MEMORIAL OF SAINT LOUIS-MARIE GRIGNON DE MONTFORT, PRIEST; SAINT PETER CHANEL, PRIEST AND MARTYR AND SAINT GIANNA BERETTA MOLLA ~ FEAST DAY: APRIL 28TH: Today, we celebrate the Memorialof Saint Louis-Marie Grignon de Montfort, Priest; St. Peter Chanel, Priest and Martyr and Saint Gianna Beretta Molla. Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary and the Saints during this Easter season, we humbly pray for all expectant mothers and the unborn, we pray for their safety and well-being. We pray for all Healthcare professionals, praying for their health, safety and protection especially during these incredibly challenging times. We pray for the safety and well-being of us all and our families, for peace, love and unity in our families, our marriages and our divided and conflicted world. Every life is a gift. We pray for God’s deliverance from impossible causes or situations. We pray for the souls in Purgatory and the repose of the gentle souls of our beloved family members who recently passed away and the souls of all the faithful departed, may the Lord receive them into the light of Eternal Kingdom. For all widows and widowers. And we continue to pray for our Holy Father, Pope Francis, the Bishops, the Clergy and all those who preach the Gospel. For vocations to the priesthood and religious life, for the Church, for persecuted christians, for all the innocent who suffer violence due to political or religious unrest, for the conversion of sinners and Christians all over the world. Amen
SAINT LOUIS-MARIE GRIGNON DE MONTFORT: St. Louis-Marie de Monfort (January 31, 1673 – April 28, 1716) was a 17th century French Roman Catholic Priest and Confessor. He was known in his time as a preacher and was made a missionary apostolic by Pope Clement XI. As well as preaching, St. Louis De Montfort found time to write a number of books which went on to become classic Catholic titles and influenced several popes. He is known for his particular and intense devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the practice of praying the Rosary. St. Louis-Marie is perhaps most famously known for his prayer of entrustment to Our Lady, “Totus Tuus ego sum,” which means, “I am all yours.” The late-Pope John Paul II took the phrase “Totus Tuus” as his episcopal motto.
St. Louis-Marie De Monfort was born in Montfort, Brittany, France on January 31, 1673 to a large farming family. As a child he displayed an unusual spiritual maturity and spent much time in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. He possessed a strong devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and was also intimately devoted to the Blessed Virgin, especially through the Rosary. He took the name Marie at his confirmation. The saint manifested a love for the poor while he was at school and joined a society of young men who ministered to the poor and the sick on school holidays. When he was 19, he walked 130 miles to Paris to study theology, gave all he had to the poor that he met along the way and made a vow to live only on alms. After his ordination at 27, he served as a hospital chaplain until the management of the hospital resented his reorganization of the staff and sent him away.
St. Louis-Marie discovered his calling to be an itinerant preacher and great gift for preaching at the age of 32, and committed himself to it for the rest of his life. He received the title of “Apostolic Missionary” from the Pope after his bishop tried to silence him. For the next 17 years he preached missions in countless towns and villages throughout France with an emphasis on renewal and reform. His fiery devotion, oratory skill, and identification with the poor led many souls to conversion. He met with such great success that he often drew crowds of thousands to hear his sermons in which he encouraged frequent communion and devotion to Mary. But he also met with opposition, especially from the Jansenists, a heretical movement within the Church that believed in absolute Predestination, in which only a chosen few are saved, and the rest damned. Much of France was influenced by Jansenism, including many bishops, who banished St. Loius-Marie from preaching in their dioceses. He was even poisoned by Jansenists in La Rochelle, but survived, though he suffered ill health after. While recuperating from the effects of the poisoning, he wrote the masterpiece of Marian piety, “True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin,” which he correctly prophesied would be hidden by the devil for a time. His seminal work was discovered 200 years after his death. One year before he died, St. Louis-Marie founded two congregations: the Daughters of Divine Wisdom – which tended to the sick in hospitals and the education of poor girls, and the Company of Mary, missionaries devoted to preaching and to spreading devotion to Mary.
Quotes of St. Louis-Marie Grignon de Montfort:
“We never give more honour to Jesus than when we honour His Mother, & we honour her simply and solely to honour Him all the more perfectly. We go to her only as a way leading to the goal we seek – Jesus, her Son.”
“The rosary is the most powerful weapon to touch the Heart of Jesus, Our Redeemer, who loves His Mother.”
O God, You willed to direct the footsteps of St. Louis, Your Priest, in the way of salvation and the love of Christ, with the accompaniment of the Blessed Virgin. Grant that following his example we may meditate on the mysteries of Your love and strive indefatigably to build up Your Church… Amen
SAINT PETER CHANEL, PRIEST AND MARTYR: The Protomartyr of the South Seas, St. Peter Chanel was born in Clet in the diocese of Belley, France, in 1803. He became a diocesan priest and in three years completely revitalized the first parish to which he was assigned. Since his mind was set on missionary work, St. Peter joined the newly formed Society of Mary (Marists), which concentrated on missionary work at home and abroad. To his dismay, he was appointed to teach at the Seminary of Belley and remained there for the next five years, diligently performing his duty. In 1836, St.Peter was sent to the New Hebrides as the superior of a little band of missionaries. After a long and arduous ten-month journey, the band split up, with Peter and two others going to evangelize the island of Futuna. Once there, St. Peter and his two assistants made headway in converting the island’s populace, attracting even the son of the King. As a result, the King dispatched a group of warriors to set upon the saintly head of the missionaries.
