Vigils Reading – Bl Maria Gabriella

From an article by Mother Martha Driscoll on

BLESSED MARIA GABRIELLA

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Born in Sardinia on March 17, 1914, Maria Sagheddu grew up in a typical

shepherd’s family. Life was not easy, and the death of her father when she was

only four accustomed her to poverty and hard work from earliest childhood. A

stubborn and willful child, she had a passion to win, both at school and at play,

and a strong determination to overcome any challenge.

At the age of eighteen, Maria experienced some kind of conversion

experience. At the same time, she voiced her desire to consecrate herself to God

in religious life. She enrolled in Catholic Action and became active in teaching

catechism, serving the poor, the sick, the unwanted. The most profound change,

however, was in herself. “She became sweet and calm,” was her mother’s brief

comment about a daughter who no longer lost her temper or became annoyed

by the contradictions of life.

After two and a half years of determined conversion, her parish priest

chose for her the hard and simple life of the Trappists. At the age of twenty-one,

she entered the small, poor Trappist monastery of Grottaferrata, not far from

Rome. She received the habit on April 13, 1936, made her first vows on the Feast

of Christ the King in October, 1937, contracted tuberculosis in the spring of

1938, and died on April 22, 1939, at the age of twenty-five.

Sr Maria Gabriella, as she was called in the monastery, became aware of

prayer for Christian Unity through her Abbess, Mother Pia Gullini. She

encouraged the movement of prayer for the unity of Christians as promoted by

Abbe Paul Couturier in his Octave of Prayer. Mother Pia began to direct the

entire community to the special vocation of prayer…

Almost immediately an elderly Sister approached the Abbess and asked to

offer her life for this cause. Exactly a month after the Novena, the seventy-eight

year old Mother Immaculata died peacefully as a result of a stroke the week

before. The community was informed of her offering, and fervor for the cause of

unity grew… During the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity…the next year, it

was Sr Maria Gabriella who felt called to offer her life. The Abbess told her: “I

won’t say yes or no. Offer yourself to the will of God.”

Shortly afterward, Sr Gabriella developed a cough and loss of energy. By

Easter the abbess sent her for an x-ray. She spent forty days in a large public

hospital in painful but futile attempts to cure the tuberculosis that had been

diagnosed. When she returned to the monastery, she was taken to the infirmary,

where she spent the remaining ten months of her life in peace, abandonment

and growing joy as the definitive encounter with Christ grew near.

Sr Maria Gabriella went to the Lord on the evening of April 23, 1939. It

was the fourth Sunday after Easter, the Sunday of the Good Shepherd, and the

Gospel proclaimed: “I have other sheep as well that are not of this fold. I must

lead these also so that there will be but one Shepherd and one fold”. The

circumstance was seen as a confirmation that the offering of her life had been a

response to a divine inspiration. On January 25, 1983, Maria Gabriella

Sagheddu was proclaimed Blessed by Pope John Paul II during the annual

ecumenical celebration in the basilica of St Paul’s Outside the Walls at the end of

the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.