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INTRODUCTION

Holiness in Families around tHe World
… tHe most attractive Face oF tHe cHurcH (GE 9)

A few years ago, as I was preparing a workshop with my husband on
holy spouses in the Church’s most recent history, I realized that there are so
many families in the world that have embarked upon a journey of holiness!
Couples of spouses and “families next door” (cf. GE), who left evidence
of how to joyfully live everyday full of Christian grace. For some of these
couples and families, a cause of beatification has been initiated: Servants of
God, venerable, blessed, and a married couple who are saints precisely by
virtue of their marriage, Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of St. Thérèse
of Lisieux. In fact, As Pope Francis recalls, “In many holy marriages too,
each spouse becomes a means used by Christ for the sanctification of the
other” (GE 141). Yet, we have never even heard of most of them. These were
Italian, Spanish, South American, African, and Asian couples from all parts
of the world who were able to put God at the center of their families.
When one consults the list of cases currently underway, one can truly
realize how the call to holiness is the way in which Christ is revealed through
the vocation of each person, not only as individual baptized faithful, but also
by virtue of our state of life, such as marriage. In fact, we spouses are called
to walk the path of holiness together: not only as two distinct individuals,
but also as a couple, in the only Sacrament of Matrimony. If, in fact, through
Baptism the Holy Spirit descends upon each of us, making us children of God
and calling us to personal holiness, in marriage the Holy Spirit descends upon
the loving relationship of the spouses to transform their ability to love to the
point of making them holy together!

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