My National Marriage Week Inspiration Couples

It’s National Marriage Week, friends. And as we celebrate this sacred sacrament this week, I’ve also felt called to share some couples who have inspired me amidst not just the joys, but especially the struggles that magnify the beauty and blessings within marriage. As of late, two couples have influenced my approach to my own marriage.

National Marriage Week Modern-day Couple: “God Stopped Me from Leaving”

The first couple are modern-day friends, Joe and Nicole Berlucchi. While I’ve yet to meet the lovely Nicole in person, I’ve known Joe since we were freshmen at Franciscan University back in the 90s (yes, last century!). We’re both from similar areas of Michigan—so I’m sure we shared at least one car ride home over those four years—yet haven’t seen each other outside of social media posts since then. So, it was extra special to get to have a deep chat with Nicole last year about marriage.

I reached out to Nicole after I listened to her interview with my friend Lindy Wynne on the Mamas in Spirit podcast. After hearing the following intro, I needed to hear more of this brave soul’s story:

Watch Nicole & Lindy’s full interview here:

Hearing Nicole’s story of God healing and restoring her marriage in ways so much greater than we can even conceive, especially amidst a very difficult season of marriage, left me searching my own heart. It’s amazing how, when we surrender and let God lead, He not only softens hardened hearts but also transform them, which then transforms our marriages.

Our conversation was so encouraging to me during a season when God was deeply at work on the foundation of my own marriage. Go listen to the rest of this story, “God Stopped Me from Leaving with Nicole Berlucchi of ‘Magnify Love.’” 

What is Magnify Love about? “Uncover the power of the Rosary and Mary’s intercession: how the scripture-based mysteries of the Rosary can be a compass in directing your steps and navigating the highs and lows, in order for you to listen for God’s voice and live like Jesus.

So many people talk about discernment and listening to the Lord, but how do we do it and how does it play out? Through personal accounts about navigating life shifts, secondary infertility, marital struggles, career changes and physical challenges, Nicole Berlucchi invites you into her love story to learn from her mistakes and to be encouraged by her transformation when she started leaning on God and listening to the Holy Spirit. Discover what it means to Magnify Love when you open your heart to what the Rosary has to teach us.” 

If you want to unlock the power of the Rosary in your own life, or if you’re looking for hope or help amidst a difficult season of marriage, please grab her book here: Magnify Love: Unlocking the Heart of Jesus in Your Marriage and Your Life.

National Marriage Week Saint Couple: God Brings Abundance from What Appears Desolate

My National Marriage Week saint pick couple lived during 19th-century France. The story of Félix and Élisabeth Leseur exemplifies how God can bring abundance from what appears desolate. Despite being unequally yoked and suffering from infertility, their witness demonstrates the tremendous graces flowing through the sacrament of marriage and the power of uniting our suffering to Christ. When we focus on what we can do in the present, joining in the Lord’s salvific work by offering up our suffering, our sacrifices of love eternal.

Shortly before their Parisian wedding in the summer of 1889, Félix Leseur confessed to his fiancée, Élisabeth Arrighi, that he no longer believed in God. Although they were both raised in affluent, Catholic families, Félix lost his faith at medical school, where materialism had ignited his passions. While saddened, Élisabeth thought it would have minimal impact on their marriage, since, despite her conventional faith, he had promised to respect her beliefs. The young, smart, and successful couple shared a deep love and common interests in travel, art, entertaining, and literature.

A month into the Leseur’s marriage, Élisabeth fell ill and required months of recovery. Having contracted hepatitis as a child and suffering relapses throughout her life, the young wife was no stranger to chronic illness. In time, it also became evident that she would be unable to bear children. In the long reflections on suffering that she later wrote, Élisabeth acknowledged her unexplained infertility as one of the heaviest crosses of their marriage. 

As their marriage progressed and Félix’s beliefs became more progressive, the other cross within her vocation grew. The more atheistic literature he read, the less tolerant he became. Determined to free his beloved wife from her “religious superstitions,” he began searching “for weapons against Catholicism,” Félix later wrote. “I set myself to attack Elizabeth’s Faith, to deprive her of it, and…I nearly succeeded.” 

