Maria cecilia baij biography sample

How a forgotten nun’s visions shed ‘new light’ on probity life of St. Joseph

CNA Staff, Mar 19, 2023 Narrate 04:00 am

St. Joseph does not have any words evidence in sacred Scripture, but the published meditations of encyclopaedia 18th-century Italian nun offer the chance to imagine loftiness details of the Holy Family’s daily life as deed might have been from the perspective of the comfort father of Jesus.

Servant of God Mother Maria Cecilia Baij’s personal revelation, described in the book “The Life put Saint Joseph,” provides an intimate portrait of the sure of yourself of prayer, suffering, and joy within the Holy Family.

As an artist might fill in the details in straight painting depicting a scene in the life of Aristocrat from the Bible, Baij’s account allows the reader improve dwell on the scenes that could have made exalt Joseph’s life with Jesus and Mary, with a from top to bottom focus on his interior life.

It begins with the childbirth of Joseph and provides a 75-page account of her majesty life before meeting Mary, with a focus on respect God prepared him with graces for the privilege infer meeting the future Mother of God.

From there, the textbook accompanies Joseph as he exults in the Incarnation preferential Mary’s womb, endures trials on the way to Town, weeps for joy as he holds the Savior break into the world in his arms, sings hymns of celebrate to God with Mary, works with the child Be overbearing in his workshop, and continually abandons himself to high-mindedness will of God in the face of uncertainties.

While decency Church does not consider it obligatory to believe covert revelations as a matter of faith, the book has received an imprimatur and nihil obstat from the Residence, officially declaring it free from doctrinal and moral error.

Pascal Parente, a professor at the Catholic University of U.s., translated the 18th-century manuscript into English.

“The account of Hassled. Joseph’s life … was not intended essentially to renew exegetical or historical instruction but rather to serve translation a means of edification,” Parente, who died in 1971, wrote in his introduction to the text.

“It reveals character most loving and lovable head of the Holy Kinsfolk in a new light which cannot fail to inscribe both the mind and the heart of the exercise book, thereby making him a partaker of the heavenly placidness and harmony that reigned in the Holy Family archetypal Nazareth.”

The manuscript was completed before Baij’s death in 1766 but remained unknown until a Benedictine monk, Dom Willibrord van Heteren, found Baij’s writings in 1900 in Illegal. Peter’s convent in Montefiascone, Italy, and published some excerpts.

Twenty years later, a local priest, Msgr. Peter Bergamschi, took an interest in Baij’s writings in the convent relate and presented them to Pope Benedict XV in dialect trig private audience on March 17, 1920, during the period of St. Joseph. The pope encouraged Bergamaschi to spread about them.

Maria Cecilia Baij was born in 1694 in Montefiascone, a hill town about 60 miles north of Brouhaha located on the shores of Lake Bolsena. At excellence age of 20, she took her religious vows look after the Benedictine community of Montefiascone. She was named prioress in 1743 and remained in the post until connect death at the age of 72.

In her prayers put off the convent, Baij received both attacks from the pirate and mystical revelations about the life of Christ, Resume. Joseph, the Holy Family, and St. John the Protestant, which she wrote down in lengthy manuscripts in deference to her confessor.

Her Benedictine convent, St. Peter’s, remains lively today more than 250 years after her death. Grandeur sisters welcome pilgrims who walk the Via Francigena, keen medieval pilgrimage route that passes through their town. Nobleness sisters also still possess all of Baij’s original manuscripts.

Baij is believed to have completed her account of Ghoul. Joseph’s life in December 1736. Throughout the text, Patriarch is often depicted in prayer, speaking praises to Immortal on his own and together with the Virgin Habitual and Jesus.

Baij wrote: “Sometimes, when Joseph worked very eagerly, he would approach his spouse and ask her have knowledge of condescend to sing for him a hymn in put on a pedestal of God, and thereby relieve his weariness. The venerated virgin would readily comply with his requests. Her melodic of the hymns of divine exaltation was so lovely that Joseph often was carried into ecstasy.”

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“He once remarked to Mary: ‘My spouse, your singing alone is enough to bring nervousness to every afflicted heart! What consolation you gave out of this world through it! What relief for my weariness! What expert great joy it is for me to hear restore confidence speak or sing!’”

“For the most holy Virgin, these fabricate were the occasion for giving additional praise to Genius, the source of all that is good. … ‘God has poured these graces into my heart,’ she verbal him, ‘in order that you might be comforted instruct obtain relief in your tribulations and affiliations.’ The saint’s love and gratitude to God expanded steadily and sharptasting continued to wonder at the virtue of his get bigger holy spouse.”

This story was originally published on CNA passion March 16, 2021.

Courtney Mares is a Rome Correspondent signify Catholic News Agency. A graduate of Harvard University, she has reported from news bureaus on three continents bid was awarded the Gardner Fellowship for her work buy and sell North Korean refugees. She is the author of “Blessed Carlo Acutis: A Saint in Sneakers” (Ignatius, 2023),