WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28
Saint Gianna Beretta Molla

“Clear and graceful”: this is how Dr. Gianna Beretta appeared to engineer Pietro Molla during their first meetings. They married in Magenta on September 24, 1955. Gianna was a surgeon and later specialized in pediatrics: “Whoever touches a patient’s body,” she used to say, “touches the body of Christ.” They had children: Pierluigi, Maria Rita, and Laura. In September 1961, while she was pregnant with her fourth child, Gianna discovered a fibroid in her uterus: the prospect was to renounce motherhood in order not to die. Gianna, however, decided to sacrifice her life for her daughter. “She told me explicitly,” her husband Pietro recalls, “‘If you have to choose between me and the baby, do not hesitate: choose the baby. Save her.’”
In his homily at the canonization Mass, John Paul II emphasized: “Gianna Beretta Molla was a simple, yet extraordinarily significant messenger of divine love. A few days before her wedding, in a letter to her future husband, she wrote: “Love is the most beautiful feeling that the Lord has placed in the hearts of men“.
Following the example of Christ, who “having loved his own… loved them to the end” (Jn 13:1), this holy mother of a family remained heroically faithful to the commitment she had made on her wedding day. The ultimate sacrifice that sealed her life testifies that only those who have the courage to give themselves entirely to God and to their brothers and sisters can fulfill themselves.

May our age rediscover, through the example of Gianna Beretta Molla, the pure, chaste, and fruitful beauty of married love, lived as a response to the divine call!».

For further reading:
• Saint Gianna Beretta Molla. All the Colors of Life. Woman, wife, mother… Saint

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28
Beginning of the triduum to Saint Joseph the Worker

Today we begin the triduum to Saint Joseph the Worker. Let us remember all workers in our prayers, that they may bear witness to a living faith in the workplace. Let us pray for young people, that they may take their responsible place in society. Let us remember all the unemployed and pray that they may never lose hope, but feel everyone’s closeness and solidarity.

For further reading:
• Prayers to Saint Joseph

THURSDAY, APRIL 29
Saint Catherine of Siena

Catherine was born in Siena in 1347. At the age of six, she had her first vision of Jesus, who invited her to follow him. She opposed her family’s plans for her marriage and, as Saint Dominic had foretold to her in a dream, she donned the habit of the Mantellate. She promised to dedicate her life to the conversion of sinners and to the reform not of the Church, but of its visible representatives on earth, beginning with the Pope, whom she called «the sweet Christ on earth». With the same strength with which she wrote to the pontiff and the powerful, Catherine consoled a young man unjustly sentenced to death: she convinced him to offer his life to God’s infinite justice, «like a meek lamb». She died at the age of 33, saying: «Father, into your hands I commend my soul!».
John Paul II said of her: «She is a remarkable woman who, in the second half of the fourteenth century, shows what a human creature - and I insist, a woman, the daughter of humble dyers - is capable of when she knows how to listen to the voice of the one shepherd and teacher, and nourish herself at the table of the divine Bridegroom, to whom, as a “wise virgin,” she generously consecrated her life.
It is a masterpiece of the grace that renews and elevates the human creature to the perfection of holiness, which is also the full realization of the fundamental values of humanity».
Let us learn more about her life and invoke her intercession.

For further reading:
• On Your Word – (March-April 2021 missal)

THURSDAY, APRIL 29
Beginning of the novena to Our Lady of Pompeii

“Prayer,” Blessed Longo said, “is the orbit in which humanity moves around its center of attraction, which is God. A humanity without prayer would be a humanity that had left its orbit.” Let us put these words into practice and begin today to pray the novena, confidently invoking Our Lady of Pompeii. We can find a beautiful novena in the recommended book!

For further reading:
• Blessed Bartolo Longo. Our Lady Needs an Advocate

SATURDAY, MAY 1
Saint Joseph the Worker

Pius XII established the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker in 1955 to give workers a protector and to impart a Christian meaning to the “feast of labor.” John Paul II invited every worker to look to Saint Joseph as a model and, in this way, to make their work a service rendered to Jesus: “The believer knows well, moreover, that Christ wanted to hide himself in every human being, explicitly asserting that ‘whatever is done for even the least of one’s brothers is as if it were done for him’ (cf. Mt 25:40). In every kind of work it is therefore possible to ‘serve Christ’” (Regina Coeli, 1^o May 1982). Paul VI stated that it was necessary to “pray for the world of work, for all those who are suffering in it today: the unemployed, the underemployed, emigrants, those uncertain of their daily bread, poorly paid for their labor, embittered by their fate… so that, with the humble and great Craftsman of Nazareth as their patron, ‘justice and peace’ may bloom anew in a Christian way in the world of work.” Pope Francis reminds us in Patris corde that “Saint Joseph was a carpenter who worked honestly to provide for his family’s sustenance. From him Jesus learned the value, dignity and joy of what it means to eat the fruit of one’s own labor.” May these words inspire us when we feel the full burden of our daily tasks.
Let us invoke the powerful intercession of Saint Joseph for all workers, and pray that he may also intercede for all those who are unemployed.

For further reading:
• Prayers to Saint Joseph
• Redemptoris Custos
• Patris corde