June 9

Spiritual Bouquet: He who is faithful in the little things is faithful also in much. St. Luke 16:10

BLESSED ANNA MARIA TAIGI
Wife and mother, Trinitarian Tertiary
(1769-1837)

Anna Maria Gianetti was born in Siena, Italy. She joined her father in Rome when a reversal of fortune obliged him to go and settle there. The little girl went to school only two years, and she scarcely learned how to read. Her parents poured all their bitterness upon their daughter, but the angelic little child redoubled in meekness towards them.

Anna Maria soon began working to help her parents. She grew up a pious, hard-working, coquettish lass who enjoyed dressing herself up. Domenico Taigi, an honest but rough man, quick to anger, who was working as a day laborer in the Chigi Palace, offered to marry her, and Anna Maria accepted his proposal.

In the early days of their household she kept her worldly habits, loving to go to the puppet theater and wear jewelry. After three years of a life divided between love of God and love of the world, Anna Maria went to confession to Father Angelo of the Order of Servites. She was totally converted, and with her husband’s consent she was received into the Third Order of the Trinitarians. Domenico asked for only one thing: keep the house peaceful and in good order!

But now Anna Maria’s parents came to join the young household. From the moment of their arrival, yelling scenes became a daily occurrence. Anna Maria did her best to quiet them down, but her quarrelsome mother was always looking for a fight with her son-in-law, who flared up very easily. Attenuating the blows as best she could, Anna Maria hastened to serve her quick-tempered husband, who was perfectly capable of dashing the contents of the dinner table onto the floor when a dish did not please him. After her mother’s death, her father lived at his daughter’s expense and heaped dispute upon dispute. When he contracted leprosy, Blessed Anna Maria cared for him tenderly and helped him die a Christian death.

Their home would have become a veritable hell for their seven children, but the Blessed remained so supernaturally sweet that Domenico later declared that the house was a real paradise, and that cleanliness and order reigned everywhere in his poor dwelling. Anna Maria would get up very early to go to church, and she received Communion daily. When a family member was sick, however, to avoid giving an occasion for complaint, she deprived herself of Mass and Communion. To make up for this involuntary privation, she spent her free moments in recollection on such days.

Blessed Anna Maria Taigi always kept her children busy. After supper, the family recited the Rosary and read a brief Life of the Saint of the day, and then the children went to bed after receiving a blessing. On Sunday they visited the sick in the hospital. Her maternal tenderness did not keep her from firmly applying punishments when they were deserved, such as the rod and fasting. Her children profited well from such a balanced formation, and soon they were an honor to their virtuous mother and an example to their companions.

Her delicacy towards the humble was exquisite. She fed her servant girl better than herself; when one of them awkwardly broke some dishes, she said sweetly, “Well, I suppose the people who make the china have to make a living too.”

When she was received as a member of the Third Order of the Holy Trinity, the Blessed offered herself as a victim of atonement for the sins of the world. In return for this generous offering, God granted her the permanent vision of a luminous globe or sun, in which she could read the needs of souls, the condition of sinners, and the dangers of the Church.

This extraordinary phenomenon lasted forty-seven years. Surprised by ravishments and ecstasies amid her domestic occupations, Anna Maria strove vainly to avoid them. Thanks to her, many sick people warned of their approaching end met with a holy death. The fate of the dead was revealed to her, and her compassion towards them inspired her to multiply her penances to win an earlier release for these poor souls, who came to thank her for their deliverance.

Although Blessed Anna Maria Taigi fervently wanted to remain unknown to everyone, a whole host of visitors — the poor, princes, priests, bishops, even the pope — flocked to her to ask for advice from her inspired wisdom. Simple and humble, she would reply very simply, trying to avoid praise, always refusing little gifts.

This woman who spread light and serenity all around her was deprived of spiritual consolation for five years and had a the very strong sentiment that she had been relegated to hell. The anxiety and darkness in her soul had been on the increase for seven months, and Anna Maria Taigi underwent a veritable agony, but she continued directing her house as though nothing was amiss.

Despite the fact that her fingers had become very painful, she did a great deal of sewing to earn the family’s daily bread. The wife of the Governor of Savoy, who had obtained many graces through the prayers of the handmaid of God, wanted to give her a large sum of money, but the Blessed categorically refused.

On Monday in Holy Week, Anna Maria learned in ecstasy that she was going to die on Good Friday. After blessing her loved ones and thanking them, she gave up her soul with a cry of joy and deliverance. It seems that God wanted to show in the person of this admirable Blessed the possibility of joining eminent virtue and exceptional supernatural gifts to fidelity in the most humble and material duties of the common life. Pope Benedict XV beatified Anna Maria Taigi on May 30, 1920.