On April 28, 1841, three years after his arrival, a band of native warriors entered the hut of Father Peter Chanel on the island of Futuna in the New Hebrides islands near New Zealand. They seized and clubbed the missionary to death and cut up his body with hatchets. He was killed by hose he had come to save and his death brought his work to completion—within five months the entire island was converted to the Faith. Two years later, the whole island was Catholic. St. Peter Chanel’s death bears witness to then ancient axiom that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians.” He is the first martyr from Oceania, that part of the world spread over the south Pacific, and he came there as the fulfillment of a dream he had had as a boy. Peter was canonized in 1954 by Pope Pius XII. Patron Saint of Oceania.
PRAYER: God, in order to spread Your Church You crowned St. Peter with martyrdom. Grant that in these paschal joys we may so frequent the mysteries of Christ’s Death and Resurrection as to become witnesses of the new life. Amen
SAINT GIANNA BERETTA MOLLA: St. Gianna (October 4, 1922 – April 28, 1962) was an Italian Roman Catholic pediatrician, a Mother, Doctor, Fashionista and Lover of Life. She was a pro-life doctor and mother who gave her life for her unborn child. Gianna Beretta was born in Magenta (Milan) October 4, 1922. Already as a youth she willingly accepted the gift of faith and the clearly Christian education that she received from her excellent parents. As a result, she experienced life as a marvelous gift from God, had a strong faith in Providence and was convinced of the necessity and effectiveness of prayer. She diligently dedicated herself to studies during the years of her secondary and university education, while, at the same time, applying her faith through generous apostolic service among the youth of Catholic Action and charitable work among the elderly and needy as a member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. After earning degrees in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Pavia in 1949, she opened a medical clinic in Mesero (near Magenta) in 1950. She specialized in Pediatrics at the University of Milan in 1952 and there after gave special attention to mothers, babies, the elderly and poor.
While working in the field of medicine-which she considered a “mission” and practiced as such-she increased her generous service to Catholic Action, especially among the “very young” and, at the same time, expressed her joie de vivre and love of creation through skiing and mountaineering. Through her prayers and those of others, she reflected upon her vocation, which she also considered a gift from God. Having chosen the vocation of marriage, she embraced it with complete enthusiasm and wholly dedicated herself “to forming a truly Christian family”. She became engaged to Pietro Molla and was radiant with joy and happiness during the time of their engagement, for which she thanked and praised the Lord. They were married on September 24, 1955, in the Basilica of St. Martin in Magenta, and she became a happy wife. In November 1956, to her great joy, she became the mother of Pierluigi, in December 1957 of Mariolina; in July 1959 of Laura. With simplicity and equilibrium she harmonized the demands of mother, wife, doctor and her passion for life.
In September 1961 towards the end of the second month of pregnancy, she was touched by suffering and the mystery of pain; she had developed a fibroma in her uterus. Before the required surgical operation, and conscious of the risk that her continued pregnancy brought, she pleaded with the surgeon to save the life of the child she was carrying, and entrusted herself to prayer and Providence. The life was saved, for which she thanked the Lord. She spent the seven months remaining until the birth of the child in incomparable strength of spirit and unrelenting dedication to her tasks as mother and doctor. She worried that the baby in her womb might be born in pain, and she asked God to prevent that. A few days before the child was due, although trusting as always in Providence, she was ready to give her life in order to save that of her child: “If you must decide between me and the child, do not hesitate: choose the child – I insist on it. Save him”. On the morning of April 21, 1962, Gianna Emanuela was born. Despite all efforts and treatments to save both of them, on the morning of April 28, amid unspeakable pain and after repeated exclamations of “Jesus, I love you. Jesus, I love you», the mother died. She was 39 years old. Her funeral was an occasion of profound grief, faith and prayer. The Servant of God lies in the cemetery of Mesero (4 km from Magenta). “Conscious immolation, was the phrase used by Pope Paul VI to define the act of Blessed Gianna, remembering her at the Sunday Angelus of September 23, 1973, as: “A young mother from the diocese of Milan, who, to give life to her daughter, sacrificed her own, with conscious immolation”. The Holy Father in these words clearly refers to Christ on Calvary and in the Eucharist. St. Gianna was beatified by Pope John Paul II on April 24, 1994, during the international Year of the Family. She was canonized by Pope St. John Paul II on May 16, 2004. She’s the Patron Saint of mothers, physicians, wives, families, and preborn children.
PRAYER TO SAINT GIANNA FOR HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS: Dear St. Gianna, you who knew that Christ Himself was present in each of your patients, and who chose medicine as a way to serve Him, we entrust to you the health care professionals of our times. We ask you to take into your care in a special way those who do not know Christ, beseeching the Holy Spirit to fill their hearts with Love since God is Love. We ask you to comfort those who are Christians. Keep their eyes focused on their Divine Savior, and never let them forget that He is present before them and through them. You who knew so well the challenges of combining your work with your family life, take care of the families of our doctors, nurses, and health care workers. Help them to know that in their generosity, they too are serving God. Intercede for the health care workers who are sick in body or in spirit, overwhelmed by the high price their bodies and their spirits must pay in order to assist others.
Ask God to bring the souls of the health care professionals who have died into the mercy of his loving embrace.
St. Gianna Molla, pray for them and pray for us.”… Amen