“The final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family.” These prophetic words were shared in a letter from Sister Lúcia to Cardinal Carlo Caffarra of Bologna. Sister Maria Lúcia of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart was a Portuguese Catholic nun and one of the three children to witness the 1917 Marian apparitions in Fátima.

In her letter to the Cardinal, she also said, “Don’t be afraid…because anyone who works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue. However, Our Lady has already crushed its head.”

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This week we continue our series on models of marriage lived virtuously. Blessed Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi were beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 21, 2001. This fulfilled a lifelong desire of the future St. John Paul II when, for the first time in the history of the Church, he beatified a husband and wife together. The beatification was part of celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the publication of John Paul II’s seminal apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio (The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World).

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St. Joachim and St. Anne are the parents of Mary, the Blessed Mother of Jesus. Each year the Church venerates them on July 26th. Tradition holds that they struggled with infertility for decades. Infertility quite often resulted in couples being shunned and scorned by their family, friends and neighbors.

After years of longing for a child, undeterred in his faith, St. Joachim went into the wilderness to fast and pray for a child. Saint Anne remained home, donning garments of mourning, weeping to God because she was childless. A servant girl reminded St. Anne to put her trust in God. St. Anne washed away her tears, donned her bridal clothes and went into her garden to pray to God for a child.

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Today is the Feast Day of Saints Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Just this past October, they became the first couple to be canonized together as husband and wife. As the exemplars of holy family life, we have designated Louis and Zélie Martin as the patron Saints of the Calling Couples to Christ Apostolate.

Pray for us, Saints Louis and Zélie, that we may be an instrument of hope and healing to families as they strive to live well their vocation to marriage and family life.

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We live in a crazy, mixed up world. What is up is down. What is down is up. There is no area of greater confusion in our society than in the area of marriage and family. If we do not understand marriage, we will never understand God. A lifelong, committed, chaste, faithful and fruitful union of one man and one woman is thought to be old-fashioned. Relationships are just another means of recreation, for immediate self-gratification and nothing more. People are just objects to be used for one’s own personal gratification. If a relationship is not meeting your needs, just throw it away and move on to another.

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We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage. (Teddy Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States)

The American Revolution was in part, a battle for religious freedom. Courageous men and women stood up for that which was right and just, a belief held so deeply that they were willing to risk their lives to fight for this freedom. This young nation honored God and by His providence, was protected from evil forces seeking to destroy it. God bless these holy men and women for fighting for what they believed.

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Did you know that the family is the Center of the New Evangelization? St. John Paul II in his epic Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris Consortio (On the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World), had this to say about the mission of the family:

…the family has the mission to become more and more what it is, that is to say, a community of life and love…we must say that the essence and role of the family are in the final analysis specified by love…the family has the mission to guard, reveal and communicate love, and this is a living reflection of and a real sharing in God’s love for humanity and the love of Christ the Lord for the Church His bride[i]

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HAPPY FATHER’S DAY to the men out there! I have something to ask of you today. If there was one thing that you could do to virtually divorce-proof your marriage, would you be willing to do it? This activity has been described as being more intimate than the marital embrace. Do I have your buy-in?

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Modern Natural Family Planning (NFP) methods were developed during the 1960s in the midst of the sexual revolution. Although NFP brought a new understanding of love, sexuality, gender roles, fertility appreciation, openness to life and intimacy, it did not have a language to articulate these benefits to the culture. Dr. Mary Shivanandan says St. John Paul II’s landmark work on the Theology of the Body (TOB) provides a new voice and a new language for Natural Family Planning. In her article Natural Family Planning and the Theology of the Body: A New Discourse for Married Couples[1] she explains how TOB gives NFP a voice to communicate the beauty and richness of the Church’s teachings on marriage and family life to a contracepting culture.

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