Source: Marteau de Langle de Cary, 1959, Vol. II, pp. 338-342. Brothers of Christian School Edition, p. 201 — O.D.M. article.

SAINTS PRIMUS and FELICIANUS
Martyrs
(†286)

These two martyrs were brothers who lived in Rome, heirs of a family of great wealth, toward the latter part of the third century. It was through the assiduous love of Pope Felix I that they had the happiness, in their mature years, of being converted to the Christian faith; afterwards they encouraged each other for many years in the practice of all good works. They seemed to possess nothing but for the poor, and often, during the persecutions, they spent both nights and days with the confessors in their dungeons, or at the places of their torments and execution. Some they exhorted to persevere; others who had fallen, they raised again. They made themselves the servants of all in Christ, that all might attain to salvation through Him.

Though their zeal was very remarkable, they had escaped the dangers of many bloody persecutions; they had grown old in the heroic exercises of their virtue, when it pleased God to crown their labors with a glorious martyrdom. Primus was about 90 years old, when the pagans raised so great an outcry against the brothers that they were apprehended and put in chains. They were inhumanly scourged and tortured, and then sent to a town twelve miles from Rome to be chastised again, as avowed enemies to the gods, by a prefect who detested the Christians. There they were cruelly tortured to make them renounce their faith, both together and then separately, but the grace of God strengthened each of them. Felicianus was nailed by his hands and feet to a post and left without food or water for three days; Primus was beaten with clubs and burnt with torches. God spared them amidst these tortures, and wild beasts in an arena imitated their God’s mercy. Finally, they were beheaded on June 9, 286.

Reflection. A soul which truly loves God regards all things of this world as nothing. The loss of goods, the disgrace of the world, torments, sickness, and other afflictions are bitter to the senses, but appear light to the one who loves God. If we cannot bear our trials with patience and silence, it is because we love Him only in words. “One who is slothful and lukewarm complains of everything, and calls the lightest precepts hard,” says Thomas a Kempis.

Source: Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler’s Lives of the Saints, and other sources by John Gilmary Shea (Benziger Brothers: New York, 1894).

SAINT COLUMBA or COLUMKILLE
Abbot
(521-597)

Saint Columba, the apostle of the Picts of Scotland, was born of a noble family in the county of Tyrconnel in Ireland, in 521. He studied Holy Scripture under the saintly bishop Finian, and when ordained a priest in 546 he opened a school where he formed several disciples. He founded several monasteries in Ireland. He is sometimes called Columkille, which is Old Irish for Founder of cells. Though austere, he was not morose; and, although he often longed to die, he was untiring in good works throughout his life.

His zeal in preaching against public vices offended King Dermot, and the Saint decided to leave his domains, departing for Scotland with a dozen of his disciples. He arrived there in 565, according to Saint Bede. There he founded a hundred religious houses and converted the Picts of the north, who in gratitude gave him the island of Iona, a short distance from the mainland. On that island Saint Columba founded his celebrated large monastery of Hy (or Y Colm-Kille), a school for apostolic missionaries and martyrs, and for centuries the last resting place of a multitude of Saints and of the kings of Scotland. Later its monks adopted the Rule of Saint Benedict.

The gentleness and charity of Saint Columba, which were unfailing, won the hearts of all with whom he conversed. His virtues, to which God added the gifts of prophecy and miracles, attracted for him universal veneration. The kings did nothing without consulting him; King Edhan in 570 wished to receive the royal ornaments from his hand.

Four years before his death, our Saint had a vision of Angels, who told him that the day of his death had been deferred four years, in answer to the prayers of his spiritual children. Thereupon the Saint wept bitterly, for he desired above all things to reach his true home. He was seventy-six years old, and surrounded in choir by his disciples, when finally the day of his peaceful death came. It was the 9^th of June, 597, when he said to his disciple Diermit, “This day is called the Sabbath, that is, the day of rest, and such will it truly be to me; for it will put an end to my labors.” Then, kneeling before the altar, he received the Viaticum, and sweetly slept in the Lord. His relics were later carried to Down and laid in the same shrine with those of Saint Patrick and Saint Bridget.

Reflection. How different is the attitude of most men from that of Saint Columba; they dread death above all else, instead of wishing “to be dissolved, and to be with Christ"! The more perfect we become, the more we desire to behold that for which Saint Columba sighed.

Sources: Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin (Bloud et Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 6; Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler’s Lives of the Saints, and other sources by John Gilmary Shea (Benziger Brothers: New York, 1894).