November 25 -- Feast of Blessed Maria Corsini and Luigi Beltrame Quattrochi

Can you imagine a nicer couple of saints? 

These folks were beatified together on October 31, 2001, the first married couple to be jointly beatified. Although there were requisite miracles -- in their case posthumous miracles -- testified, they were really honored and acknowledged for living ordinary lives in an extraordinary way.  Catholicism was certainly out of fashion in Italy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but they maintained devotion to God and to the Church.  Their two sons became priests and one of their daughters was a nun.  The other cared first for them and then for one of her brothers, leading a life of service without even the habit of a nun.  In World War II, Luigi and Maria opened their home to refugees.  Maria had also served as a volunteer nurse during the war in Ethiopia.  Luigi's work as a lawyer, drafting charters for several institutions following the War, and eventually retiring as a deputy attorney general, was matched by Maria's work as a professor and writer.  And yet, they prayed nightly, volunteered in apostolic work, and maintained lives of spiritual devotion.  It would be fun to report that they exorcised demons, conversed with angels, or turned water into limonchello without using lemons, but they were not those sort of saints. They were just the quiet servants of Christ who drew on their endless reserves of faith. 

Blessed John Paul II's homily on the occasion was surprising in a couple of ways.   First, he assumed his listeners knew about the lives of these two beati, so he didn't bother to go into details.  Second, he spoke of their life rather than their lives, appropriate perhaps for a joint beatification but still strange.  Here's an excerpt.

In their life, as in the lives of many other married couples who day after day earnestly fulfil their mission as parents, one can contemplate the sacramental revelation of Christ's love for the Church. Indeed, "fulfilling their conjugal and family role by virtue of this sacrament, spouses are penetrated with the spirit of Christ and their whole life is permeated by faith, hope, and charity; thus they increasingly further their own perfection and their mutual sanctification, and together they render glory to God." (Gaudium et spes, n. 48)

Here's a link to the whole beatification document.