Angela
Merici
Today,
members of the Body of Christ throughout the world come together to remember
and honor another beautiful soul St.
Angela Merici, who was born in 1470 and died in 1540. She lived to be about 70 years of age.
Three
things can be said of her. First, a
story was told that at one point in her life she had the privilege of taking a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. But during
the trip, she was struck with blindness.
Her friends felt sorry for her and suggested that they go home because
she couldn’t take in the visual beauty of the places where the Lord traveled. Nevertheless, she insisted on continuing with
the pilgrimage and visited the shrines with much devotion and enthusiasm as if
she had her sight. On her way back,
while praying before a crucifix, her sight was restored at the same place where
it had been lost. St Angela believed
that the blindness was a gift to help her grow in charity and not to be blind
to the needs of God’s people.
Secondly,
it was later in her life that she began to make a big impact in the community
and the Church. At the age of 56, after
a private audience with the Holy Father who was Pope Clement VII at the time,
she as a third order Franciscan, was asked to form another religious order for
nursing the elderly. Fully aware that
the request from the Pope was a great honor and opportunity to serve, but she
eventually understood that her vocation was in education. She learned that only those with money had
education. The poor children were not
given education and she could easily relate to that since she herself was an
orphan losing both parents at the age of ten.
She formed a group under the care of St Ursula who was another woman,
but lived during the medieval period, and was the patron of universities. Angela Merici was able to fulfill an urgent
need by forming the Ursuline Sisters, the first religious order of women
focused on education. She was 57 at the
time, and her order began with a group of 12 and increase to 28.
Thirdly,
forming a group of Sisters was far from being easy especially because the lack
of finances was always a barrier. In
addition, the ideals during that time was quite new and foreign, and change is
always difficult. Nevertheless, she
approached change in this manner: “Beware of trying to accomplish anything by
force, for God has given every single person free will and desires to constrain
none; he merely shows them the way, and invites them and counsels them.” Near the end of her life around the age of
70, her sisters in the same congregation was afraid to lose her in death. But she assured them with these words: “I shall continue to be more
alive than I was in this life, and I shall see you better and shall love more
the good deeds which I shall see you doing continually, and I shall be able to
help you more."
Through
the prayers and intercessions of St. Angela Merici whom the Church honors
today, may we be filled with greater charity to God and the needs of our
neighbor. Amen.
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