Ordinary Holiness

Homily for All Saints Day, Year C
Maria Corsini was born in the mid-1880s in Florence, Italy. She was a military kid – her father was in the Italian army – and so they moved around quite a bit as Maria grew up. For a time, Maria attended a Catholic school, but her father had a disagreement with some of the nuns who ran the school, and so he withdrew Maria and sent her to a public school. She became a volunteer nurse with the Red Cross, eventually serving in both the First and Second World Wars, and she liked to write in her spare time on educational topics. In 1905, Maria married a man named Luigi Beltrame Quattrocchi. He was a lawyer, working for the Italian version of the IRS, and together they had four children. Their family life was always full – sports, vacations to the ocean, large gatherings with friends and family. Friends used to say that their house was particularly noisy at mealtimes. But this family never let their pastimes and busy-ness get in the way of their faith – Luigi, Maria, and their children attended mass daily; they prayed the rosary together every night; and they regularly participated in all-night vigils and weekend retreats. Their lives were in no way extraordinary – but they were full of life, full of faith, and full of love. Luigi died of a heart attack in 1951, and Maria died in 1965. Less than fifty years later, in 2001, Pope John Paul II beatified the couple – they are now Blesseds Luigi and Maria, one step away from sainthood. They made history as the first married couple in the life of the Church to be beatified together, and to be beatified primarily because they lived the best married life possible. Pope John Paul said in the homily at their beatification mass that Maria and Luigi “lived an ordinary life in an extraordinary way.” They became holy as husband and wife, as parents, as children of God living through the regular ups and downs of life.

We are all called to holiness – we are all called to be saints, to live as God’s chosen children, as the First Letter of John tells us. Some of the saints we celebrate today lived heroic lives – as martyrs, like St. Agnes; or missionaries, like St. Francis Xavier; or founders of religious orders, like St. Benedict. But most of us are not called to be martyrs, or missionaries, or to found religious orders. We are called to be holy as husbands and wives, as parents and children, as people of faith in the ordinary ups and downs of life. Today we remember all the saints – from Mary and Joseph to Blesseds Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi – and as a Church we ask their prayers for all of us as children of God.