On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the beatification of Dr. László Batthyány–Strattman, we remember his wife, Mária Terézia Coreth, whose life and example completes the light of the holiday.
During the eight years she spent at Sacré Coer in Vienna, Mária Terézia Coreth deeply embraced the love and the lifelong commitment for God that accompanied her throughout her life as a child. This humility and love later defined and gilded not only his own life, but also the everyday life of his loved ones, family and environment.
The seeds sown at school eventually came to fruition in her marriage, in which she did not look for herself or the fulfillment of her own desires, but instead she focused on God and her husband. God blessed the couple's lifelong happiness with fourteen children. Mária – or as she was often called in the family: Misl – tried with everything she did to raise her children in a Christian spirit, whose recollections as adults are the most beautiful examples of how the parents' endless commitment to each other and to God inspired others. Their eldest daughter, Lili, said of her parents: "I have never seen such a happy couple in my life, at least not a couple in which the interest in each other was so complete on both sides."
Mária helped her husband in his work in the same way as in other areas of life, who could hence truly fulfill himself with her loving support. Having learned the duties of a medical assistant, she worked alongside his husband at the hospital, often caring for 70-100 patients in a single day. She kept the names and addresses of the poor and needy in a separate diary so that she could follow and help them prosper.
Coreth Mária Terézia egész életével megtestesíti mindazt, amit a keresztényi hit szerint követhetünk. Anyaként, házastársként és hívőként ragyogó és hiteles példaképe mindannyiunknak.
Source of the article and the photos: Diocese of Szombathely and the Hungarian Batthyány Foundation