The Life of the Venerable Anna Maria Tiagi

I recall Fr Benedict Groeschell commenting one time that it must have been hard for St Joseph living with Jesus and Mary; that since they were both perfect and he was not that it must have been hard on the poor man.

I don't know though I would imagine living with a Saint must be wonderful.

But Fr Benedict had a lot to do with Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta when she was in New York and he says she could cut to the bone at times.

Also Mother Angelica of EWTN had a reputation of being very hard to live with on occasions.

I like this but. I love it that they were so human.

 

I think it varies

 

Perfect analogy! We take turns being the cheese or the grater.
Today is our anniversary. 52 years!

 

Congratulations! What a grace!

 

Happy Belated Anniversary, AED. The 27th of December? It takes a lot of work to reach each milestone, what more something as great as 52! My husband and I are only halfway to yours, and oh boy, is the climb steep

 

Dec 28th Feast of the Holy Innocents.
Keep climbing.its so worth it. One advantage of so many years together--it gives you the long view from 40,000 feet as they say. Not as much drama. A lot more patience. A great deal of gratitude. (But still praying for his return to the faith.)

 

Thank you!!!

 

I think my mother and father were married about that long, what a great grace. God bless for the next 52 Here they are on their 50th.

 

I was touched on reading something Domenico said about his wife and their life together. Every evening Anna Maria used to gather everyone together and they read from a life of a saint and talked about it. Then they went together and said the rosary in front of the altar to Our Lady and went on to bed.

Domenico was asked what he had thought of all this and he answered, 'Paradise'.

Of course it is impossible to imagine such a thing today, times have changed.

Years ago I heard of a couple in Canada who had six sons. Both mother and father had wanted to be each of them in Religious Life as respectively a nun and a monk but felt that God wanted them to be married. Anyway they did get married and brought up their sons very,very devoutly indeed, even all saying and singing the office together several times a day.

As it turned out all six sons became monks and priests.

When I told my mother and father this they both burst out laughing and thought this was more than a bit mad. This startled me as I thought they would have been lost in admiration. This was one of my first lessons in how little I know about married life.

 

I am glad that the Church had Canonised several married couples in recent times. It used to be nearly all priests and nuns with a sprinkling of lay people thrown in.

Why was this? Well several reason really. One was in order to push forward the canonisation process requires a great deal of money and know how. This was never forthcoming in the past from lay people.

I think also in the Church there was a kind of supposition often that in order to be a saint you nearly had to be a priest or religious. That being a lay person or married was a kind of failed second best. Vatican 2 changed all that.

Another big change in modern times is the amount of child and teen saints. That is a big change, so many of them having died of cancer. Am I a big fan of this? Well no. I am very glad to see so many married saints. But the child/ teen cancer saints much less so. They have all the same kind of story to tell. Frankly it gets a little boring and redundant.

Child and teen martyrs ,yes. That never gets boring. St Joan of Arc was a great example of a teen saint.

Saint Jose Sanchez a great example of a child saint

.

 

A very Happy Anniversary to you and your husband, AED. This longevity is a sign of a relationship protected by God. I’m sure you’ve had many ups and downs over the years but you two chose to work things out. Sadly, many marriages nowadays implode at the first sign of trouble. We’ll done!

 

Beautiful.

 

Thank you so much.
The sacrament of Matrimony i believe holds many time- release graces that kick in when you need them. But yes you are right. Many ups and downs but God did protect us then and now. I have to credit the Blessed Mother for helping me give up my need to be in charge and to be right. What a huge burden to unload.

 

Great post. I agree totally.

 

is there any job for Vatican priests, where they go around villages\parishes, congregations etc, looking for stories of possible saints who have died? miraculous relics or gravestones, they made prophecies while alive and it came true, etc?

 

God bless you and yours! The circumstances may arise where the constancy of your dependable presence may waver. Would he then turn to Christ? Have you ever been hospitalized or seriously ill?

 

How wonderful AED! Congratulations to you both!

 

Congratulations! What an achievement. I will pray for your husband!
God bless!

 

I am not trying to contradict your statement regarding Vatican 2 recognizing more married saints but something I came across in my reading struck me: the copyright is 1883 and the author is speaking about the second Christmas mass offered for that day which makes a remembrance to St. Anastasia, a Roman wife martyred under Dioclesian while on the same day there is a virgin, by the name of Eugenia who also was martyred, but he points out that Anastasia was preferred in order to show that "the married are holy and are blessed in their children as Mary was at Bethlehem." I think that element was very much there but so few lived up to it.

Perhaps we have so many canonized religious because the consecrated life is like taking the escalator up Mt. Everest and many took advantage of that. Meanwhile with marriage you are given trekking poles and an oxygen mask! Ha! But the examples are there, a personal favorite is St. Francis of Rome.

You are probably very right though about the process (money and know- how) making it easier for the religious to be recognized.

 

There is also the wonderful example of St Monica, the mother of St Augustine.

It must be strange for Parish Priests getting to know their congregations so well. They see and hear things the rest of us do not. People tell them things. I would guess that they are frequently astonished at some of the very ordinary looking people they meet who they discover are very,very holy indeed.

https://denvercatholic.org/learning-pray/

'Most Catholics don’t imagine themselves as contemplatives, I suspect. But those Catholics who have discovered or rediscovered Eucharistic adoration in recent years are in fact practicing a venerable form of contemplative prayer. Its beauty and simplicity are captured in a story about St. John Vianney. The famous Curé of Ars noticed that an elderly peasant in his parish spent hours before the Blessed Sacrament. One day, unable to restrain his curiosity, John Vianney came up to the old man as he was leaving church after a lengthy spell in front of the tabernacle. “What are you doing?” he asked his parishioner. “I look at Him, and He looks at me,” came the reply. And that, I think, is the essence of contemplative prayer. It’s available to us all.'