The church feasts for September are bookended by those of two eminent Doctors of the Church, whose work should be celebrated in every age: Pope St Gregory the Great who reformed the medieval church and St Jerome, the great translator of the Vulgate Bible – a work that has lasted almost 1,700 years. By contrast, amongst the other saintly feasts for the month, is that of Sts Cosmas and Damian, twin physicians who reputedly treated without charge, cured patients in a deep sleep and miraculously managed to replace a man’s diseased leg with one from a black corpse. The twins were martyred supposedly in their 20s in Syria around 300 CE and not surprisingly are the patron saints of physicians and surgeons, barbers, pharmacists; less likely, they “are venerated as protectors of Christian marriage and conjugal harmony”. Their names ring a bell because they are among the list of saints said aloud in the pre-Vatican II Preface of the Mass.
It struck me that few today could identify those two, or many others of the fairly lengthy list of men or the few (mostly) virgin martyr women who bring up the end of the post Consecration list. On the premise that the purpose of naming saints is to offer them as exemplars and as intercessors, it must go without saying that saints ought to have some contemporary relevance. Without forgetting or being dismissive of those murdered for their beliefs in the last hundred years of war or destructive political systems, the bulk of Catholics today live married lives working to provide for the spiritual and physical welfare of both partner and children and to achieve a rich “conjugal harmony” that stretches into old age. Something young bachelor twin doctors could know little of.
So, who are the sainted married couples of the Church?
First are Mary and Joseph, who provided a loving home for the child Jesus. Apart from the infancy narratives, Mary is briefly mentioned at the foot of the Cross and then at Pentecost; her subsequent life, like that of Joseph, is sadly legend. Mary’s parents Anne and Joachim, patron saints of grandparents, appear in the non-canonical Gospel of James; on a more certain footing, Mary’s cousin Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah – parents of John the Baptist, are part of the first infancy chapters of St Luke.
While these couples are extraordinary in their piety and in the roles they played in the life of Christ, they are hardly marital couples in the ordinary sense of the word. There are two more pairs commonly listed as saints, more relatable, yet who seem as different as chalk and cheese. Firstly, there are St Paul’s co-workers who he describes:
“Greet Prisca (Priscilla) and Aquila, who work with me in Christ Jesus,
and who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles.”
Refugees from Rome, they had met St Paul in Corinth, and since they too were tentmakers, they worked together and the couple developed a deep understanding of his teaching. They played a vital role in the expansion of Christianity, eventually moving on to Ephesus before going back to Rome to establish another church there. They are mentioned six times in the New Testament, always together as a vital couple and at times with her name cited first, indicating her (unusual) status as a woman. As was the practice of the early church, they opened their home to celebrate the Eucharistic meal with the Christian community; Pope Benedict XVI said in 2007, the faithful can learn from their example how “every home can transform itself in(to) a little church”. Many church historians would argue that for some centuries the homes were the churches, that the transformation went the other way, and that churches should be more home-like.
The other couple is Sts Louis Martin (1823-94) and Marie-Azélie “Zélie” Guérin (1831-77). Pope Francis canonised the French couple in 2015. Louis, a watchmaker, and Zélie, a lacemaker, attempted to enter religious life before discerning marriage. They are perhaps best known for being the parents of St Thérèse of Lisieux, their youngest daughter. St Thérèse was one of nine children the Martins welcomed into their home; four died in infancy, the other five – all girls – joined religious orders. The couple’s path to holiness embodies the “little way” that St Thérèse is famous for – doing small things with great love. “The holy spouses Louis Martin and Marie-Azélie Guérin practised Christian service in the family, creating day by day an environment of faith and love which nurtured the vocations of their daughters”, Pope Francis remembered at their canonisation.
So what of today’s married saintly couples?
Recent discussions of the continuing post war traumas experienced by WWII prisoners brought to mind men returned from Changi and the Burma-Thailand Railway who had borne terrible deprivations. One doctor I knew of, a man of genuine saintliness in his treatment of the sick and wounded during three years as prisoners of war returned home without fanfare to his family and medical practice. While he appeared to put the war behind him, maintaining a cheerful, courteous demeanor to his patients and friends, that could simply not have been possible. He must have suffered post-traumatic stress, but he and his wife together strove to cope with such pain. She too must have changed over those three years of anxiety and fear, of not knowing if her husband was alive or dead, of learning a socio-business management of the house and family unfamiliar to women born in the first years of the twentieth century; and then returning to the pre-war role of wife and mother so that her husband had a familiar home where he could re-integrate. Those two, whose marriage only became richer over half a century, and many other couples like them, strove lovingly to make richly Christian marriages for each other and their children.
There is an important distinction to be made here between the marriage of two saintly people and the partnership of two people whose saintliness is increased through and because of their deeply spiritual and loving marriage – Saintliness the result of marriage. Continuing in the spirit of those early medical exemplars, think of doctors who leave home before first light to treat patients without charge just as the early bachelor saints were reputed to have done; think too of their partners who lovingly sent half a dozen children, with their lunches, off to school on their own with joy. Such people gave to each other in order to become a saintly couple; their work was the result of their deep spiritual loving relationship, and their ‘conjugal harmony’ was maintained through decades of work and prayer.
This is in contrast to the lives of most early saints. Around the time of the Council of Nicaea in 326 CE and our young saints Cosmas and Damian, over 50% of children died before reaching 10; those who survived might well, with a good diet, make it to 50 but death in childbirth or war haunted every marriage so that 20 years was a lifetime. (If most of the sacraments seem bunched towards the beginning or end of life, that was because there was no ‘middle of life’ as we know it now.) Saintly couples today are in it for the long haul in a way not even thought of in the early church.
It often seems that a church which continues to celebrate the saintliness of singles and celibates could well come to an end in one distinct generation if the whole community took them at their word. Theirs has been a spirituality that took for granted the goodness of parents and the prayerful generosity of the very many unremarked but saintly – and sometimes quite exceptional – couples who in hard-won conjugal harmony have kept the church alive for two thousand years.
But at last there seems to have been some development of understanding. At the end of the recent long summer holidays, Vatican employees had a family day of some fun and relaxation. There last weekend, Pope Leo spoke of ‘two greatest miracles: of giving life and giving love’, and of the ‘great miracle’ that families are. Perhaps that’s a step towards realizing that the union between two people enables them to reach a level of saintliness far greater than either might achieve on his/her own.
Image 1:
Pedro Berruguente cir. 1500; Gregory and Jerome from the Prado in Madrid. The Triple Tiara (the triple crowned headpiece) as a sign of the papacy was actually used first in the C14 about 900 years after the real Gregory. Not used now. D.G. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Image 2:
Illustration from two Vulgate manuscripts from the 8th and 9th centuries. Note the book case is a lockable cupboard with shelves to hold manuscripts lying flat at an angle for ease of consultation. The Vulgate was used by the church from late C4, confirmed at Trent and was only superseded post Vatican II. (Source: Wikipedia)
Image 3:
Benvenuto Tisi da Garofalo cir. 1520; The Holy Family visited by Elizabeth, Zachariah and John the Baptist. Two saintly families together. National Gallery London. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Image 4:
Louis and Zélie Martin (photo from 1850s). Public Domain. Irish Province of Carmelites
Image 5:
Giotto, in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. Anne and Joachim meeting at the Golden Gate. It is usually accepted to be the first emotive kiss in Western Art—a kiss that is not only a symbol but a vivid human experience of a joyful marriage. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
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Christine Georgiou says:
Once again Sandy a rivetingand insightful essay. Thank you.