From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Chaste Fear   
      
      "Just from the fact that you try to avoid evil, you improve   
   yourself, and you begin to desire what is good. When you begin to   
   desire what is good, there will be a chaste fear in you.   
      That fear by which you fear being cast into hell with the devil is   
   not yet chaste, since it does not come from the love of God but from   
   the fear of punishment. But when you fear God in the sense that you do   
   not wish to lose him, you embrace him, and you desire to enjoy him."   
   --St. Augustine--Sermon on 1 John 9, 5   
      
   Prayer: Lord, I now love you alone, I follow you alone, and I seek you   
   alone. I yearn to be possessed by you.   
   --St. Augustine--Soliloquies 1, 1   
      
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   August 20th – Bl. Mary De Mattias, Virgin, Foundress   
   d. 1866   
      
   When Mary de Mattias began the work that was to develop into a   
   congregation for adoration of the Precious Blood of Christ and the   
   education of children she met a requirement of her time, which needed,   
   in the words of Pope Pius XI, "a general reform, especially by way of   
   better instruction of minds and a renewed purifying of habits".   
      
   Born in 1805, Mary was the eldest of the four children of a lawyer,   
   John de Mattias, and Octavia de Angelis his wife, who lived at   
   Vallecorsa on the borders of Lazio and Campania.  Shortly after her   
   17th birthday St. Caspar del Bufalo gave a mission in the parish   
   church, which was the occasion of her hearing a definite call to some   
   special work for the good of souls.  Within a little time she had come   
   to know the Venerable John Merlini, disciple of St. Caspar and his   
   successor at the head of the Missioners of the Precious Blood;  he   
   became her director and adviser, and remained so for the rest of her   
   life.   
      
   In 1834 Mary accepted an invitation from her bishop, Mgr. Lais, who   
   was also the administrator of Anagni, to take charge of a school at   
   Acuto in that diocese.  She went there determined not simply to be a   
   school-mistress but to establish a religious house as well. In the   
   following year came her first recruit, Anne Farrotti. They committed   
   themselves to foundation of a congregation under the inspiration of   
   the example of Canon del Bufalo's missioners.   
      
   Mary had already begun to extend her activities from school-children   
   to older girls and to married women. Six more recruits soon followed.   
   Mary de Mattias, like St. Lucy Filippini, had a great gift of easy and   
   convincing speech, which she used to much advantage in her   
   catechetical and biblical instructions and in the girls' and women's   
   societies that she organized; and at the end of 1837 she began to   
   conduct "spiritual exercises" for mothers of families, which were a   
   great success. This evoked the inevitable unfavourable comment and   
   invoking of I Corinthians xiv 34 (though they were not in fact held in   
   the church), but after due inquiry Bishop Muccioli approved.  When   
   women began to attend the May devotions in the school the   
   parish-priest objected and put a stop to it but Mary was vindicated by   
   the rural dean, much to the joy of the mothers.   
      
   The canonical process of her beatification makes it plain that Mary's   
   eloquence really was such: she loved quiet and silence,  "She was not   
   loquacious".   
      
   In 1840 a second school was taken over, under the auspices of the   
   Missioners of the Precious Blood, in Mary's old home at Vallecorsa,   
   and other foundations followed, the work for adult women and girls   
   increasing at the same time.  Between 1847 and 1851 two houses were   
   founded in Rome itself through the interest of a Russian widow,   
   Princess Zena Volkonska; and there two English prelates, Mgr. George   
   Talbot and Mgr. (later cardinal) Edward Howard, became her good   
   friends. It is recorded of an English member of the congregation that   
   Mother de Mattias had gently to rebuke her for her endless boasting   
   about English politeness "Calvary is the school of good manners ", she   
   said.   
      
   The rapid expansion of the Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood of   
   course did not take place without difficulties and disappointments--so   
   many trials for the faith and spiritual integrity of Mother de   
   Mattias.  But at last her robust energy began to fade and her health   
   to weaken, and she died at Rome on August 20, 1866, in her 61st year.   
   At the time of her beatification in 1950 her congregation had nearly   
   400 establishments, many of them in the United States and other   
   countries, including schools of all grades and kinds.   
      
   The first biography of Bl. Mary de Mattias was by Don Merlini. A full   
   official life was published in Rome in 1950, written by a Benedictine,   
   Dame M. Eugenia Pietromarchi .   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   Live in the world as if only God and your soul were in it; then your   
   heart will never be made captive by any earthly thing.   
   -- Saint John of the Cross   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   He has built his high dwelling place in the heavens and supported his   
   vault on the earth;   
   he summons the waters of the sea and pours them over the land. ‘The   
   Lord’ is his name. (Amos 9:6)   
      
      
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   ABANDONMENT TO THE DIVINE WILL   
      
   Father, I abandon myself into Your hands; Do with me what   
   You will.  Whatever You may do, I thank You: I am ready for   
   all, I accept all.  Let only Your will be done in me, And in all   
   Your creatures- I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into Your   
   hands I commend my soul; I offer it to You with all the love of   
   my heart, For I love You, Lord, and so need to give myself to   
   surrender my self into Your hands without reserve, and with   
   boundless confidence, for You are my Father.  Amen   
   (Brother Charles de Foucauld)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)