Today is the feast of Blessed Maria Droste zu Vischering -- now that's a mouthful! (1863-1899). I like Blessed Maria. She was very strong-willed ("a will of iron" it is said of her), hot-tempered, but also with "a sensitive and generous heart." You just know if she were your friend you could ask her for anything and she'd give it to you.
The daughter of a count and countess, she grew up in a castle (Darfield Castle in Munster, Germany), attended a fine school run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, and after her Confirmation returned home, sure of her vocation, despite her poor health. She was accepted by the Good Shepherd Sisters and humbly embraced the stark simplicity of her new room and life. Their primary mission was with developmentally and emotionally disabled people, some of them real hardcases and all societal misfits. She had a real way with the girls, due to her spirit of kindness and happiness. She took all in stride, from her much-disliked assignment as superior of the convent in Oporto, Portugal to the degenerative spinal disease that eventually killed her. She had a great devotion to the Sacred Heart and died right after she received the encyclical consecrating the world to the Sacred Heart, for which she had personally petitioned Leo XIII. (You know, I don't remember him, but the more I hear about Leo XIII, the more I like and admire him.) Her body was found incorrupt in 1944 (after her cause was started in 1921) and she was made Venerable in '64 and beatified in '75.
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