Feast Day: October 6th
Admittedly, we do not know a lot of particulars about St. Mary Frances. She grew up in Naples in the early 1700s in a middle-class family (her father wove lace and/or sold clothing – carrying the fantastic title of “haberdasher” – which also brought in a decent income for his family), but they lived in a rough part of that city. Furthermore, though her mother was pious and patient, her father was a man quick to anger and harsh with his family, if not outright abusive to them. Her young life was marked by the traumatizing clash of a nominally Christian home with the very unchristian experience of incessant work and hard treatment even at a tender age. At 16 her father arranged for Anna Maria (her baptismal name) to marry a rich man from the area, though Anna protested that she wanted instead to enter the Third Order of St. Francis.
She had gotten to know the friars there in Naples, part a branch of the Franciscans having been reformed by the great St. Peter of Alcantara back to a rigorous living of holy poverty. A certain Father Theophilus convinced Anna’s father to allow her to enter their order and so it happened on September 8th, 1731. In a certain way, this transformed the rigors of her life into sweet sacrifices for the Lord. She still lived at her home, though now wearing the religious habit and having been given the new name of “Mary Francis of the Five Wounds”, a nod to her love of Our Lady, St. Francis, and the Passion of Christ. From that house that had been for her a place of great sadness and suffering, now she had won a measure of freedom in her father’s permission to enter the consecrated life, and all the hardships that remained were now more formally consecrated to Christ and could flower into works of charity and a deep life of prayer.
In this Sister Mary Frances already shows us a way forward in those moments when any of us encounter suffering, whether inflicted on us, or just as part of living a human life. Can we consecrate those crosses? Can we carry them with love, let them lead us to generosity and charity rather than self-protection or anger? This is not an easy transformation! All of us carry wounds in our hearts, and they often feel like places where we can’t love as we want, or ought; places where we have been beat-down or broken, where it’s hard enough to just persevere with those pains, much less to discover freedom and generosity in those things.
This was a long process for Sister Mary Frances. She spent a lot of time in prayer, and working with the poor, day by day stretching her heart to be able to love rather than hate, to give rather than protect herself. She got a spiritual director, and a confessor, who she went to frequently for counsel and forgiveness. Sometimes that walk with the Lord was lifegiving and beautiful, and sometimes her wounds were reopened. Some of those priests that gave her direction or the sacraments were harsh or clueless, they did not represent Christ well, and so the Heavenly Father’s face was again mis-represented. She endured physical pain at times too, reputedly feeling in her hands at least the pain of the Christ’s nails, and other ailments too – some of them healed at the intercession of St. Raphael, some of them which she had to bear with patience for her whole life.
Eventually she and another Franciscan tertiary, Sister Maria Felice, moved into a home with a priest/chaplain living on the floor above (he, a pious man, must have been a healing example of priestly-fatherhood for her. Both sisters would generously take care of him over the coming years.) It was a simple family home, so they had to make do renovating some of the rooms to be their chapel and places for their work with the poor. Gradually, it was her charity and patience despite all the crosses she carried that led many to come to her for counsel and compassion. 38 years she lived in that little place at Vico Tre Re a Toledo (where a church now dedicated to her as a saint still stands) just encountering people who were hurting in different ways, and from a heart stretched by her own hurts, met every one of them with delight and love.
She died on October 6, 1791, beloved by the townspeople and hailed immediately as a saint and exemplar of holiness. She would be canonized in 1867 (by Pope Pius IX), the first saint from Naples!
– Fr. Dominic takes one more lesson from Saint Mary Frances of the Five Wounds: contentment with the day’s labor. She did not accomplish much over her life. Lived with her crosses, loved those who were around her, prayed every day, and just that was enough to make her a great saint. No huge conversions, no changing world history, no transformation of the city of Naples … she just lived each day with as much love as she could muster from her encounters with Jesus in the Eucharist. What if we were content with the same?