Patrons for the Pilgrimage

 

St. Therese of the Child Jesus

The world came to know Therese through her autobiography, "Story of a Soul". She described her life as a "little way of spiritual childhood." She lived each day with an unshakable confidence in God's love. "What matters in life," she wrote, "is not great deeds, but great love." Therese lived and taught a spirituality of attending to everyone and everything well and with love. She believed that just as a child becomes enamored with what is before her, we should also have a childlike focus and totally attentive love. Therese's spirituality is of doing the ordinary, with extraordinary love.

"My mission - to make God loved - will begin after my death," she said. "I will spend my heaven doing good on earth. I will let fall a shower of roses."

It is interesting to note that St. Therese, the Patron of Missions, during the last year of her life, drew the United States as her Mission and country for which to pray and sacrifice throughout the following year.

We pray in confidence each day throughout this year--Grace and Ellen's 25th on this earth-- in intercession to St. Therese for the people of Haiti, and for us all to believe so that we might imitate the "little way" each day.  

Blessed Cecilia Eusepi,OSSM (Secular Servant of Mary), who was beatified on June 17, 2012 in Italy

Cecilia’s Simple Life

Born to good and simple parents who raised a family of love, Cecilia is youngest of 11 children. Initially from the small village of Monte Romano, (also North of Rome) Cecilia moved to Nepi at age 5. After her father died, her uncle takes care of her mother and family, and brings them to Nepi to work on a farm in La Massa, just outside of town. Soon, Cecilia is entrusted to the nuns.

Cecilia was already most devout as a young girl. Barely a teenager, at age 13, she officially joined a monastery called the 3rd Order of the Servants of Mary. She had high hopes and plans to study in Rome and Pistoia and then Zara to become a missionary there.

She did go to Rome and Pistoia, however her missionary dreams were curbed by her poor health after three years. Intestinal tuberculosis made her returned at age 16 from the nuns in Pistoia back to Nepi, where she died here two years later. During these last years, she was visited often and by many who sought her council.

Her strong devotion to Mother Mary and Jesus, as well as her being exemplary of operating in ‘little ways’, was noted by those in Rome. 

During the period of her illness, at the behest of Father Roschini, Cecilia began writing a diary in May 1927 (finished September 1928) and autobiography, called “The Story of a Clown (storia di un giglio)”.