A Community of Love, Unity and Service

St. Teresa of Avila

“By their fruits you will know them,” says Our Lord of those who claim to be His followers. The fruits which remain of the life, labors and prayer of Saint Teresa of Avila bear to her virtue a living and enduring testimony which none can refuse to admit. She herself wrote her life and many other celebrated spiritual works, and much more can still be said of this soul of predilection, whose writings and examples have led so many souls to high sanctity.

Born in 1515 in the kingdom of Castile in Spain, she was the youngest child of a virtuous nobleman. When she was seven years old, Teresa fled from her home with one of her youngbrothers, in the hope of going to Africa and receiving the palm of martyrdom. Brought back andasked the reason for her flight, she replied: “I want to see God, and I must die before I can see Him.” She then began, with her same brother, Rodriguez, to build a hermitage in the garden, and was often heard repeating: “Forever, forever!” She lost her mother at the age of twelve years, and was led by worldly companions into various frivolities. Her father decided to place her in aboarding convent, and she obeyed without any inclination for this kind of life. Grace came to herassistance with the good guidance of the Sisters, and she decided to enter religion in the Carmelite monastery of the Incarnation at Avila.

For a time frivolous conversations there, too, checked her progress toward perfection, but finally in her thirty-first year, she abandoned herself entirely to God. A vision showed her the very place in hell to which her apparently light faults would have led her, and she was told by Our Lord that all her conversation must be with heaven. Ever afterwards she lived in the deepest distrust of herself. When she was named Prioress against her will at the monastery of the Incarnation, shesucceeded in conciliating even the most hostile hearts by placing a statue of Our Lady in the seatshe would ordinarily have occupied, to preside over the Community.

God enlightened her to understand that He desired the reform of her Order, and her heartwas pierced with divine love. The Superior General gave her full permission to found as manyhouses as might become feasible. She dreaded nothing so much as delusion in the decisions shewould make in difficult situations; we can well understand this, knowing she founded seventeenconvents for the Sisters, and that fifteen others for the Fathers of the Reform were establishedduring her lifetime, with the aid of Saint John of the Cross. To the end of her life she acted only under obedience to her confessors, and this practice both made her strong and preserved her from error. Journeying in those days was far from comfortable and even perilous, but nothing could stop the Saint from accomplishing the holy Will of God. When the cart was overturned one day and she had a broken leg, her sense of humor became very evident by her remark: “Dear Lord, if this is how You treat Your friends, it is no wonder You have so few!” She died October 4, 1582, and was canonized in 1622.

The history of her mortal remains is as extraordinary as that of her life. After nine months in a wooden coffin, caved in from the excess weight above it, the body was perfectly conserved, though the clothing had rotted. A fine perfume it exuded spread throughout the entire monastery of the nuns, when they reclothed it. Parts of it were later removed as relics, including the heart showing the marks of the Transverberation, and her left arm. At the last exhumation in 1914, thebody was found to remain in the same condition as when it was seen previously, still recognizableand very fragrant with the same intense perfume.

St. Gall

Saint Gall was born in Ireland soon after the middle of the sixth century, of pious, noble, and rich parents. He was raised in a monastery during his youth, under Saint Colomban and Saint Comgall, his Abbot. When Saint Columban left Ireland, Saint Gall accompanied him into England and afterward into France, where they arrived in 585. In a wild forest of the diocese of Besançon, Saint Columban founded the monastery of Annegray, and two years afterward another in Luxeuil. Driven away by a hostile king, the two Saints withdrew into more propitious regions, eventually going into Switzerland, near Bregentz, a village on Lake Constance. The idolaters of the region were greatly irritated when Saint Gall preached to them and broke three statues, throwing the pieces into the lake. Many, however, were converted, and Saint Columban was able to purify and dedicate a formerly idolatrous chapel, which had once been a small sanctuary honoring a Roman martyr named Saint Aurelia, and consecrate an altar for it, where Mass was then offered. The disciples who had remained behind the two Saints, rejoined them at this place and built cells around the chapel. When the Saints learned that the hostile king who had driven them out of France now had conquered this Swiss territory also, Saint Columban went into Italy; Saint Gall was prevented by a grievous illness from accompanying him.

