• May 22nd - St. Humility, Widow

    From rich@1:396/4 to All on Fri May 21 10:26:03 2021
    From: rich <richarra@gmail.com>

    May 22nd - St. Humility, Widow

    THE foundress of the Vallombrosan nuns was born at Faenza in the
    Romagna in the year 1226. Her parents, who were people of high rank
    and considerable wealth, called her after the town of Rosana, with
    which they were in some way connected, but she has always been known
    by the name of Humility, which she adopted when she entered religion.
    Her parents practically compelled her when she was about 15 to marry a
    local nobleman called Ugoletto, a young man as frivolous as his bride
    was earnest and devout. She had the misfortune to lose both her sons
    shortly after their baptism, and for nine years she strove, apparently
    in vain, to appeal to her husband's better nature. A dangerous
    illness, however, then brought him to death's door and upon his
    recovery he was induced by his doctors to consent for his own benefit
    to his wife's request that they should from thenceforth live as
    brother and sister. Soon afterwards they both joined the double
    monastery of St. Perpetua, just outside Faenza, he becoming a
    lay-brother and she a choir nun.

    Humility was then 24 years of age. She discovered before long that the
    rule afforded her insufficient opportunity for solitude and austerity,
    and she withdrew first to a house of Poor Clares and then to a cell,
    which was constructed for her by a kinsman whom she had cured of a
    painful infirmity of the feet. It adjoined the church of St.
    Apollinaris, and into this there was an opening--what archaeologists
    call a =E2=80=9Csquint=E2=80=9D--which enabled her to follow Mass and to re= ceive holy
    communion. The church seems to have been served by religious from a
    priory dependent on the Vallombrosan abbey of St. Crispin, the abbot
    of which, following the ceremonial provided for in such cases,
    solemnly enclosed her in her cell. Her life was now one of heroic
    mortification : she subsisted on a little bread and water with
    occasionally some vegetables; she wore a cilicium of bristles, and the
    short snatches of sleep she allowed herself were taken on her knees
    with her head leaning against a wall. She had never consented to see
    her husband after she had left the world, but he could not forget her;
    and in order that he might keep in touch with her, he left St.
    Perpetua's to become a monk at St. Crispin's, where he died=
    three
    years later. After Humility had lived 12 years as a recluse, the
    Vallombrosan abbot general persuaded her to emerge from her retirement
    to organize a foundation for women. At a place called Malta, outside
    the walls of Faenza, she established the first Vallombrosan nunnery,
    of which she became abbess and which was known as Santa Maria Novella
    alla Malta. Long years afterwards, actually in 1501, the convent was
    removed for safety into the city and occupied the site once covered by
    the monastery of St. Perpetua. Before her death St. Humility founded
    in Florence a second house, of which she was also abbess and where she
    died at the age of eighty on May 22, 1310.

    Tradition credits St. Humility with the authorship of several treatises=E2=80=94she is said to have dictated them in Latin, a language sh=
    e
    had never studied. One of these deals with the angels and in it she
    speaks of living in constant communion with two heavenly beings, one
    of whom was her guardian angel.
    A contemporary life is printed in the Acta Sanctorum, May, vol. v,
    from a manuscript notarially attested in 1332 to be an exact copy.
    There is a modern biography by M. Ercolani (1910), and a shorter one
    by Dame M. E. Pietromarchi, S. Umilta Negusanti (1935). The Latin
    tractates of St. Humility were edited by Torello Sala at Florence in
    1884; they are said to be very obscure and the Latin to be stiff and artificial.


    Bible Quote
    I give thanks to my God, always making a remembrance of thee in my
    prayers. 5 Hearing of thy charity and faith, which thou hast in the
    Lord Jesus, and towards all the saints: 6 That the communication of
    thy faith may be made evident in the acknowledgment of every good
    work, that is in you in Christ Jesus.=C2 (Philemon 1:4-6)

    Saint Quote:
    Remember, that you must treat not only bodies, but also souls, with
    counsel that appeals to their minds and hearts rather than with cold prescriptions to be sent in to the pharmacist.
    -- Saint Giuseppe Moscati from a letter to one of his students

    Note: Saint Giuseppe Moscati was the first modern doctor to be canonized.

    <><><><>
    For the Most Forgotten Soul

    O Lord God Almighty, I beseech Thee by the Precious Body
    and Blood of Thy divine Son Jesus, which He Himself on the
    night before His Passion gave as meat and drink to His
    beloved Apostles and bequeathed to His Holy Church to be
    the perpetual Sacrifice and life-giving nourishment of His
    faithful people, deliver the souls in purgatory, but most of all,
    that soul which was most devoted to this Mystery of infinite
    love, in order that it may praise Thee therefore, together with
    Thy Divine Son and the Holy Spirit in Thy glory for ever.
    Amen.

    --- NewsGate v1.0 gamma 2
    * Origin: News Gate @ Net396 -Huntsville, AL - USA (1:396/4)