St Benedict of the Bridge St Cronan of Roscrea St Cyril of Turov Bl Gerard of Bourgogne Bl Hanna Helena Chrzanowska OSB (1902-1973) Bl Józef Cebula Blessed Luchesius TOSF (c1180 – 1260) Layman – The first Franciscan Tertiary
Nuestra Señora del / Our Lady of Quito, Ecuador (1534) – 28 April:
This miraculous image of Our Lady of Quito currently in the Capital City of Ecuador ,is said to date from the first Spanish settlement there in the year 1534. At the very least, it has certainly been venerated there for a long time and is popularly called ,by the people of Quito, Our Lady of the Earthquake. The painting represents the Sorrowful Mother and in the early years of the twentieth century, devotion to Mary under the title of Our Lady of Quito was introduced into England ,by the Servite Friars in London. Saint Pius X accorded them an indulgence for those who should pray before her picture, and the devotion was greatly promoted in England by the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus, Mother Cornelia Connelly’s congregation. The original image at Quito was solemnly crowned in 1918. On 20 April 1906, thirty-six boys attending the boarding school of the Jesuit Fathers at Quito, Ecuador, together with Father Andrew Roesch, witnessed a miracle of this famous picture of Our Lady. While in the refectory they all saw the Blessed Mother slowly open and shut her eyes. The same miracle occurred no less than seven times after that, in favour of the boys at the school but this time, in the Chapel to which the picture had been taken.
Ecclesiastical authorities soon investigated these incidents and finally concluded by ordering the picture to be transferred, in procession from the college to the Church of the Jesuit Fathers. Once at the Church, the miracle was repeated several times before large crowds and many, many conversions took place because of these miracles. At one time, the wonder continued for three consecutive days. At Riobamba, before a faithful reproduction of Our Lady of Quito, the same wonder was seen by more than 20 persons, including the president of the City. In Quito this picture is known as the Dolorosa del Colegio.
A Conceptionist Sister, named Mother Mariana de Jesús Torres received Marian apparitions under this title from 2 February 1594 to 2 February 1634. In 1611, the local Bishop gave his approval to the apparitions.
Mother Mariana de Jesús Torres
Our Lady appeared to Mother Mariana and predicted many things about our own times. This following, is part of what she told her. We can see for ourselves how it relates directly to our own time. “…. I make it known to you, that from the end of the 19th century and shortly after the middle of the 20th century…. the passions will erupt and there will be a total corruption of customs (morals)…. “They will focus principally on the children, in order to sustain this general corruption. Woe to the children of these times! It will be difficult to receive the Sacrament of Baptism and also, that of Confirmation… “As for the Sacrament of Matrimony… it will be attacked and deeply profaned… The Catholic spirit will rapidly decay; the precious light of the Faith will gradually be extinguished… Added to this, will be the effects of secular education, which will be one reason for the dearth of priestly and religious vocations. “The Sacrament of Holy Orders will be ridiculed, oppressed and despised… The Devil will try to persecute the ministers of the Lord in every possible way; he will labour with cruel and subtle astuteness, to deviate them from the spirit of their vocation and will corrupt many of them. These depraved priests, who will scandalise the Christian people, will make the hatred of bad Catholics and the enemies of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church ,fall upon all priests… “Further, in these unhappy times, there will be unbridled luxury, which will ensnare the rest ,into sin and conquer innumerable frivolous souls, who will be lost. Innocence will almost no longer be found in children, nor modesty in women. In this supreme moment of need of the Church, the one who should speak will fall silent.” In a subsequent apparition, Our Lady told Mother Mariana that these apparitions were not to become generally known until the twentieth century.
On 8 December 1634, the apparition predicted that Papal Infallibility “will be declared a Dogma of the Faith by the same Pope chosen to proclaim the Dogma of the Mystery of My Immaculate Conception.” In 1854, Blessed Pope Pius IX defined the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception and in 1870, he declared the Dogma of Papal Infallibility as defined by the First Vatican Council.
