Infidelity is one of the most painful experiences in life. We remain in that pain for far too long, drowning in anger, rage and hurt.  The anxiety we feel cuts with its edge into other areas of our lives too. We become powerless, because we begin to doubt everything that matters to us, everything that, until that moment, was good and worthwhile in our lives.  Life turns into mere existing. Anything, just to avoid the image of the person to whom we gave ourselves and promised faithfulness, now in the embrace of another man or woman. In any case, this is a blow that changes life at its very foundations, both for the one who has been unfaithful and for the one who has discovered the infidelity.

What next, and how, after infidelity?

I would like to tell you the story of a marriage marked by the anguish of her husband’s infidelity, the story of Elisabetta Canori Mora, whom Pope St John Paul II beatified in 1994. She lived at the turn of the eighteenth into the nineteenth century in Rome, Italy. From the story of the infidelity of her husband Cristoforo, people today, in a world where statistics show that  one in every three couples divorces,  can learn how the anguish of conflict-ridden marriages does not necessarily end in divorce or long-term therapy,  but can instead be completely transformed into the beauty of God’s presence on earth. 

It is not only a matter of facing up to each partner’s own failings individually, since these can easily turn into self-destruction, but rather of reflecting on one’s own dissatisfaction and hidden desires, and once again seeking an answer to the question of who I am and what I want. If we do not ask the right questions, and do not know where to find the right answers (sometimes professional help is needed in this process), and yet do not want to separate, we will remain in a fictitious union that amounts to mere emotional survival. We Christians often justify this kind of survival with the fact that God gave us this person as our life partner, and that we must suffer and forgive, since otherwise we are not good Christians. I always feel sorry for God when he is described as someone unfeeling who wills human suffering and has no influence at all over human destiny, as someone who merely created the world and watches it from on high, as though creation did not happen anew every day, as though every day we did not have the chance to see the world through God’s eyes.

Elisabetta and Cristoforo, each in their own way, took part in an extraordinary plan of God’s providence, which first redeemed them and washed them in the Lord’s blood, and then did the same for the many who came to know them, both during their lifetime and afterwards, since their story has been inspiring and changing people for two hundred years now.

Elisabetta and Cristoforo lived at a time when civil society as we know it today was only just beginning to awaken. Both were children of their age, and it was a period in which the perception of woman as homemaker, carer and educator of children, devoted to family and husband, was regarded as a less valuable calling. Elisabetta lived out this understanding of womanhood, yet at no point did she belittle it or try to change it. Quite the opposite: precisely because she fully accepted her feminine humanity and offered it to the Lord in her daily prayers and sacrifices, she was able to counsel many entrepreneurs, industrialists and church dignitaries. She died with a reputation for holiness, and left her husband a prophecy as her legacy, that he would convert only after her death: "You will return to God after my death, you will return to God to give him glory."

He then repented, was reconciled with God and with his children, was ordained a priest, and himself died with a reputation for holiness. But let us start from the beginning.

Elisabetta was born on 21 November 1774, the thirteenth of fourteen children, six of whom died at an early age. Her father was a successful landowner who sold agricultural produce throughout Italy, in a modern and innovative way for the time. He had his children educated, and entrusted Elisabetta and Benedetta, the two youngest, to the sisters for their upbringing in the monastery of St Rita in Cascia. In that monastery the seed of true devotion and a life in God was sown. As young girls, both sisters longed for religious life. At the age of 12, before her first Communion, Elisabetta made a vow of chastity. "I gave myself completely to the Lord," Elisabetta wrote in her diary, recalling her first Communion.  However, God’s plan for her life was different. She married Cristoforo at the age of 20. Cristoforo was a young lawyer, 22 years old, with a promising career. They fell in love at first sight. She was beautiful, elegant, educated, a woman of refined manners,  deeply religious without unnecessary fanaticism. In the first years of their marriage they lived happily, relying on one another, but even then Cristoforo showed signs of psychological instability, often burdening her with his jealous outbursts. He wanted her entirely for himself. He forbade her to visit her parents, to do needlework or housework,  and resented any attention shown to her at friendly dinners and parties.

She soon became pregnant, but the baby girl she gave birth to died in the first days after the delivery. With the loss of their first child, suffering moved into their life like a sudden and unwelcome guest. She noticed a change in her husband’s behaviour. During her second pregnancy she confirmed with certainty that Cristoforo had another woman. Seven years of attempts to win him back, to persuade him and to prove her love followed. She gave birth to three more daughters, two of whom survived. Convinced that children can learn many things from a very young age, she taught her children a range of different subjects. At the age of three, her daughter Luisa could already read, and soon after that, together with her sister, could write, sew and do sums. For Elisabetta, there was no true upbringing unless it was grounded in faith, since the ultimate meaning of human life is God.

Tenderness between the spouses was not lacking either, as shown by the fact that, once during these seven years, when Cristoforo’s health was so gravely threatened that everyone thought he would succumb to his illness, she cared for him with great concern and love. He apologised to his wife for his infidelity. However, this was not enough to stop him falling once again, after his recovery, for the charms of another woman. Elisabetta had no support from her husband’s family. Besides being blamed for his infidelity, because "she does not know how to be the wife Cristoforo needs", she was also blamed for her husband’s business failures. But  Cristoforo’s parents and sisters likewise openly accused him of squandering his inheritance and, through a lawyer – since adultery was punishable at that time – had him confined for re-education according to strict church rules in the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome. On returning home, Cristoforo showed rage and hatred towards his wife, and several times threatened to abandon her again or to kill her, firing a pistol: «It was a great surprise to my relatives that I had the spirit to remain alone at night in a room with such an enraged man, without fear that I would end up dead at his hands».

