At a time when the world offers “many counter-examples” of what a healthy marriage should look like, Pope Leo XIV has urged couples to look to Saints Louis and Zélie Martin — the parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux — as a model of a joyful and holy marriage.
In an Oct. 18 message marking the 10th anniversary of the Martins’ canonization, Pope Leo said their lives show “marriage as a path to holiness” and provide an example that the world today urgently needs of how to help one’s children discover God’s “boundless love and tenderness and strive to make them love Him in return as He deserves.”
“Among the vocations to which men and women are called by God, marriage is one of the noblest and most elevated,” the pope wrote.
Yet, he added, “in these troubled and disoriented times, when so many counter-examples of unions, often fleeting, individualistic and selfish, with bitter and disappointing fruits, are presented to young people, the family as the Creator intended it could seem outdated and boring.”
The pope described the Martins as a couple who found “profound happiness” in giving life, transmitting the faith, and “seeing their daughters grow and flourish under the gaze of the Lord.”
Their example, he said, reveals the “ineffable happiness and profound joy that God grants, both here on earth and for eternity, to those who embark on this path of fidelity and fruitfulness.”
“Dear couples, I invite you to persevere courageously on the path, sometimes difficult and laborious, but luminous, that you have undertaken,” Pope Leo wrote.
“Above all, put Jesus at the center of your families, your activities and your choices,” he said.
The message was addressed to Bishop Bruno Feillets of Séez, France, whose diocese includes the Martins’ first family home in the town of Alençon, where celebrations are taking place for the anniversary.
Louis and Marie-Azélie (Zélie) Martin were married in 1858 at Notre Dame Basilica in Alençon. Before marrying, both had sought religious life — Louis with the Augustinians and Zélie with the Sisters of Charity — but each discerned that God was calling them to marriage.
Zélie prayed for children who would consecrate their lives to God, and the couple was blessed with nine. Four died in infancy, and the remaining five became religious sisters, including Thérèse, who would later become one of the Church’s most beloved saints and a Doctor of the Church.
Thérèse said that God had given her “a mother and a father more worthy of heaven than of earth.”
Zélie died of breast cancer in 1877 at age 45. After Zelie’s death, Louis moved the family to Lisieux, where four of his daughters went on to become Carmelite nuns.
The Martins were canonized together by Pope Francis on Oct. 18, 2015, becoming the first married couple in Church history to be declared saints together — a testament, Pope Leo said, to the enduring truth that marriage, lived faithfully, “leads to the glory of heaven.”
This article was originally published by CNA.
