For Valentine's Day this year, I want to celebrate with more than chocolates and flowers. I want to pray for marriages. When my husband and I were first married, I believed that our love for each other was the greatest love that ever existed. Over time, I have realized that when we started out, we had a long way to go to achieve perfection. After 45 years, we are still working on it! But the fact that we are still in love after all these years is somewhat remarkable in this world where 40% of marriages end in divorce. What makes our marriage successful when so many others fail? Perhaps it's because we have tried to put God at the center of our lives and our marriage, praying to become better people and to help each other get to Heaven. The saints have helped us on the way, by their example and by their prayers for us. So this novena is for all Catholic couples, married or engaged, to ask saints who were happily married to pray for our marriages to be happy as well.
St. Paul’s treatise on love describes the qualities of true, Christian love: “Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8)
In this novena, we will pray for an increase in the virtues we need to make our own marriage (or that of another couple) happy: patience, kindness, humility, generosity, gentleness, charity, faith, hope, and endurance. It takes time and prayer to develop virtue, so be patient with yourself and your spouse. We will also ask for the intercession of a different saint or saintly couple each day. Following the examples of saints who were happily married will help us make progress in our own journey to Heaven.
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