“We are all called to holiness,” which “is a goal that cannot be achieved by our own strength alone, but is the fruit of God's grace and our free response to it”; this is what Pope Francis teaches us about holiness, and so it makes sense to ask: can you be holy in marriage? It seems difficult, indeed almost impossible, because often - contrary to what the Pope tells us - we are inclined to think that this depends only on us, on how capable we are and how well we fulfill our role as husband or wife. We think we have too many faults and limitations to be holy.
Yet the Church knows and honors holy married couples: among others, the Martin spouses and Blessed Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi who, as Maria writes in the book The Warp and the Weft, lived “thread by thread, interwoven in God, one with the other without interruption, unto eternity.”
Luigi and Maria shared forty-six years of marriage, and their “recipe” for life and holiness was trusting surrender to God's will in every circumstance: so when a doctor advised Maria, pregnant with her fourth daughter, to terminate the pregnancy because her life was in serious danger, she and Luigi decided together not to do so and to trust in the Lord; Enrichetta was born on April 6, 1914. Every day, early in the morning, they went to Mass together and exchanged good morning wishes after Mass, as if the day began only then.
The example of Luigi and Maria can enlighten the lives of many married couples, who can turn to them with confidence and peace of mind.
