Mother Maria Candida
of the Eucharist
(1884 - 1949)
Beatification scheduled for March 21, 2004
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Mother Maria Candida of the Eucharist (1884 - 1949) |
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Mother Maria Candida of the Eucharist (1884-1949).
She was of Silician origin. Her father was from Palmero, but the Cardinal of
Palmero discouraged her from entering the local Carmel there and referred her to
Ragusa. When she left Palmero to join Carmel, her family disapproved, and never
visited her. A couple months after she made her solemn profession, the nuns of
Ragusa elected her Prioress and she remained Prioress until about a year before
she died of liver cancer.
born Maria Barba on 16-Jan-1884 in Catanzaro (Southern Italy)
1886 - family moves to Palermo (father's hometown)
1912 - contacts Palermo Carmel, reads Therese's Story of a Soul
1919 - Leaves Palermo for Ragusa.
16-Apr-20 enters Novitiate in Ragusa: Maria Candida of the Eucharist
23-Apr-24 solemn profession, 10-Nov-24 elected Prioress. Held office to 1947.
28-Sep-46 brings Carmelite Friars from Venice province to Ragusa.
1949 - Diagnosed cancer of liver in Feb. Dies 12-Jun-49 (Feast Holy Trinity) at
65.
1956-62: Diocesan Process,
18-Dec-00 Pope JP II declares her "Venerable"
21-Mar-04: beatification
Fr. John Michael Payne OCD
Maria Barba’s family home was in Palermo, Sicily. However, Pietro
Barba’s work as a Judge in the Appeal Court took the family briefly to Catazaro
in Italy and it was there that Maria Barba was born on the 16th January 1884.
The deeply-religious family returned to Palermo when she was two years old.
From the age of fifteen Maria felt called to Religious Life but her family
strongly opposed this; she had to wait for twenty years before she could fulfill
her calling. During these years of waiting she suffered interiorly but showed a
remarkable strength of spirit and fidelity to her calling, unusual in one so
young. Her trials were to last until she entered the Teresian Carmel, Ragusa, on
25th September 1919. During this time she was sustained by a special devotion to
the Eucharist, in which she saw the mystery of the sacramental presence of God
in the world, the concrete symbol of His infinite love of humanity, and the
reason for our trust in His promises.
Her love for the Eucharist was evident from the very beginning. “When I was
still a child” - she testified – “and before I was old enough to receive Jesus
in Communion, I used to rush to the front door to greet my mother when she
returned from Mass. There I stood on tiptoe to reach up to her and cried, ‘I
want God too!’ My mother would bend down and softly breathe on my lips; I
immediately left her, and placing my hands across my chest, full of joy and
faith, jumping for joy I would keep repeating: ‘I have received God too! I have
received God too!’” These are signs of a vocation, for one who is called by
God’s free and gratuitous will as a gift for the Church.
From the age of ten, when she made her First Holy Communion, her great joy was
to be able to receive Communion. From then on, to be deprived of Holy Communion
was for her a great and painful cross. In fact, after the death of her mother in
1914, she could only rarely receive Communion, so as to not offend her brothers
who would not allow her to go out on her own.
Maria entered Carmel and took the name Maria Candida of the Eucharist, which in
certain aspects was prophetic. She said that she wanted “to keep Jesus company
in the Eucharist for as long as possible.” She prolonged the time of her
adoration, especially every Thursday, when from eleven to midnight she would be
before the tabernacle. The Eucharist really dominated her entire spiritual life,
not so much for the devotion, as for the fundamental effect it had on her
spiritual relationship with God. It was the Eucharist that gave her the strength
to consecrate herself as a victim to God on 1st November 1927.
The new Blessed fully developed what she herself was to describe as her
“vocation for the Eucharist”, helped by Carmelite spirituality, to which she was
attracted after reading Story Of A Soul. The pages in which St Teresa of Avila
describes her own particular devotion to the Eucharist are well known. It was in
the Eucharist that the saintly Foundress experienced the mystery of the humanity
of Christ.
In 1924 Sr. Candida was elected Prioress, a position in which she was to remain,
except for a brief period, until 1947. She established in her community a
profound love for the Rule of St Teresa of Jesus. She was directly responsible
for the expansion of Carmel in Sicily, making a new foundation in Syracuse and
helping to secure the return of the male branch of the Order.
On the Feast of Corpus Christi during the Holy Year of 1933, Mother Candida
began to write what was to become her little masterpiece, entitled The
Eucharist, true jewel of Eucharistic spirituality. It is a long and profound
meditation on the Eucharist, which had as its goal a record of her own personal
experiences and her deepening theological reflections on those same experiences.
She saw all the dimensions of Christian life summed up in the Eucharist.
Firstly, Faith: “O my Beloved Sacrament, I see you, I believe in you! … O Holy
Faith. Contemplate with ever greater faith our Dear Lord in the Sacrament: live
with Him who comes to us every day”. Secondly, Hope: “O My Divine Eucharist, my
dear Hope, all our hope is in You … Ever since I was a baby my hope in the Holy
Eucharist has been strong”. Thirdly, Charity: “My Jesus, how I love You! There
is within my heart an enormous love for You, O Sacramental Love … How great is
the love of God made bread for our souls, who become a prisoner for me!”
As Prioress, Mother Candida, acquired from the Eucharist a deep understanding of
the three religious vows which can be seen in a life that is intensely
Eucharistic. Not only their full expression but also a concrete way of living, a
kind of deep asceticism and a progressive conformity to the only model of every
person’s consecration, Jesus Christ who died and rose again for us: “Which hymn
would we not sing in obedience to this Divine Sacrament? And what is the
obedience of Jesus of Nazareth compared with His obedience in this Sacrament for
two thousand years?” “After having taught me obedience how much He talks to me,
instructs me in Poverty, O Sacred Host! Who is more naked, poorer than You...You
have nothing, You ask for nothing!...O Jesus, let religious souls long for
sincere detachment and poverty!” “If You speak to me of obedience and
poverty..., what a spell of purity You have over me just by Your glance. Lord,
if Your home is in pure souls, who is the soul that relating with You does not
become such?” From this came my goal: “I want to be close to You through purity
and love”.
The model of a Eucharistic life is, of course, the Virgin Mary, who carried the
Son of God in her womb and who continues to give birth to him in the souls of
his disciples. “I want to be like Mary,” she wrote in one of the most intense
and profound pages of The Eucharist, “to be Mary for Jesus, to take the place of
His Mother. When I receive Jesus in Communion Mary is always present. I want to
receive Jesus from her hands, she must make me one with Him. I cannot separate
Mary from Jesus. Hail, O Body born of Mary. Hail Mary, dawn of the Eucharist!”
For Mother Maria Candida the Eucharist is a school, it is food and an encounter
with God, a coming together of hearts, a school of virtue and wisdom. “Heaven
itself does not contain more. God, that unique treasure is here! Really, yes
really: my God is my everything”. “I ask my Jesus to be a guardian of all the
tabernacles of the world, until the end of time”.
After she endured months of painful suffering, the Lord called Mother Maria
Candida to Himself on the 12th June 1949. It was the Feast of the Most Holy
Trinity.