TODAY'S SAINT (St. Meronica Giuliaani)

JULY 9

ST. VERONICA GIULIANI

Virgin

St. Veronica was born at Mercatello in Urbino, Italy, in 1660, of a well-to-do family. Though she was a very religious person by nature, her father insisted that she marry when she came of age and paraded suitors before her. This so worried the girl that she became ill; only then did her father realize the genuine character of her vocation and allow her to enter the Capuchin convent of Poor Clares at Citta di Castello in Umbria, at the age of seventeen. She was to remain there for the rest of her life.

After her profession, she had a vision of Jesus bearing His Cross, and she began to feel acute pain over her heart. In 1693, she had another vision, in which she was offered the chalice of Christ's sufferings; when she acepted it, after a fierce struggle, her body and soul ever afterward carried the marks of our Lord's sufferings. The next year, the imprint of the crown of thorns appered on her head, and on Good Friday, 1697, the impress of the five sacred wounds.

As a result of these mystical experiences, she became the object of close vigilance on the part of her superiors and the competent religious authorities. Thus, though this caused her much distress and suffeing, it also ensured that her mystical experiences were well attested, making her an outstanding case in the history of mystical phenomena. Her huumble obedience convinced all of the truth of these mystical experiences.

St. Veronica also possessed a large dosage of common sense and an admirable degree of efficiency. She was novice-mistress of here convent for thirty-four years and diligently laid the foundation for the Sisters under her charge to progress in humility, obedience, and charity. She became Abbess eleven years before her death and labored for the improvement of the convent even in its physical entity. She died on July 9, 1727, leaving behind a catalogue of her religious experiences enntitled Diay of the Passion, written at the request of her confessor.

Prayer:

Lord Jesus, You wondrously impressed the

marks of Your Passion upon St. Veronica the

Virgin. May we crucify our flesh and thus come

to the eternal joys of heaven. Amen.