Today September 3

Today is the feast of Servant of God Teresa Pantellini (1878 - 1907). She was born a noblewoman, got a great education, traveled extensively throughout Europe and in North Africa as a child, and grew up headstrong and impudent. But she was also very devoted and religious. She felt not only a vocation to the religious life, but heard an interior voice directing her to a specific order: Don Bosco's Daughters of Mary, Help of Christians. Her family was surprised, thinking she'd at least go into the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, who had educated her. But this noble, intelligent, refined and introverted young woman actually had a rare gift with the sometimes rough girls they educated and housed. Her patience even in the face of insults and spitting eventually won them over. She worked hard to master her strong will and to live in a dorm room (not even a private cell), and to endure poor food and a difficult assignment. She was generous and liberal in her attitudes: when one sister was attacked by 5 rough girls and her veil pulled off, she refused to press charges, but worked to rehabilitate the girls. (She succeeded.) She did the most menial work (counting and sorting the dirty laundry) and adopted as her humble motto: "I resolve to pass unnoticed."

A word about the laundry. Father Bonanni in the Via Cappelle started it "to help keep girls off th streets teach them a trade, and help them earn an honest living." - Modern Saints. I suspect this was the motivation behind the sister-run Irish laundries, despite the calumny they endured from movies like "The Magdalene Sisters." I don't know much about the Irish ones, but I've read that, unlike in the movies, they were completely voluntary and the girls appreciated them as a shelter, albeit a hard-working one.

Sister Teresa was dying of tuberculosis when she had a vision, actually more of an apparition since Sister Lenci saw it too, of Don Bosco, then only a Servant of God himself. He approached her, smiling, and she directed him to the other sister who was also sick. "Don Bosco, it is not I who am asking for a cure -- it's Sister Lenci." That sister was cured and went on to labor for thirty more years in the field. Sister Teresa lingered for another month and a day. Her last words, uttered with a smile despite her pain, were: "Don't be upset, it doesn't matter, let it alone." Sweetly appropriate for this meek soul, comforting her other sisters. Sister Teresa Pantellini, pray for us