Saint Maria Goretti – Crimson Rose of Jesus

The little white and crimson rose of Jesus The name of Maria Goretti has a special place for me. I would judge that almost everyone in my generation has grown up hearing the story of the little crimson and white rose of Jesus, St. Maria Goretti.

Their story inspires us with so many emotions, so much desire to take us to Jesus and his Mother Mary as pure buds, ready to flourish in whatever vocation they wish for us, be they religious, laity or as in the case of little Mary. , Saints who gave their lives as martyrs rather than stain their immortal souls by committing a sin. And in this way, saints like Maria Goretti become role models for young people in these modern times. We know the story of Maria Goretti with superficial knowledge.

She is famous for what she obviously did, die rather than allow her relationship with Jesus to be compromised by giving in to sexual temptation. This is the obvious cause of her sainthood, just as St. Maxmilian Kolbe’s obvious reasoning for her sainthood was to take the place of a fellow prisoner in the death cells of Auschwitz during World War II. But this is only apparent.

There is so much more to each life that calls us to revere them as special servants of God, true role models. We have written about Saint Maximilian Kolbe in two different books, trying to tell the story of this powerful man in the Church.

There were two other virtues of Saint Maria Goretti that are so subtle that they are lost in the shadow of giving life. One of them was disinterest. She cared more about her eternal soul than the safety of her body. And possibly even more than that, she cared more for her attacker’s soul than her own life.

As we delve into the painful story of his life and death, we can’t help but realize that part of the reason for his determination not to give in to Alessandro Serenelli was for his salvation.

Maria Goretti was a good girl, a pure girl. At eleven years old, she had such a love relationship with Jesus that she would rather die than allow her chastity to be compromised, rather than die than risk breaking off the relationship with Jesus. But how can that be? How could she understand which way her Yes to Jesus would lead her? We are not talking about Saint Agnes or Saint Cecilia or Saints of the early Church who gave their lives for Jesus.

This was the 20th century. She was a product of that century. Where have we gone, how far have we gone, that our young people cannot understand how a girl of her own century can sacrifice her life for her morals? Girls as young as eleven, are “sexually active,” have become pregnant, have had abortions often with the help of their own mothers, in many cases, and those who did not die on the abortionist’s table have died of AIDS. in many cases.

We are at a time in our society where morality is practically not taught or practiced in our school classrooms, in the pulpits of our churches, or in the homes of the parents of these children.

Our schools give boys condoms and parents give girls the contraceptive pill. They are teaching us safe sex in an effort to prevent the spread of dangerous diseases and keep the world population low.

Last on the list of priorities is preventing the spread of moral decay in a civilization, which in its final analysis will be far more deadly than any physical disease our children may contract. Maria Goretti is definitely a contradiction in terms. Surely it is a paradox. It is not possible that she exists in the last decade of the 20th century, at the end of the second millennium, and yet she is a product of our century.

Either she is completely out of sync, or we are doomed by the apathy we show our children by our behavior. Either María Goretti is wrong or we are wrong. Could we be wrong?

But we are getting too far ahead of ourselves. To begin at the beginning of this short but brilliant life in the Lord, we have to go to the extreme north and east of Italy, to the Marches, the rough area around Ancona and the Adriatic Sea. For those of us who visit the Santa Casa de Loreto, it seems like a most pleasant place.

The month we usually choose, July, is not hot yet. The warm breezes from the Adriatic make it a highly desirable time to visit our Lady of the Holy House there. But that’s July in Loreto. Not far away, in Corinaldo, where our little Santo was born, things are not exactly the same.

Winters are brutal. The howling winds coming off the Adriatic Sea strike the rock-hard land, making it nearly impossible to work on the farms. If this is not enough, spring and fall bring heavy rain and flooding, ruining any small number of crops that might be planted. No matter how hard the farmers tried, this was not a good place to make a living. For Maria Goretti’s parents, Luigi Goretti and Assunta Carlini, it was home. They had lived here their entire lives, as had their parents before them and their parents before them. But that didn’t make their lives any more bearable. It was just consistent.

And this is where our little Santa was born on October 16, 1890. She was the second living daughter of the Goretti family, the first child died as a baby. She had an older brother, Angelo, and would have more brothers and sisters as time went on. When we wrote about the Little Flower of Lisieux, Saint Teresa, we said that Saints beget Saints. Maria’s mother in particular, Assunta, was a holy woman. She had no formal education, but her Church taught her powerfully and gave her, we believe, Holy Spirit-infused knowledge.

This love for God and his Church was transmitted to his children, especially little Mary. She was baptized the day after her birth. Assunta didn’t want her son to carry the stain of Original Sin any longer than necessary. Under the tutelage of Assunta and Luigi, Maria grew up as a generous and selfless child. She cared more about pleasing others than her own comfort. Little things had great meaning for Maria.

Perhaps because the family had always been and always would be financially very poor, she did not have a great need for possessions. They were not available to the family; Maria did not think of them. Instead, she tried to do everything possible to make her family’s life more pleasant. She was a very normal girl, she enjoyed playing games and running through the fields. But her mother noticed a strong spirituality in her from an early age. She never abandoned her; she just got more intense. Little Maria and her family lived a happy life in Corinaldo, but always on the edge. The land was too small and difficult to farm. Luigi did the best he could, but he wasn’t good enough. He insisted that he couldn’t take care of his family properly under these conditions. He argued that they would have a better chance in some distant land, perhaps the great city, Rome. The grass was always greener somewhere else. Besides, anything was better than what they had.

Assunta, on the other hand, was determined not to leave the place of her birth and that of her children, especially for a decadent place like Rome. But Luigi was determined to give his family a better life. To strengthen his case, his very close friends and neighbors, Domenico and his sister Teresa Cimarelli, also planned to leave. This gave Luigi courage to convince Assunta that they and their children should leave Corinaldo and head towards Rome.

The lure of the big city has always drawn people from farms. But it hadn’t helped those who left in most cases. Although there was work, very often there was no life. The wages were just above slave labor; living conditions were impossible; the whole family had to work in different factories. The work of San Don Bosco in the slums of Turin in the last fifty years of the nineteenth century had been proof that in the big cities there were no streets lined with gold, but only heartbreak and, very often, family breakups.

Reference “Holy Innocence”