Saint Gall had been ordained a priest by the command of Saint Columban, and now,having learned the language of the region where he settled near Lake Constance, he cast outdemons, lived in peace with the wild animals, drove serpents from the valley, and converted to thefaith a great number of idolaters. The cells which the Saint built there for those who desired toserve God with him, were attached to the monastery which bears his name. A synod of bishops,with the clergy and people, earnestly desired to place the Saint in charge of the episcopal see ofConstance; but his modesty refused the dignity, and one of his disciples was chosen instead. Hedied in the year 646.

St. Gerard Majella

Saint Gerard Majella is known as a Thaumaturge, a Saint who works miracles not just occasionally, but as a matter of course. It has been said that God raises up not more than one every century. He was born in Italy at Muro Lucano, south of Naples, in 1726. As a child of five, when he would go to pray before a statue of the Virgin with her Child, the Infant Jesus regularly descended to give him a little white bun. He took it home and naively told his mother, when she asked him, where he obtained it. His sister was sent to the church to observe in secret, and saw the miracle for herself. He wanted very much to receive Holy Communion at the age of seven and went to the Communion railing one day with the others; but the priest, seeing his age, passed him up; and he went back to his place in tears. The following night, Saint Michael the Archangel brought him the Communion he so much desired.

As he grew older, when anyone spoke to him about marriage, he would answer: “The Madonna has ravished my heart, and I have made Her a present of it.” He desired to enter religion, but his health was unstable as a result of the mortifications he had constantly practiced as a young man. He had acquired a reputation of sanctity, and finally, when he was 23 years old, he obtained the aid of some missionaries to second his request, and was admitted as a Coadjutor of the newly founded Congregation of Redemptorists, in 1749.

He showed himself to be a model of every virtue and he did the work of four, still finding time to take on himself that of others. He would say: “Let me do it, I am younger, take a rest.” He made the heroic vow of always choosing what appeared to him most perfect. He wasperfectly obedient to his superior’s wishes, even when not expressed; and one day, to demonstrate this to a visiting authority who required a proof, his immediate Superior sent him out, saying: “I will tell him interiorly to return; he needs no other command than this.” Soon the Brother knocked on the door once more and said: “You sent for me to come back?” He conducted a group of students on a nine-day pilgrimage to Mount Gargano, where the Archangel Michael hadappeared. They had very little money for the trip, and when they arrived at the site, there was none left. Gerard went before the tabernacle and told Our Lord that it was His responsibility to take care of the little group. He had been observed in the church by a religious, who invited the Saint and his companions to lodge in his residence. When the party was ready to start homeagain, Gerard prayed once more, and immediately someone appeared and gave him a roll of bills.

The most famous of Saint Gerard’s miracles occurred when a mason fell from a scaffolding during the construction of a building. Gerard had been forbidden by his Superior towork any more miracles without permission. He stopped the man in mid-air, telling him to waituntil he had obtained permission to save him. He received it, and the man descended gently to theground. When a plague broke out, he had the gift of bilocation; he was seen in more than onehouse at the same time, assisting the sick. Not a page of his life, it is said, was without prodigies, all tending to the glory of God and motivated by prodigious charity towards his neighbor. He was condemned falsely at one time, as a result of a connivance between two individuals; the Superior General, Saint Alphonsus Liguori himself, who did not know Gerard personally, was induced to believe the black calumny. Later the guilty ones wrote him a letter confessing their fault, and Gerard, who had said nothing at all when relegated into solitude, was asked why he had not said he was innocent. He replied that the Rule required that the religious not defend themselves.

He died in 1755 at the age of 29 years, was beatified in 1893 by Pope Leo XIII and canonized in 1904 by Saint Pius X.

St. Hedwig

Saint Hedwig was the wife of Henry, Duke of Silesia and Poland, and the mother of six children. To one of her sisters, married to the King of Hungary, was born the future SaintElizabeth of Hungary; another was the wife of Philip-Augustus of France, and the third, Abbess ofa celebrated monastery at Lutzingen. Saint Hedwig led a humble, austere, and holy life amid allthe pomp of her royal state. While still young, she and her spouse made a solemn vow of chastity,ratified by their bishop. Her house was a school of piety and good order; with Duke Henry shebuilt the large monastery of Trebnitz, where she placed nuns of the Order of Citeaux.

