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Day 1 of Novena to St. Gianna

 
Dear Friend,

St. Gianna to me is an especially inspirational saint for us to imitate today.

As a lay person, she exemplified holiness at every level inside her triple vocation as wife, mother and doctor. In each of those seemingly ordinary roles, she exercised virtue to a heroic degree. Because of this, St. Gianna is often called the “saint of the ordinary.” Even her husband Pietro Molla affectionately said of her when he discovered his wife’s cause for canonization was opened, “Look, I know I married a fantastic woman. But she was so normal!”

But normal for us Catholics today, is not the “normal” of the average person. As Catholics, you and I are faced with our own spiritual and moral battles with temptations and the practice of virtue. We have the obligation to always echo the true doctrines of the Catholic Church in our daily example amid the onslaught of relativism with which we and our families are bombarded.

As husbands and wives, fathers and mothers – leaders in the home – in the ordinary course of our lives we must contend with spiritual threats on our path to holiness. St. Gianna is a perfect model to help us from Heaven to overcome these struggles. She is the “extra-ordinary” response we need to fend off the influences of our modern and godless culture.

In the ordinary business of our lives, let’s invoke St. Gianna who showed us how to be in the world, but not of the world. As Our Lord rose from the dead to life, let us resurrect in our hearts new enthusiasm to bolster our daily resolve to practice to a heroic degree the Beatitudes just as St. Gianna did.

For this reason, I want to invite you to pray with me a Novena to St. Gianna to begin today, April 20th and end on April 28th, her Feast Day. Since she is also a patroness for Catholic Action for Faith and Family, we will be delving deep into the story of her life along the path of this Novena, making the connections between this modern saint and her heroic practice of the Beatitudes.

On this first day of our Novena to St. Gianna, you and I can reflect on Gianna’s being “Poor in Spirit,” a truly formidable defense against the Devil.

If you have not already done so, please join me in this Novena of prayer to St. Gianna! When you sign-up, you will continue to receive a new e-mail every day with a link to the Novena.

Sign-Up to Pray the Novena to St. Gianna Beretta Molla!

On April 20-28:

Your friend in Jesus and Mary,

Thomas J. McKenna 
Founder and President
Catholic Action                                      
http://www.catholicaction.org/