+ When she was 56, Angela Merici said "No" to the Pope. She was aware that Clement VII was offering her a great honor and a great opportunity to serve when he asked her to take charge of a religious order of nursing sisters. But Angela knew that nursing was not what God had called her to do with her life. She had just returned from a trip to the Holy Land. On the way there she had fallen ill and become blind. Nevertheless, she insisted on continuing her pilgrimage and toured the holy sites with the devotion of her heart rather than her eyes. On the way back she had recovered her sight. But this must have been a reminder to her not to shut her eyes to the needs she saw around her, not to shut her heart to God's call.
All around her hometown she saw poor girls with no education and no hope. In the sixteenth century when she lived, education for women was for the rich or for nuns. Angela herself had learned everything on her own. Now nuns in her day were among the most educated, but they were not allowed to leave the cloister. There was no teaching order of sisters like we have today. And so, Angela brought together some fellow Franciscan tertiaries and other friends, who went out into the street to gather up the girls they saw and teach them. These women had little money and no power, but were bound together by their dedication to education and commitment to Christ. Angela's work impressed many, including the Pope. Although it was never a religious order in her lifetime, Angela's Company of Saint Ursula, or the Ursulines, was the first group of women religious to work outside the cloister and the first teaching order of women. Angela reminds us of her approach to change: "Beware of trying to accomplish anything by force, for God has given every single person free will and desires to constrain none; he merely shows them the way, invites them and counsels them." Saint Angela Merici reassured her Sisters who were afraid to lose her in death: "I shall continue to be alive that I was in this life, and I shall see you better and shall love more the good deed which I shall see you doing continually, and I shall be able to help you more." She died in 1540, at about seventy years of age. Our own St. John's School has been fortunate to have the Ursuline Sisters as teachers there for a great number of years! We remember them on their feast day today!
The gospel passage today tells us about how much Jesus loved children and even equated receiving them and caring for them to receiving and caring for he, himself. May we regard children as such today! Many children are products of happy families and are easy to love and receive. But some are not so easy, due to the circumstances of life. These need to be loved and cared for in even a more special way – if only by prayer and remote support. If they can only sense that others care for them because God had something to do with it, then a lifelong impression may be made on them – and a soul may have been redirected and saved because of our kindness and gentle concern: the same that Saint Angela Merici had for children.
Young men and women, praise the name of the Lord!
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