Description

Oil Dedicated to Blessed Stephanie

Oil Dedicated to Blessed Stephanie from A Blessed Call To Love, Ireland.

Stephanie was born near Brescia, Italy, in 1457, of fervent Christian parents. She was brought up in the village of Soncino, where there was a Dominican monastery well known for its preachers, eminent in doctrine, eloquence and sanctity. One of them knew her family and taught their little daughter the Ave Maria and other prayers. He told her that when he died he would make her his heir. A few years later, when Blessed Matthew Carreri died, she felt her heart painfully wounded, and suddenly saw the deceased man, who told her this the heritage he had promised her. Suffering was to be her lot, and her existence was one of those of which people say: It is more admirable than imitable.

For forty years, she also endured the worst moral sufferings. She was in darkness, aridity, abandonment. This martyrdom of the soul was a worse torment for her than that of the body. An Angel said to her: There are several means which cause a reasonable creature to rise to perfect love of God, but one of the principal ones is the life of suffering, a life steeped in sorrow and bitterness which must be accompanied and followed by thanksgiving and resignation to the divine Will. Affliction is the road to perfect love and perfect transformation. She given Saint Paul to be her guide and instruct her in the secrets of mystical theology, that is, of the interior life under the immediate direction of God.