Optional Memorial of Saint Angela Merici

Fifteen or so years ago, on my first four-day retreat as a deacon, the retreat director began our first conference with advice I have followed ever since. First thing every morning, I pray, “Good morning, Lord. I know that there is nothing I encounter today that you and I together can’t handle.”

Preparing for this Reflection, I read and reflected on today’s Gospel, and I was struck, as I have always been, by Jesus’ closing words: “Amen, I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness but is guilty of an everlasting sin” (Mark 3:29). As I reflected on Jesus’ words, my daily morning prayer popped into my head because I realized that that prayer, which assumes that the Holy Spirit is my constant companion, makes it impossible for me to sin against the Holy Spirit, to deny through suicidal despair the very existence of God. If Judas had asked Jesus to forgive him, Our Lord would have forgiven him. But Judas, who has always made himself, not Jesus, the center of his existence, chooses suicide instead.

We can be sure that Angela Merici (1474-1540) would never have fallen into the sin against the Holy Spirit. Orphaned as a child in sixteenth-century Italy, young Angela surrounded herself with other young women who put God at the center of their existence, serving God through prayer and works of charity. When Pope Clement VII asked Angela to become superior of a convent in Rome, she decided instead to start her own community, the first teaching order of women religious in the Church. They organized under the patronage of Saint Ursula, who was the patron of medieval universities.

Prayer:

Dear Lord, Saint Angela Merici wrote that Ursulines must focus on charity and patience, “for with these two virtues, one crushes the head of the devil.” Help us to live every day with charity and patience. We ask your help through Christ our Lord. Amen.