Just four days after the start of the German-Soviet War, a sick woman asked the local priest, Fr. Mykola Konrad, to hear her confession. Volodymr accompanied the priest, but sometime after their visit, they disappeared.

Our beloved St. Valentine is actually based on several known Valentine or Valentinus martyrs whose exact stories are not absolutely certain. The most popular telling of the legend says that third-century Roman Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage for young men — because single men made better soldiers than those who were married.

My husband and I are not saints. God willing, we still have many decades left to foster our relationship with God, to leave a good impact on the world, to keep striving for holiness… to mess up, to get knocked down, to go into the confessional and promise to be better. We know our path won’t be a straight line but we hope and pray that we will fight the good fight, run the race, and keep the faith (2 Timothy 4:7).

So how did St. Nicholas of Myra — also known for (literally) fighting heresy — become Santa Claus? As the National Geographic says, “Nicholas was neither fat nor jolly but developed a reputation as a fiery, wiry, and defiant defender of church doctrine during the Great Persecution in 303, when Bibles were burned and priests made to renounce Christianity or face execution.”

Happy All Saints’ Day!

In honor of this wonderful feast, I decided this month’s Married Saints blog would be a little different. Today I want to explore several of our saints to give you an overview of wonderful patrons you might not have considered for your marriage before.

Have you figured out how you know about Sts. Louis and Zélie yet? Their youngest daughter was born on January 2, 1873, and was not expected to survive long outside the womb. After their four losses already, Zélie and Louis prepared for the worst. Zélie wrote, “I have no hope of saving her. The poor little thing suffers horribly … It breaks your heart to see her.”2 But this little girl grew stronger and became a Carmelite nun.

Isidore and Maria show the beautiful complementarity of spouses. Isidore worked the fields, evangelizing with his actions, while Maria prepared to continue serving God’s people from the home. Without Isidore there would be no one to feed, but without Maria there would be no food to give.

Elizabeth’s words would be repeated for millennia to follow, memorialized in Scripture and with every Catholic reciting them a seemingly infinite number of times over our lives: Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

The legacy they left behind is summed up best in the words of Pope St. John Paul II: “The blessed couple lived an ordinary life in an extraordinary way.”

Remember, the most popular Valentine legend says that after third-century Roman Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage, Fr. Valentine continued to marry couples in secret. He recognized that marriage is a sacrament instituted by God, meaning the State didn’t have the authority to ban it at all. Despite his courage, Valentine was ultimately discovered and beheaded. 

So how do we honor his day, honor true love, honor our spouses and significant others, while also paying due homage to the beginning of Lent?

Marriage is the common vocation, of course. I believe is the main argument for why we are so quiet about marriage when we discuss vocations. The majority of people will get married, so there’s no need to talk about it.

But I believe this has consequences for our Church. I think we need to talk about marriage as a vocation much more often than we do. We celebrate with couples on their wedding day, but beyond that, how many of us can say we really take time to think about our married friends and pray for and support their marriage? As a Church, in practice, we don’t treat marriage like it is a vocation that should be taken as seriously as the priesthood or religious life.

Ask any married couple you know how they are doing and I will tell you: they’re struggling.

My husband and I actually don’t fight very often. We do watch a certain reality show that involves couples who fight a lot (it features couples from different countries who have a certain number of days to be a fiancé) and often find ourselves saying, Wow, I’m so glad we don’t talk to each other like that. My husband usually sums it up by saying, “We don’t fight dirty.”

The lesson of the parable is that if we listen to Christ, the foundation of our lives will be strong, so when tragedy and disaster and suffering and hard times come into our lives, we will remain steadfast.

But can’t we also apply this parable to our relationships as husband and wife? If our relationship is strong, then even things that might shake us up will not cause our house to cave in. Even when we face tragedy and disaster and suffering, we will be unmoved from our marriage with each other. Our relationship is strong, so our wedding is strong, so the world cannot break it apart.

“But our world has turned its back on beauty. And because of that, we find ourselves surrounded by ugliness and alienation. I want to persuade you that beauty matters, that it is not just a subjective thing, but a universal need of human beings. If we ignore this need, we find ourselves in a spiritual desert. 

I want to show you a path out of that desert — it is a path that leads to Home.”

You might have noticed this week is National Vocations Week here in the United States. My priest talked about it this past weekend and my social media has been full of discussions about it.

One thing I couldn’t help but notice, though, was that Vocations Week only focuses on the priesthood and religious life. There hasn’t been any talk, that I’ve seen, about the vocation to marriage. 

I'm just going to say it: I'm really bad at praying the rosary. I suffer from chronic wandering mind, and no matter how much I set myself up for success, I can't seem to turn it off. It's not even that I'm easily distracted, like putting my phone in another room would do the trick. Any time I'm in a silent, distraction-free space, my mind latches onto whatever problems I think I need to solve at that moment.

Imagine saying your vows to each other while holding the greatest representation of Christ’s love in your hands:

“I take you to be my husband. I promise to be faithful to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.”

This resonated with my husband and he immediately said he wanted us to do it.

If you’re looking for a creative nudge, check out the list below. I’ve included themes as well as gift ideas plus Catholic-inspired presents that fit within the themes.

This list goes through the first 10 years of marriage. Send me an email if you’re looking for your eleventh anniversary or beyond and I might just add it!

Learn to love yourself first and notice God's graces in the little things around you in your daily life. If you're constantly looking to your partner to “make you happy” or “save you,” you'll become distracted from everything God is blessing you with.

Although we can’t really pin down its origin, one new trend from the last few decades has been the unity candle. The unity candle includes some brief ritual where the parents of the bride and groom or the couple themselves light two separate candles, which are then brought together in one larger candle in the center. Two families, two individuals, however you want to look at it, are becoming one just as the separate flames become one flame.

Happy two-year anniversary, Covenant Co.!

I honestly can’t believe it’s already been a year since Covenant Co. launched.

Lots of stuff happening here this September!

It’s been a super successful July and I just wanted to give everyone some updates, details, and what to expect from Covenant moving forward. Be sure to read all the way to the end for some exciting news!

What happens when you try so hard and it comes out: Ugly? Bad? Embarrassing? Unusable? What happens next?

What happens when you try so hard and it comes out: Ugly? Bad? Embarrassing? Unusable? What happens next?