Saints quotes for love letters and valentines
- Aimee Boudreaux MacIver
- Feb 13
- 4 min read
On our wedding invitation, we featured this excerpt from a homily of St John Chrysostom about how husbands ought to speak to their wives:
"For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us."
We chose these beautiful words for their high calling and sacramental focus, but also for their pure romance. I mean, just read them again—is your heart skipping yet?
St John Chrysostom was a priest and bishop, not married, but many other saints were. This means that essential to their sanctity and vocations was meeting each other, feeling deep attraction, dating, and falling in love. Marriage, after all, forms the best analogy we have for the love of Christ for us (the "least inadequate," as St John Paul II puts it). Human romance matters because it mirrors the divine romance that pursues every heart.
Among the great treasury of the Church triumphant are the love letters of the saints to their spouses, along with many gorgeous insights from other saints who lived celibate vocations. Here are some of my favorites.
I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us.... I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you.Â
+St John Chrysostom (the full quote wouldn't fit on our invitation)
I really want to make you happy and be what you desire: good, understanding and ready for the sacrifices that life will require of us. Now there is you, whom I already love, and to whom I intend to give myself to form a truly Christian family.
+St Gianna Molla, to her then-boyfriend and future husband, Pietro
I love you, my dearest. I could not have received a greater or more ardently desired grace from our Heavenly Mother, Our Lady of Good Counsel. I so wanted and needed love and a family of my own. Now I have you, your love and affection, and I am happy. My love is yours, and I want to raise a family with you. I too want to make you happy and understand you well.
+Pietro's response to Gianna, in case you were curious
I am longing to be near you, my dear Louis. I love you with all my heart, and I feel my affection so much more when you're not here with me. It would be impossible for me to live apart from you.
+St Zélie Martin to her husband, St Louis Martin
Soon we will have the intimate happiness of the family, and it's the beauty that brings us closer to Him.
+St Louis Martin to his wife, St Zélie Martin
When we were at the lake, my thoughts were with you constantly. I kissed your picture over and over again.
+St Zélie Martin to her husband, St Louis Martin
My beloved is mine, and I am his.
+Song of Songs 2: 16
When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.
+Ven Fulton Sheen
Love is the most beautiful sentiment the Lord has put into the souls of men and women.
+St Gianna Molla
My love for you is a reflection of God’s infinite love for us, and in serving you, I learn to serve Him better.
+St Frances of Rome to her husband, Lorenzo Ponziani (paraphrased by her biographer)
You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have ravished my heart with one glance of your eyes.
+Song of Songs 4:9
Every furrow I plow, I plow for you and for God, for you are the one He gave me to love and serve. Together, we till the soil of this life, knowing the harvest awaits us in heaven.
+St Isidore the Farmer to his wife, St Maria de la Cabeza
Love consists of a commitment which limits one's freedom—it is a giving of the self, and to give oneself means just that: to limit one's freedom on behalf of another. Limitation of one's freedom might seem to be something negative and unpleasant, but love makes it a positive, joyful and creative thing. Freedom exists for the sake of love.
+St John Paul II
Only love me in the Lord, with a chaste, marital affection, so that we, in the same way, might hope for the reward of eternal life from him who has sanctified the law of marriage.
+St Elizabeth of Hungary to her husband, Louis IV of Thuringia
The love I bear you is not only for this life but is sealed in eternity, where we shall rejoice together in God’s light.
+St Thomas More to his first wife, Jane Colt
Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger or higher or wider, nothing is more pleasant, nothing fuller, and nothing better in heaven or on earth.
+Thomas á Kempis (not a canonized saint, but the holy author of the great spiritual classic Imitation of Christ)
I give you the will of a man, an upright and honest will, the will to be good so as to make you happy.
+Blessed Frederic Ozanam to his wife, Amélie Soulacroix
I love you endlessly.
+Blessed Charles of Austria's last words to his wife, Zita of Bourbon-Parma
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