In her diary she writes that she herself "was amazed at the inner peace and calm with which she lived through that period". As a result of this extremely stressful period for Elisabetta and her family, she herself fell ill after losing another newborn baby. The fever did not leave her for days, and, to everyone’s astonishment, she recovered and once again took up her household and maternal duties.

In the three dramatic months following her illness, when her relatives advised her to enter a convent, her mother begged her to return to her family home, and her confessor urged her towards an annulment of the marriage by the Church, Elisabetta, to the surprise of many, made a  quite different decision. She told her confessor as follows: "I reject every thought of ending this marriage, for the salvation of these three souls (my husband and daughters) is for the ever-greater glory of God, and I place this above any personal or spiritual good of my own." Elisabetta loved her husband, and the supernatural gifts of love, faith and hope bore in her  the fruits of the Holy Spirit and a sincere desire for the salvation of her family. Elisabetta was aware of St Paul’s warning in his letter to the Corinthians, in which he mentions adulterers among those "who will not inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor 6:9), and firmly resolved to hold to the following personal principles: 1. to practise tenderness, patience and gentleness in every situation of life; 2. to see God’s will in everything and in everyone; 3. like St Paul, to be a companion in Christ’s suffering in his work of salvation, through prayer and penance.

Just as Abraham went out from the desert and walked boldly towards the Promised Land, so too Elisabetta, through her own YES, opened up space for God to begin his work within her. God makes all things new. Elisabetta felt that God was calling her to a special mission, and she surrendered herself to him completely, knowing that he was leading her and that he would fulfil his promise.

From that moment on, it seems as though the two of them went their separate ways: Cristoforo completely infatuated with the other woman, and Elisabetta absorbed in the experience of God’s presence in her life. But in fact it was only then that the renewal of their marital relationship began. He refused to end his relationship with his mistress, and the consequences of the image he had created for himself would affect his business relationships even more. He was losing credibility in his work as a lawyer. At no point did she intend to leave him or reproach him; instead, together with her daughters, she lived through the family’s bankruptcy, trusting in God’s Providence. This was no longer a path of faithfulness in which one patiently waits for the return of a wounded soldier from war. It was precisely at this time that the priest Andrea Felici, from Imola, came to the Canori-Mora household and, responding to a mysterious call, gave Elisabetta an image depicting Jesus of Nazareth. This holy image, before which she began to pray intensely, became miraculous, and the house soon turned into an unusual place of pilgrimage for many people. Even Pope Pius VII would recover his health thanks to water that Elisabetta sent him, after praying before the holy image.

Unlike her husband, she was on a path of a different kind of faithfulness. Day by day, she lived out what God asked of her. She prayed continually, and God repaid her with extraordinary gifts: the gift of healing, the gifts of prophecy and counsel, and the gift of bilocation. In this relationship with God she achieved a remarkable balance that allowed her to live intensely and to reconcile her mystical experiences with her family life: visions alongside her work as a seamstress, in order to repay the family’s debts and support her daughters;  the gift of healing alongside her daily engagement with the poor and the sick, and other needy people who knocked on the door of their family home; and the gift of prophecy and counsel alongside absolute obedience to her confessor. One day she said to her husband: "Laugh, go on and laugh, one day (after my death), you will say Mass and hear confessions."

Her daughters, Luisa and Marianna, were at that time in their adolescent years, a challenging period for any parent, especially when wishes and expectations fail to align. Cristoforo and Elisabetta were in a difficult financial situation, so Cristoforo’s sisters took over the care of their daughters. A worldly way of life had a strong influence on them (running away from home, going out, and so on), but their mother won that battle too. Whenever they wanted to spend too much time in that way, she would invite them, or go with them, to visit friends, organise games with girls from trustworthy families, and outings into town, overcoming her daughters’ inevitable resistance through her own cheerfulness and enthusiasm.

Marianna married a man for whom her mother had prayed, while Luisa discovered a religious vocation. Their mother took particular care that they should respect their father and not judge him for his emotional distance from them, both in his emotional absence and in all his other shortcomings. Proof of this is that, after their mother’s death, Luisa comforted her father, even encouraging him to marry his long-time mistress. Her words are proof of the extraordinary spiritual inheritance both daughters received from their mother. Cristoforo never remarried, but his conversion took place on the very night Elisabetta died. She was only 49 years old. According to the accounts of the blessed woman’s life, he was away from home that night too. When he opened the door of the house and saw his wife lying lifeless before him, the one who had remained faithful to him to the end, he was overcome by a violent fit of weeping and repentance for his neglect, ingratitude and infidelity. He publicly acknowledged his failings to such an extent that he said: "There is no mother like her in the world, and I was not worthy to be her husband."

He himself had been astonished by the miracles taking place in his home, yet he never made his final decision while his wife was alive. He converted after her death, and for the rest of his earthly life carried his wife’s picture beneath his hat. Although Elisabetta did not, in her lifetime, have the consolation of a complete reconciliation with Cristoforo, she possessed a deep faith that built a marital bond for eternity. Twice seemingly far apart, at a certain point they nonetheless became one and the same road leading to God, where together they now contemplate, in eternity, the Face of God.