Blessed Maria Francesca Rubatto

Today in Rome it's the feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), a feast day because she is one of the many patron saints of Europe, except where I happen to be offering Mass this week, at the Capuchin Sisters of Mother Rubatto, where today is the feast of their foundress, Blessed Maria Francesca (Anna Maria) Rubatto (1844-1904).

Mother Rubatto

Their General Curia is on the other side of the Villa Borghese from where we are and the priests here who sign up take weekly turns offering the weekday Mass there. I've appreciated getting to know them; they seem like a great community. It's too bad we don't have them in the U.S.A.

So I could prepare for the Mass today, the sisters lent me a copy of the liturgy for the day. Since not much was going on in the office--August in Rome you know--I made a translation of the reading offered for the Office of Readings.



Second Reading

From the letters of Blessed Mary Francis of Jesus
(Letters, 4 vols., Genoa, 1974 ff.)

Prayer, sacrifice, and the will of God

Dear daughters, there is no need for me to repeat it to you: every beginning demands sacrifices and therefore you cannot even imagine the need we have for prayer and divine help; may the Lord then inspire in us what is most fitting and pleasing to him. Divine Providence will not be lacking for us, even in temporal things. But what is more desirable is to be able to begin our mission with the sick and in teaching poor girls, and this will be obtained, I hope, by prayer and sacrifice. We have to pray very much that the Lord make us holy and sacrifice us for the good of souls.

Let us pray! Only prayer and the sacrifices that good souls make will be able to stop the many woes that are flooding the earth … May God keep you fervent in spirit and make you lovers of duty and of sacrifice, for without sacrificing ourselves—let us keep it in mind—no good will ever be done that can call itself truly good.

Attend lovingly and assiduously to what is yours to do. When you are busy, don’t think of so many miseries, but keep the mind centered in God and in what you are doing. This will put the conscience at peace and make the heart content …

Dear daughters, I recommend to you that you see things here below as always coming from the hand of God, so that you can remain at peace in abandonment to Divine Providence. Remember the great saying of our Seraphic Father who, amid fears, in sufferings, and in pains within and without, often repeated: “So great is the good that awaits me that every pain is a delight.”

Do everything for the love of God and you will see that you do not feel the weight of anything. If we all begin by taking up our own cross willingly, we will find ourselves at the summit of the holy mountain without having felt its weight and without having put it off onto others.

It is very true that sometimes a bit of storminess comes to us, but this is not always a matter of harm. We get beaten up a little—this I don’t deny—but this also makes us turn back more often to God who comes to our help, who breaks us out of bad habits, supports us, and strengthens us in the virtues of humility, patience, and charity. Blessed be God who in his goodness does not smite us completely, but only when we have need of purifying ourselves of our many defects …

How sad it is to see the suffering that comes from being without the comfort of our holy religion! When we have worked hard to stand up straight again under the weight of some problem that has come, there comes another that makes us pine for the former … Let us not lose heart in misfortunes! These are in fact our valid passport to heaven, to our true homeland!

Pray and work hard in the field that the Lord has prepared for you; obtain much merit for yourselves, keeping in mind that this life passes quickly and nothing remains before God but the good works done with a right and holy intention. Let us console ourselves with the thought that the one who suffers more will merit more, though only on the condition that our we offer our sufferings to Jesus our Spouse.

Let us procure for ourselves the grace of carrying our difficulties in peace and even to kiss them, for they are mixed with roses. You cannot ask God why. In great afflictions we cannot do other but resign ourselves to the Will of God and to repeat what a certain holy mother foundress said many times: “O Will of God, you are my Paradise.”

Relic of Blessed Maria Francesca Rubatto