Devotions from April 12 to 18, 2021
“Peace be with you!” we will read in the Gospel on Sunday. It is Jesus’ greeting. He gives us peace, true peace, which only he can give us. Let us welcome it with joy and gratitude.
Here is “the good news: Jesus is not a ghost; he is the power of life. He envelops me in peace, forgiveness, and resurrection. He lives in me, weeps my tears, and smiles as no one else does. Sometimes he lives ‘in my place,’ and things greater than I happen to me, and everything becomes more human and more alive” (Father Ermes Ronchi). Let us live this week enlightened by the light of the Risen One, under the loving gaze of Mary Most Holy, enriched by the examples of the saints we remember these days.
MONDAY, APRIL 12
Virgin of Revelation
On April 12, 1947, the Blessed Virgin appeared to Bruno Cornacchiola and his three children. Bruno was a Roman Protestant streetcar driver who wanted the destruction of the Catholic Church and had resolved to kill Pope Pius XII.
That Saturday, April 12, he goes with his three children to the area around the Trappist abbey of Tre Fontane. The children are the first to see the apparition: kneeling before a cave, they murmur one after another: “Beautiful Lady...” She says: “I am she who is in the divine Trinity: I am the Virgin of Revelation... You persecute me. Enough now. Return to the holy Fold, the heavenly court on earth. God’s oath is and remains unchangeable: the nine First Fridays of the Sacred Heart that you made, lovingly urged on by your faithful wife, before beginning down the path of error, have saved you!”
Let us delve into this extraordinary story on the 74th anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady of the Three Fountains in Rome.
To learn more:
• Revelation of the Virgin at the Tre Fontane
FRIDAY, APRIL 16
Saint Bernadette Soubirous
On February 11, 1858, there is no more firewood in the Soubirous household. Bernadette had gone with her sister to look for dry branches. Left alone near the Massabielle rock, she hears a loud noise: she sees that the oak clinging to the rocky outcrop is swaying. Suddenly, the dark hollow lights up, and amid so much gentle light, a smile awaits her: a splendid Lady appears on the rock.
In the apparition of March 25, 1858, she reveals her name to her: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” After the apparitions end, Bernadette crosses the threshold of the mother house of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity. Here she is a nurse, sometimes a sacristan, but often ill herself. She is generous, gentle, and wise in serving others. Meanwhile, asthma, tuberculosis, and a bone tumor are seriously weakening her body. “I am being ground like a grain of wheat,” she says when she is finally confined to bed. She dies at the age of 35, on April 16, 1879. Pope Pius XI declares her a saint on December 8, 1933.
To learn more:
• Saint Bernadette. One of us
• Lourdes. Rosary with Saint Bernadette
“At dawn I will pass by the doors of all my brothers and sisters
and say to every house: peace!
and then I will sprinkle the earth with holy water
toward the four points of the universe,
then I will never let the altar lamp die
and every Sunday I will dress in white.”
This is how a poem by Davide Maria Turoldo dedicated to Easter ends. May the word “peace” truly also be our greeting. Let us bring it to the brothers and sisters we meet along the roads of our lives.
Have a good journey!