Mother Mariana died on 16 January 1635, shortly after the last apparition. When her tomb was reopened in 1906, her body was found to be perfectly incorrupt, after nearly 300 years in an ordinary, unprotected, wooden coffin. The Archdiocese of Quito opened her cause for Canonisation in 1986 and finished the Diocesan stage of the process ,in 1997.
Bl Józef Cebula
Bl Luchesius Blessed María Felicia of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament / Guggiari Echeverría OCD (1925-1959)
St Mark of Galilee
St Pamphilus of Sulmona
St Prudentius of Tarazona
—
Martyrs of Alexandia:
Didymus
Theodora
Martyrs of Durostorum:
Dada
Maximus
Quintilian
Martyrs of Languedoc:
Agapius
Aphrodisius
Caralippus
Eusebius
Martyrs of Laon:
Germaine
Probe
Martyrs of Larino:
Alexander
Firmianus
Primianus
Tellurius
Martyrs of Nicomedia:
Caralampo
Eusebius
Martyrs of Prusa:
Acacius
Menander
Patritius
Polyenus
Martyrs of Ravenna:
Ursicinus
Valeria
Vitalis
Martyrs of Vietnam:
Gioan Baotixta Ðinh Van Thành
Phaolô Pham Khac Khoan
Phêrô Nguyen Van Hien
Pilgrims of Gallinaro:
Arduin
Bernhard
Gerard
Hugh
Saint of the Day – 28 April – Blessed Itala Mela ObSB (1904–1957) – Laywoman, Mystic, Benedictine Oblate, Theological Writer.
Blessed Itala was an Italian Roman Catholic who was a lapsed Christian until a conversion of faith in the 1920s and as a Benedictine oblate assumed the name of “Maria della Trinità”. She became one of the well-known mystics of the Church during her life and indeed following her death. She also penned a range of theological writings that focused on the Trinity, such an integral element of the Christian faith.
Itala Mela was born on 28 August 1904 in La Spezia to Pasquino Mela and Luigia Bianchini, both were atheist teachers. She spent her childhood in the care of her maternal grandparents from 1905 to 1915, as her parents worked and her grandparents prepared Mela for her First Communion and Confirmation – she made on 9 May 1915 and 27 May 1915 respectively.
The death of her brother Enrico at the age of nine (27 February 1920) challenged Mela’s perception of her Christian faith and she wrote of her feelings to the loss: “After his death, nothing”. As a result, she eschewed her Christian faith and slipped into atheism. However, at the age of 18 she had a profound spiritual experience whichresulted in the reawakening of her faith, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (8 Dec. 1922). After rediscovering God, her faith deepened with the motto she took being: “Lord, I shall follow You unto the darkness, unto death”.
Bl Itala became a member of FUCI (Federation of Catholic Students) in 1923, where she met future pope Giovanni Battista Montini (St Paul VI) and Bl Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster OSB (1880-1954) at the meetings there. She also met the priests Divo Barsotti and Agostino Gemelli OFM. At such meetings, Monsignor Montini and both the politicians Aldo Moro and Giulio Andreotti, both of the Christian Democracy Party served as major influences upon her.
She passed her studies in 1922 with recognition of being a brilliant student and was enrolled at the University of Genoa on the following 11 November, where she later received a degree in letters in 1928 as well as in classical studies.
Bl Itala experienced her first vision of God on 3 August 1928 as a beam of light at the tabernacle, in a church of a seminary at Pontremoli. She wrote afterwards, “The will of Christ, which I feel in the depths of my soul, is to drag me, to immerse myself with Himself in the abysses of the Holy Trinity … It is useless to look for other ways, this is what He has chosen for my sanctification.” Feeling called to the religious life, she tried to enter a Benedictine convent but health did not allow her to remain. Instead she became a Benedictine Oblate and consecrated herself to the Holy Trinity.
