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Friends of the Rosary,

Ten years ago, Louis and Zélie Martin — the parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, pictured — were canonized as a model of a joyful and holy marriage.

Pope Leo said their lives show “marriage as a path to holiness.”

“Among the vocations to which men and women are called by God, marriage is one of the noblest and most elevated.”

Pope Leo XIV urged couples to look to the Saints as a model of a joyful and holy marriage.

The Pontifex urged to discover God’s “boundless love and tenderness and strive to make them love Him in return as He deserves.”

Our secular society tends to present marriage and family as outdated and boring, but they are just the opposite.

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.”

“Dear couples, I invite you to persevere courageously on the path, sometimes difficult and laborious, but luminous, that you have undertaken,” Pope Leo stated.

“Above all, put Jesus at the center of your families, your activities, and your choices,” he explained.

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.”

Ave Maria!
Come, Holy Spirit, come!
To Jesus through Mary!

Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.
Please give us the grace to respond with joy!

+ Mikel Amigot w/ María Blanca | RosaryNetwork.com, New York

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