Angela Merici


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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