She departed for Milan at this time and chose as her confessor Adriano Bernareggi., who later became the Archbishop of Bergamo.
Her true calling as a Benedictine oblate came in 1929 and solidified to the point, where she commenced her novitiate. It concluded on 4 January 1933 when she made her profession in Rome in the church of San Paolo fuori le Mura making her four vows. As a sign of her new life, Mela assumed the name of “Maria della Trinità – Maria of the Trinity”. She composed many profound spiritual writings and continued to have spiritual visions and ecstasies. She even proposed a special memorial to Mary of the Trinity to Pope Pius XII, which he approved in 1941.
In Genoa from 5–15 October 1946, Mela composed a series of spiritual exercises for the benefit of the faithful, the exercises were well received.
Bl Itala died on 29 April 1957 aged 52. Her remains were later transferred to the La Spezia Cathedral in 1983.
She was proclaimed Venerable on 12 June 2014 after Pope Francis approved her life of heroic virtue. On 14 December 2015 the pope also approved a miracle attributed to her intercession which allowed for her Beatification to take place. Bl Itala was beatified in La Spezia on 10 June 2017 and Cardinal Angelo Amato presided over the celebration on the pope’s behalf. The miracle in question concerned the revival of an Italian newborn, whose body was in state of clinical brain death.
Pope Francis said on Sunday, 11 June 2017, the day after her Beatification:
Dear brothers and sisters, yesterday in La Spezia, Itala Mela was Beatified.
She was raised in a family far removed from the faith, in her youth she professed to be an atheist but converted after an intense spiritual experience. She worked among Catholic university students, she then became a Benedictine Oblate and followed a mystic path centred on the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, which we celebrate today in a special way. May the witness of the new Blessed encourage us, during our days, to turn our thought often to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit who abides in the chamber of our heart.
The Spiritual Experience of Itala Mela, a Life Incandescently Immersed in the Trinity
This present translation in English is the most recent development of an ongoing study regarding Itala Mela and the profound mysteries that our Lord revealed to her regarding the Inhabitation of the Most Blessed Trinity. This is a most telling narrative describing the work of God in each individual soul for the fulfilment of the destiny of mankind. A work achieved by co-operation to grace and acceptance of the circumstances of life with an eye to advancing the Kingdom within oneself and the world around us.
Itala is an example of an ordinary life of an ordinary person and how God takes this ordinariness and makes it extraordinary. Yes, sanctity is for everyone, if only we see to understand and act in love. The journey begins today with a light for each step of our path.
Low Sunday the Octave Day of Easter and Divine Mercy Sunday *2019
St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716) (Optional Memorial) St Louis’s story: https://anastpaul.wordpress.com/2018/04/28/saint-of-the-day-28-april-st-louis-marie-grignion-de-montfort-1673-1716/
St Peter Chanel SM (1803-1841) Martyred aged 37 (Optional Memorial) Biography: https://anastpaul.wordpress.com/2017/04/28/saint-of-the-day-28-april-st-peter-chanel/
St Adalbero of Augsburg
St Agapio of Cirtha
St Artemius of Sens Bl Itala Mela ObSB (1904–1957)
St Benedict of the Bridge
St Cronan of Roscrea
St Cyril of Turov
Bl Gerard of Bourgogne St Gianna Beretta Molla (1922-1962)
Bl Józef Cebula
Bl Luchesius
St Pamphilus of Sulmona
St Prudentius of Tarazona
—
St Alexander
St Aphrodisius of Beziers
St Berthold
St Buonadonna
Carino Peter of Balsamo
St Firmiano
St Germaine
St Guido Spada
St Luchtighern of Ennistymon
St Marie Louise Trichet Jesus
St Mark of Galilee
St Peter of Bearn
St Primianus
St Probe
St Tellurium
AnaStpaul 
You must be logged in to post a comment.