriva wrote in The Way: “A man like us, and true God, who loves and who suffers in his flesh for the redemp-tion of the world.” This experience will better open our hearts to the passion of the Lord and will allow us to contemplate the most holy humanity of Christ, who — in his eagerness to be one with us on our journey — reveals himself to us with all his human weakness and with all his divine splendor.

We mature spiritually and become strong next to the Cross, where we also find Mary, our mother.

Together we will also pray the Way of the Cross (Via Crucis), also commonly known as the Stations of the Cross, remembering that it is not a sad prayer. Christian joy has its roots in the form of a cross. If the passion of Christ is a path of pain, it is also the path of hope and sure victory. As we learn from the saints: “think that God wants you to be happy and that, if you do what you can on your part, you will be happy, very happy, very happy, even if you never lack the Cross. But that Cross is no longer a torment, but the throne from which Christ reigns. And next to him, his mother, our mother too. The Holy Virgin will give you the strength you need to march res-olutely in the footsteps of her Son." (St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way).



Saints and spouses

When Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin (parents of St. Thèrése, the Little Flower) were can-onized together in 2015, the Catholic world rejoiced at this couple who had found holiness through their marriage. But while the Martins were the first married couple officially canonized together (without other companions), there are any number of oth-er married couples in which both partners are saints, and even more in which the spouses’ causes for canonization are open.

Sts. Timothy and Maura (d. 286) were a young Egyptian couple martyred during the reign of Dio-cletian. Timothy was a lector and thus well known to the officials who were persecuting Christians. When he and Maura had been married only 20 days, he was arrested, and Maura was told to beg him to apostatize. Instead, Maura encouraged him to remain strong, and the two were crucified facing one another, spending one third of their marriage dying together.

Sts. Gregory and Nonna of Nazianzus (276-374, 305-374) were the parents of Church Father St. Gregory Nazianzen and his siblings, Sts. Caesarius and Gorgonia. Though Nonna was raised Christian, her husband was a pagan. Nonna prayed for years, and finally Gregory the Elder was given a vision that led to his conversion and his veneration as a saint along with his entire family.

Sts. Basil and Emilia (4th century), likewise, were the parents of children whose fame overshad-owed theirs: Sts. Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Macrina the Elder, Peter of Sebaste, Theosebia and Naucratius. These holy men and women (three of whom were bishops) owed their faith to the forma-tion they received from their saintly parents.

Sts. Henry and Cunegunda (973-1074, 975-1040) were Holy Roman Emperor and Empress, reputed to have had a Josephite marriage. They were dili-gent and successful rulers and were married for 25 years before Henry’s death, at which point Cune-gunda became a Benedictine nun.

St. Francis Choe Kyong-Hwan (1805-1839) and Blessed Maria Yi Seong-Rye (1801-1839) were a Korean couple during a time of intense persecution. Francis led the family out of the city to establish a Christian community in the wilderness. When they were eventually arrested, Maria was terrified for the health of her baby and apostatized to save the baby’s life. After the two were released, Maria lamented her choice; she gave the baby to family members to raise, kissed all her children goodbye, and presented herself to the authorities to be mar-tyred as her husband had been. Their son, Venera-ble Thomas Choe Yang-eop, was the second Korean to be ordained a priest.

Sts. Peter Choe Chang-hub and Magdalena Son So-Byok (1786-1840, 1801-1840) were the parents of a young daughter when they lost their second child as an infant. And their third. And their fourth. Nine children in a row. All died in infancy. Finally, they had another little girl who survived, a balm for the grieving parents’ souls, though they must surely have ached for the little ones they had buried. In 1839, when their oldest daughter (St. Barbara Choe Yong-i) was a young mother and their youngest daughter was only two, the family was arrested. The three adults were tortured and martyred.

Blessed Luigi and Maria Quattrocchi (1880-1951, 1884-1965) were an ordinary Italian couple with four children. Luigi was a non-practicing Catholic before he married Maria, but over the years their marriage made him a saint. Maria was a holy woman who got so sick when she was pregnant that she nearly despaired at each positive pregnancy test. The two did nothing particularly remarkable, but their ordi-nary marriage transformed them into extraordinary Christians, as all marriages should.

Servants of God Cyprien and Daphrose Rugamba(1935-1994, 1944-1994) were married after Cyprien, a former seminarian, had lost his faith completely. Though Daphrose was a faithful Catholic, Cyprien was a philanderer who had multiple affairs and one illegitimate child during their marriage. For near-ly 20 years, Daphrose prayed for her husband’s conversion. Finally, as he lay dying, Cyprien had a sudden conversion and looked up to see his wife beside him. Cyprien was healed and begged Daph-rose’s forgiveness, which she gladly gave. The next 12 years of their marriage were beautiful and joyful, until the couple was killed (with six of their chil-dren) in the opening days of the Rwandan genocide.


Source: Meg Hunter-Klimer, Aleteiahttps://aleteia.org/2020/02/15/10-married-couples-who-have-been-canonized-or-are-on-their-way/