217. A love Story
If in the previous blog I started with the last Saint on our Pilgrimage, this time I will start with the first- so here’s the coach load as we set off- at least the tail end where the youth enjoy a bit of frolicking on the back seat.
Our first stop was to the church of Saint Gianna Berretta Molla, canonized on 16th May 2004, hence a saint of our times and as can be seen in picture below, a mother too. But Gianna had not set out to be a mother at all but a missionary alongside her brother priest in Brazil because she thought that being a doctor was the best way she could be of service to humanity.
Nevertheless when it came to dedicate her life to this aim, something always crept up to prevent her from doing so, as if the Lord did not want her to go, as if the Lord had other plans. But Gianna did not know what these other plans were and she ardently sought the Lord to make known what her “vocation” in life was. You’d think being a doctor was more than enough of a vocation, but she didn’t think so.
In her years of uncertainty she suffered a great deal because God was thwarting her dreams and aspirations because she was convinced of her vocation of becoming a missionary. In her quest to find out what her vocation was she wrote these notes:
1. Ask God in prayer;
2. Ask one’s spiritual advisor;
3. Ask oneself, knowing one’s own inclinations.
When through her spiritual director and a pilgrimage to Lourdes, where she prayed harder than ever, she realized she was called by God to form a family. I think this is really beautiful because we so underestimate that “vocation” the vocation of forming a family, nowadays, don’t we?
“What is a vocation? It is a gift of God and therefore comes from God. If then it is a gift from God, it is up to us to do all in our power to know God’s will. We must go along that way, if God wills it, not forcing the door; when God wills it, how God wills it.”
And indeed, she did fall in love with Pietro Molla who says this of her at their first meeting during the first Mass of a mutual friend Priest:
“I still remember you in prayer at Benediction and I still feel your warm handshake, and see again the sweet, soft smile which accompanied it.”
While she wrote to him:
“You are the gift God gives to me so that I may have happiness.”
It was 8th December 1954, the following September they married and by 1959 she had become the mother of three children. Early in her 4th pregnancy, in 1961 Gianna is operated because of a huge growth in her womb- as a doctor- she knew what it meant and if a choice had to be made she demanded the child be saved. When the time came to have the child the following April she gave precise instructions on how to perform the delivery which led to her death a week later with atrocious pain as she also refused any form of anaesthetic, as she said, she wanted to be conscious of her suffering. She died on 28th April 1962. She is buried in the cemetery of the church named after her together with her second born, Mariolina who died two years after her mother at the age of 6. Her husband Pietro died only two months ago at the age of 98.
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