by Leela Ramdeen, Chair, CCSJ and Director, CREDI
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints. From an early age, we Catholics learned what our role in life should be. During First Communion lessons, when the Catechism teacher asked: “Why did God make you?” The entire class would reply: “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven.”
As I grew up, it is in my family and at school that I learned what this really means. My saintly mother, God rest her soul, used the Scriptures to remind us constantly what it means to love God. I recall a day when I acted on a ‘dare’ by a neighbour’s son to drink some alcohol left in the glasses of visitors to our home. I was about four years old. After I had sobered up, it was my mother who sat me down and kindly reminded me how disappointed God and my guardian angel would have been because of my action.
And do you know the name of my guardian angel? St Maria Goretti, one of the youngest canonised saints in the Catholic Church. At the moment, her relics are on a nationwide tour of the United States – A Pilgrimage of Mercy. This is the first time her relics have come to the US and only the second time they have left Italy.
Her attacker, a neighbour’s son, had made sexual advances to her. When she refused to submit to him he stabbed her 14 times. She died in hospital after forgiving him. He was arrested, convicted, and jailed. He later repented after St Maria appeared to him in a dream, forgiving him. On release from prison, he visited her mother begging forgiveness, which she granted. You should read her story.
Fr Carlos Martins CC, Director of the above mentioned Pilgrimage of Mercy, says: “While St Maria is universally known as the Patroness of Purity, her greatest virtue was her unyielding forgiveness of her attacker even in the midst of horrendous suffering, a forgiveness that would completely convert him and set him on a path to personal holiness.” He says that “the Catholic tradition of venerating relics is not worship but a way to honour and draw near to the saints, and to ask for their prayers.”
St Maria was canonised by Pope Pius XII on June 24, 1950. I was born on June 16, 1950. I was not expected to live due to illness and my Hindu father allowed my Catholic mother to take me to the church in Chaguanas to be baptised. It must have been Canon Max Murphy who chose that saint name for me as St Maria had been canonised only nine days before I was born. Canon Murphy stood as my godfather.
I tell you all this to urge you to read to your children the stories of the saints and, in particular, of the saints whose names they bear. We are all called to be saints; indeed, we are saints-in-the-making – if only we would embrace Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel reading – the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-12).
We would do well to heed this teaching if we want to journey on the saintly path. Am I poor in spirit/humble? Am I gentle/kind? Do I mourn for my sins, the sins of the world, or the suffering of others? Do I hunger and thirst for what is right? Am I as merciful as my Father in heaven is merciful? Am I pure in heart/act selflessly? Am I myself filled with peace? Do I strive to make/build peace in my home/community/the world? Am I prepared for ‘martyrdom’/to be persecuted in the cause of right?
If we hunger and thirst for justice, we cannot be guilty bystanders in the face of injustice. It is now coming to light that a number of people were aware that it was not the first time that a two-year-old girl was beaten by a 32-year-old man. I was pained to see that Facebook video and to hear the words of his 21-year- old wife: “Yuh look fuh dat!” This innocent child had been put in their care.
And then there are the children who died in day-care, the daily murders, and the video of a geriatric nursing assistant standing on the stomach of an 89-year-old man in a home for the elderly.
If we want to become saints, let’s live as people of the Beatitudes and transform society to reflect Gospel values.