Inspired by these holy examples, the Secretary of State of the Duke and Duchess left the court and dedicated all his wealth to the construction of a Cistercian monastery, which he then entered, to spend there the rest of his life.

Saint Hedwig attended to the needs of all the monasteries and the hermits of the region, visiting them herself and taking them clothing, food and all she judged necessary. She visited prisoners and saw that they did not suffer from the cold or from lack of light. She cared for the poor and served them herself in her residence. On Holy Thursday she washed the feet of several lepers, remembering the lessons of Our Saviour. She fasted often and walked barefoot in the snow when she prayed; she slept on the ground.

Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was the keynote of her life. She considered it her very great privilege to supply the bread and wine for the Sacred Mysteries, and each morning would attend as many Masses as were celebrated. After the death of her husband in 1238, she retired to the Cistercian convent of Trebnitz, where she lived under obedience to her daughter Gertrude, abbess of that monastery, growing day by day in holiness, until God called her to Himself in the year 1243. She was canonized twenty-four years later, by Pope Clement IV. This Pontiff, during the ceremony of her canonization, asked God through her intercession to cure a girl who was blind, and the cure was immediately effected. Saint Hedwig is buried in the church of Trebnitz.

St. Margaret-Mary

Saint Margaret Mary, a soul of divine predilection, was born at Terreau in Burgundy, on July 22, 1647. During her infancy she showed a wonderfully sensitive revulsion to the very idea of sin, and while still a young child always recited the entire Rosary every day. She lost her father at the age of eight years, and her mother placed her with the Poor Clares. She was often sick and for four years was bedridden, losing almost entirely the use of her members. She made a vow toOur Lady to become one of Her daughters if She cured her, and was suddenly entirely well.

She was of a gay temperament and her heart became easily attached to human affections. God began her purification when the charge of her mother’s house was confided to persons who reduced the family to a sort of servitude. Margaret Mary turned to God for strength and consolation when she was accused of various crimes she had not committed. In short, the Saint of the Sacred Heart learned to suffer for Christ, with patience, what innocence can suffer in such situations.

She desired to be a religious, but her mother could not bear to hear a word of that desire. Finally God came to her assistance through a Franciscan priest, who told her brother that he would answer to God for the vocation of his sister. In 1671 she entered the Order of theVisitation of Mary, at Paray-le-Monial, and was professed the following year. She followed allthe practices of the monastery in perfect obedience, spending as much time as she could in thechapel with her Lord. After sanctifying her by many trials, Jesus appeared to her in numerousvisions, displaying to her His Sacred Heart, sometimes burning as a furnace, and sometimes tornand bleeding on account of the coldness and sins of men. “Behold this Heart which has so loved men, and been so little loved by them in return!”

In 1675, she was told by Our Lord that she, with the aid of Father Claude de laColombiere of the Society of Jesus, was to be His instrument for instituting the feast of the Sacred Heart, and for spreading that devotion everywhere. This was not accomplished without greatsufferings. The good Jesuit did all in his power to make known and loved the Heart of Jesus, butwhen it seemed all obstacles were about to disappear, his credit diminished, and his Superiors sent him to England. He returned to France exhausted and soon died.

Saint Margaret Mary was for a time Mistress of Novices, and in this office exercised a true apostolate, working to win for the Heart of Jesus the hearts of the young girls who were aspiring to religious consecration. She was persecuted when she sent one of them home, not having seen in her the indications of a genuine vocation; the family attempted to have her deposed. She remained in the charge but was deprived of Holy Communion on the First Friday of the month. This practice was one of Our Lord’s specific requests; for souls who communicate nine First Fridays in succession, He promised the most wonderful graces. The demons also persecuted her visibly; nonetheless her entire Community was finally won over to devotion to the Divine Heart.

Saint Margaret Mary died at the age of forty-two years, on October 17, 1690, andeverywhere was heard in the city: “The Saint is dead! The Saint is dead!” She was beatified in 1864 by Pope Pius IX, and canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV.

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