Tag: Nun

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Saint of the Day – April 12th – Saint Teresa of Los Andes

(JULY 13, 1900 – APRIL 12, 1920)

One needn’t live a long life to leave a deep imprint. Teresa of Los Andes is proof of that.

As a young girl growing up in the early 1900’s in Santiago, Chile, Juana Fernandez read an autobiography of a French-born saint—Thérèse, popularly known as the Little Flower. The experience deepened her desire to serve God and clarified the path she would follow. At age 19 Juana became a Carmelite nun, taking the name of Teresa.

The convent offered the simple lifestyle Teresa desired and the joy of living in a community of women completely devoted to God. She focused her days on prayer and sacrifice. “I am God’s,” she wrote in her diary. “He created me and is my beginning and my end.”

Toward the end of her short life, Teresa began an apostolate of letter-writing, sharing her thoughts on the spiritual life with many people. At age 20 she contracted typhus and quickly took her final vows. She died a short time later, during Holy Week.

Known as the “Flower of the Andes,” Teresa remains popular with the estimated 100,000 pilgrims who visit her shrine in Los Andes each year. Canonized in 1993 by Pope John Paul II, she is Chile’s first saint.

Reflection

The special graces given Saint Teresa reflect the mysterious wisdom of God at work in individuals whether young or old. It appears God has his own logic when it comes to who gets what in the realm of grace. All we can say is; “Praised be the Lord.”

//Franciscan Media//

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Saint of the Day – April 9th – Blessed Katarzyna Faron

Bl. Katarzyna Celestyna (Catherine Celestine) Faron (1913-1944) was born in Zabrzez, Poland. At the age of five she was orphaned and raised by pious, childless relatives. Desiring the religious life, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate in 1930. She served in the community as a kindergarten teacher and catechist. After the breakout of World War II she became the leader of her religious house, ran an orphanage, and helped the poor. She was eventually arrested by the Gestapo, charged with conspiracy against the Nazis, and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp on the feast of Epiphany in 1943, where she was assigned to manual labor digging ditches. She praised God in all her suffering and resigned herself to following his will. Due to the poor conditions she developed typhoid fever and tuberculosis. Because she completed the nine First Fridays devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, she trusted that she wouldn’t die without Holy Communion, as Our Lord promised. On December 8, 1943, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, she received Holy Communion as viaticum which was secretly brought to the camp by a prisoner priest.

While on her deathbed Catherine prayed intensely for various intentions on a rosary made of bread. According to witnesses she offered her sufferings for the conversion of a priest who had fallen away from the Church, who later did return to the true Faith. Bl. Katarzyn finally died from her illness on Easter morning. She is one of the 108 beatified Polish Catholic Martyrs killed during World War II by Nazi Germany. Her feast day is April 9th.

//The Catholic Company//

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Saint of the Day – April 6th – Saint Juliana of Mont Cornillon

Blessed Juliana of Mont Cornillon, also known as Juliana of Liege (1193-1258) was born near Liege, Belgium. She was orphaned at the age of five and placed in the convent of Mt. Cornillon near Liege. She made rapid progress in virtue and grew in love for the Passion of Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Blessed Sacrament. At the age of thirteen she became a nun and devoted herself to caring for the sick in the convent hospital. She eventually became the superioress of her community.

Taught in repeated visions that Our Lord wanted a liturgical feast in honor of the Holy Eucharist to be established, Juliana worked diligently to have the feast of Corpus Christi instituted for the Universal Church, a task for which she endured much opposition. She was forced to flee her convent after its general superior excited the populace against her and her visions. She was later vindicated by the bishop and returned to her rightful place, only to be forced to flee a final time, ending her life in seclusion.

The feast of Corpus Christi was finally instituted six years after her death by Pope Urban IV, who also commissioned Saint Thomas Aquinas to prepare the magnificent texts for the feast’s Office and Mass. Her feast day is April 6.