Feast Day: December 15th
The year was 1848, and revolution was threatening all over Europe. You probably know of the Irish Potato Famine which was then in its third or fourth year – with a million dead, and two million having fled the country – but various bad harvest led to famines across the continent leaving countless multitudes destitute and starving. This came alongside of a cataclysmic shift in industry from subsistence farming to mechanized factory production. This, mixed with ideas of independence, and national pride, led groups in (ununified) Italy to rise up and demand national unity (which was unsuccessful as the neighboring countries of France and Austria quickly put a stop to anything that could sway their power in the region.) But then a related rebellion began in France with impoverished factory workers rising up against their rich owners, only to be brutally suppressed by soldiers, but not before bitter disunity was born between them and farmers still happily farming out in the countryside. That news made its way to Berlin where different cohorts began their own riots, there arguing for German unification. That country still hopeless split between different princes, the Prussian King actually refused to accept the crown offered him by the pressured German princes, and so the whole thing was eventually put down and all the little princedoms intact for now. Then this tale repeated itself in Poland, with the upper-class in Krakow revolting against their Austrian government, whereas the peasants there refused to join them because Austria was their only way out of basically being serfs under those landowners… and then the peasants revolted against the landowners killing thousands of them. And then it repeated with different particulars in Austria, with 100,000 dead in the aftermath… It was an age when everyone was fighting everyone to increase their slice of the pie.
Just for context, 1848 was also when Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote their famous pamphlet “The Communist Manifesto.” I think you know why.
Communism, of course, would in the end only multiply beyond comprehension the violence and deaths seen from the economic and cultural turmoil of those “hungry forties.” But when the world is crazy, God always provides saints to renew the message of the Gospel, and such was St. Maria Crocifissa di Rosa.
She was born in an affluent family, one of nine children, and given a wonderful education by sisters in Brescia, Italy up until she was 17. That being the year her mother died, she returned to her home and began to run her family’s household and manage one of her father’s textile mills. Already she was moved by the struggles of the girls who worked there and began caring for them both materially and spiritually, eventually expanding her efforts to house and help other young women, and then the mute or deaf. In 1836, she learned nursing to aid those afflicted by a cholera epidemic, and afterwards turned her newly found nursing skills to the care of the elderly. Notice what the Lord is doing here: As economic unrest, alongside of hunger and disease, begin to build around Europe, here in Italy is a young woman with the education, experience, and empathy to directly confront it. Instead of violence and anger, here is someone addressing suffering with love and compassion and prayer and Christlike love.
And so we get back to 1848. War is ramping up all around her, and her compassion rises to meet it. She argues with those who operated the hospitals to allow her, and her group of followers, to help in the hospitals and makeshift shelters for the wounded and dying. Then her best friend dies, and shortly after also the priest that had helped her all these years to discern and protect her unique vocation. And then on one famous day in 1848, enemy soldiers hammered on the door of that hospital They would break the door down and tear everyone to shreds if need be.
What would you do? What would a saint do? Sister Paula di Rosa – she would get her name a few years later when her band of followers were officially instituted as the Handmaids of Charity – but perhaps her action this day set the stage for her being named after the crucifix. Because Saint Paula di Rosa calmly opened the door, and stood before the raging mob holding a giant crucifix, flanked by two of her other sisters holding candles. She had once said “”I suffer from seeing suffering”, and so again she had plunged right into the hurt of her world, even if that meant staring down soldiers holding fast to the cross.
But stare she did. And the mob turned around. And she just kept loving the suffering until illness came for her as well. She died on December 15th, 1855.
– Fr. Dominic is taking away two truths from St. Maria Crocifissa di Rosa: First, that God can work in each of us, in precisely the way He has raised us up. He gives us our families, our story, our experiences, and our hearts to fit His plan for us perfectly. And secondly, that His plan also fits with the hunger and hurt of our particular time in history as well. We do not face cholera and hunger and mob-rule as did she, but our world has its own hurts, and we are the ones God has given to it to be saints.