Today, January 27th, as our Church celebrates the optional Memorial of Saint Angela Merici, Virgin, we are first invited to reflect on a passage from the letter of the apostle Paul to the Corinthians (4: 1-24), entitled "Christian Chastity". Our treasure, which follows, is from the Spiritual Testament by Saint Angela Merici, virgin.
Saint Angela Merici has the double distinction of founding the first of what are now called "secular institutes" and the first teaching order of women in the Church. Born in Desenzano, Italy, she was orphaned in her teens. As a young woman, with her heart centered on Christ, Angela joined the Third Order of St. Francis and embraced austerity. In a visionary experience, she felt called to establish a "company" of women.
Angela was invited to become a live-in companion for a widow in the nearby town of Brescia. There she became the spiritual advisor of a group of men and women with ideals of spiritual renewal and service to those in need. While on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1524, Angela was struck with blindness. She proceeded to visit the sacred shrines, seeing them with her spirit. On the way back while praying before a crucifix, Angela's sight was restored. At age 60, Angela and 12 other women began the Company of St. Ursula, named for a patroness of medieval universities and venerated as a leader of women. This constituted a new way of life: single women consecrated to Christ and living in the world rather than in a monastery. With Angela as their "mother and mistress," Company members did not live in community, wore no special clothing, and made no formal vows.
To the women of her time Saint Angela offers a new style of life, that of a Consecration to God, freely chosen and lived as a "spouse of the Son of God", open to a spiritual maternity, while remaining in the world living in one`s family or in one`s working environment. To this family Angela gives a proper Rule, Counsel and Testament with a profound ascetic and spiritual value as well as impregnated in a remarkable pedagogical intuition.
Saint Angela's Spiritual Testament is addressed to the matrons, noble women of Brescia who were interested in the Company and who were a guarantee for it in front of civil and religious authority. Through them Angela suggested to be instructed in their mission from which are emphasized dignity and importance. From them emerge the sense of maternity with which the "matrons" must govern the virgins. Beside the Christian anthropology, rich in an extraordinary wisdom, a profound ecclesiological sense in these writings is outlined.
Saint Angela Merici died in Brescia, Italy, in 1540. Clothed in the habit of a Franciscan tertiary, her body was interred in Brescia's Church of Saint' Afra. Four years later the Company's Rule that Angela had composed, prescribing the practices of chastity, poverty and obedience, was approved by the pope.
In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul warns against divisions within the Church and emphasizes the importance of unity among Church members. He warns members against sexual immorality, teaches that the body is a temple for the Holy Spirit, and encourages self-discipline.
