Tag: forgiveness

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Courageous Saints: St. Maria Goretti

pilgrimage logoI knelt in prayer less than a foot away from the relics of St. Maria Goretti, overwhelmed by the immensity of mercy from such a small child.

I’ve gone on my share of pilgrimages — some tinged with a little sadness, others so joyful I could barely stand it, but this pilgrimage to visit St. Maria Goretti touched me deeply in an unexpected way. I think it stirred my heart and challenged me unexpectedly.

Maria died a martyr’s death, murdered violently by a young man, Alessandro, who attempted to rape her. Her cries appealed to his soul, “It is a sin! God does not want it!” While the rape was thwarted, he fatally wounded her, stabbing eleven-year-old Maria over a dozen times. She survived into the next day, long enough to describe the scene with her assailant, Alessandro Serenelli, and to forgive him.

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Alessandro served a thirty-year prison sentence for the murder. Upon his release, he sought Maria’s mother, Assunta, to beg for forgiveness. She forgave him, explaining that she could not withhold what Maria had already freely given him. So many feels this morning as I knelt close to St. Maria’s remains!

How could Alessandro face Assunta? How could Assunta offer her forgiveness? It is, for me, the action of the Divine Mercy, Christ Himself, who forgives us and asks us to do the same.

A growing devotion to the Divine Mercy in recent years, a visit to Cuba and meeting Pope Francis, Missionary of Mercy, and now, venerating the relics of St Maria Goretti, on this Pilgrimage of Mercy, well…I am certain that I will be entering into the Year of Mercy with an open heart.

Read her entire story, including the amazing account of how both her mother, Assunta, and her assailant, Alessandro, attended her canonization: Pilgrimage of Mercy: St. Maria Goretti.

If you have a chance to visit this moving display, you owe it to yourself to go. If it didn’t come to your town or you missed it, I’d like to offer one of my readers the pair of holy cards distributed at the church. One card is a prayer for Alessandro Serenelli, and was touched to the letter he wrote to the world. The other card, of St. Maria Goretti, has a prayer and was touched to her relics, making it a third class relic.

Leave a comment if you’d like a chance to receive this lovely reminder of the gift of mercy. I’ll select the recipient on November 2nd with a random drawing.

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Warning: Wet Paint!

The last thing I ever thought I’d do as a writer is pull over to the side of the road and write down an idea, but it happened today.

My commute home was no more extraordinary than any other day. By that I mean that I was listening to the same CD that’s been in the player for weeks, and I was tuning it out in favor of the quite animated conversation that I was having with myself. I’d like to say that it stayed exclusively in my head, but there are no witnesses to call me out for moving my lips.

At any rate, my internal musings were interrupted by a sign I’d never seen before. It said:

Wet Paint
Do Not Drive
On Newly Painted Lanes

You know that little Guy-in-Red that resides over my left shoulder? He did a little jig before telling me to drive over a lane to see what happens.

Fear not, gentle reader. I listened to the little Guy-in-White. He was outraged at Guy-in-Red, and shot me a knowing look for having briefly entertained the idea, but I did the right thing and stayed on the straight and narrow.

That’s when I realized that there was this grand metaphor staring at me from the center of the road.

The whole thing about staying between the lines is more than just Kindergarten advice about coloring. It’s also more than just a driving lesson, albeit one that’ll keep you alive. It’s a metaphor for the choices we make in our lives – and the attention that we pay to details on that journey to keep us straight, keep us in the lane, keep us from dangerously going over the parameters of the road into dangerous ground that can hurt us — maybe even kill us.

That road also showed me something significant. A few people did veer too far from the center and crossed the lines. I could tell because the tires were stained by the wet paint and left a fading record of their error until it disappeared back into the road.

Hmm.

A little like the way we err in our lives? Dare I say sin? I will. Sin. We all do it. Sadly, it’s a mark of our humanity. Happily, we can also seek repentance and forgiveness. It’s an amazing grace.

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