Saints Who Married Saints: Zechariah & Elizabeth
Feast day: November 5
Patronage: pregnant women (Elizabeth)
Zechariah and Elizabeth are probably the married saints we are the most familiar with after Mary and Joseph, but how much do we really know about them? Elizabeth is the “cousin” of Mary (though the exact relationship is lost in translation) and mother of John the Baptist. We should all recognize this Scripture passage about Mary’s trip to Judah, where she went to care for Elizabeth during her pregnancy:
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”
— Luke 1:42-45
Elizabeth’s words would be repeated for millennia to follow, memorialized in Scripture and with every Catholic reciting them a seemingly infinite number of times over our lives: Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
But I don’t think we remember Zechariah’s story as often as we remember Elizabeth’s. Zechariah was a priest who was approached in the temple by the angel Gabriel (who would appear to Mary just six months later):
The angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right of the altar of incense. Zechariah was troubled by what he saw, and fear came upon him. But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall name him John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of [the] Lord.
— Luke 1:11-15
Zechariah’s reaction was one that I believe many of us would have had: he was skeptical and full of doubt. How was his wife, who was advanced in age and declared “barren,” supposed to conceive of a child? Because of his lack of faith, he was struck mute until Gabriel's prophecy was fulfilled. And this is where I think we really see the beautiful relationship and chemistry between Zechariah and Elizabeth:
When they came on the eighth day to circumcise the child, they were going to call him Zechariah after his father, but his mother said in reply, “No. He will be called John.” But they answered her, “There is no one among your relatives who has this name.” So they made signs, asking his father what he wished him to be called. He asked for a tablet and wrote, “John is his name,” and all were amazed.
— Luke 1:59-63
Tradition holds that Zechariah was ultimately martyred in the temple when he refused to disclose the location of his first-born after Herod’s decree. Elizabeth is not mentioned after John’s naming, likely because she would have been forced to hide from Herod with John until her death.
Zechariah and Elizabeth don the titles of saint without having ever gone through the canonization process. This was a weird concept to me originally, but our litany is actually full of “pre-congregation” saints, including those we often venerate like Moses, Noah, Judith, Esther, and John the Baptist himself. In extreme summary, pre-congregation saints are those who were first venerated locally by bishops, patriarchs, and primates before the development of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and have since been accepted by the Pope into universal veneration by the Church.
