Chaste Fear

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)