Félix argued, authored, edited, planted, and promoted anti-religious literature both at home and abroad. He would also set his secular friends against her. While suffering the stress of illness, seeds of doubt took root in Élisabeth’s mind, and she stopped practicing her faith for two years. 

After she recovered, worried she might revert, Félix gave her a sophisticated, atheistic book to kill any remnants of her faith. Félix recounted, “Struck by the poverty of the substance [Élisabeth]…felt herself approach the abyss and sprang backwards, and from then on, devoted herself to her own religious instruction.” Her husband’s scheme backfired, solidifying the profound religious conversion of his wife at age thirty-two.

“I felt a smothered irritation at seeing my effort collapse at the verge of accomplishment, and I redoubled by criticism and arguments,” Félix wrote. While he loved and cared for her in other ways, his offenses against Élisabeth’s steadfast faith caused her bitter suffering; however, she never argued with him and “never spoke of the supernatural side of her life, save by her example.” 

In her secret diary, Élisabeth wrote, “By the serenity and the strength that I mean to acquire, I will prove that the Christian life is great and beautiful and full of joy. By cultivating all the best faculties of my mind, I will proclaim that God is the highest intelligence and that those who serve him can draw without end from that blessed source of intellectual and moral light.” A woman before her time, she pursued the rigorous study of mystics, theologians, and philosophers, amassing a great library to rival her husband’s, and also studied under spiritual mentors.

Armed with prayer and sacrifice, she sought her husband’s conversion by offering up all her privations, trials, and sufferings in acts of reparation. Her abiding love for Christ and union with Him enabled her to seem unaffected by attacks. That love also sustained her throughout many years of infertility, as she poured out her maternal love and care upon her little sister, nieces, and nephews, prayed for all the souls she encountered, and served the poor and needy.

When illness confined her to the chaise lounge in her parlor, visitors flocked to her as she directed the greatest number of souls from her invalid chair. As Félix later wrote in his own journal, “Her strength came from her pain.” 

The couple faced other difficulties together, including her battle with breast cancer. In 1911, she underwent surgery and radiotherapy. After sufficiently recovering, she and Félix went on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, where something profound occurred: while praying before the statue of Mary, Félix saw Élisabeth levitate! Yet after Lourdes, Élisabeth’s cancer continued to spread.

As her sufferings increased, Félix wrote, “When I saw how ill she was, and how she handled it with so much patience, I was struck to see how her soul had so great a command of itself and her body. Knowing that she drew this strength from her convictions, I ceased to attack them.” His surprise grew into respect, and his respect became admiration after Lourdes.

At the tender age of forty-seven, as Élisabeth lay on her deathbed, she told her husband. “Felix, when I am dead, you will become a Catholic and a Dominican priest.”

“Elisabeth, you know my sentiments. I’ve sworn hatred of God, I shall live in the hatred, and I shall die in it,” he replied.  She repeated her words and died in Félix’s arms. 

Outraged by her faith and how much his beloved wife suffered for it, Dr. Leseur was determined more than ever to expose the folly of Catholicism by writing a book against Our Lady of Lourdes. As he returned to the apparition site to do his research, standing in front of the statue, a single glance at Our Lady’s face imparted to him the gift of faith.

Félix’s admiration and understanding deepened as he read his beloved wife’s diary, especially when he saw the depths of Élisabeth’s sacrifice. She wrote:  “In 1905, I asked almighty God to send me sufficient sufferings to purchase your soul. On the day that I die, the price will have been paid. Greater love than this no woman has than she who lay down her life for her husband.”  

In both life and death, whether it was infertility, the conversion of her husband, or illness, Élisabeth approached it with faith, trust, and abandonment to the Lord and His will. As such, Félix spent his remaining days repenting, speaking about his wife’s writings, and championing her cause for beatification. Servant of God Elisabeth Leseur, pray for us.

These are married couples in real-life messy struggles who had to put in the work with the Lord, on themselves, and with each other. They clung to their vows as the Lord purified them through the deep sacrifices of love that were required for one another. It’s left me pondering with the Lord how He is asking me to love, serve, and sacrifice in my own marriage. 

What about you? In what ways does God want to use your marriage to be a sign—a sacrament— of His light, love, mercy, and grace?