PROPER OFFICES

BLESSED MARIA ROMERO

7 July

Blessed MARIA ROMERO MENESES, virgin

Optional Memorial

For the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians: Memorial

Maria Romero Meneses was born at Granada di Nicaragua (Central America) on 13 January 1902 into a middle-class family, in which from being a little child she learned a caring sensitivity towards the poor, and in general to other people’s sufferings.

At twenty one years of age she made her religious profession in the Institute of the Daughters of Mary    Help of Christians. In the name of this her Mother and “her Queen”– as she loved to call the Madonna – she led a tireless apostolic life, creating    large-scale social works in Costa Rica, where she was sent after her religious profession.

Her main concerns were for the Christian development and education of girls, women and especially mothers, taking material help and evangelisation to poor families on the outskirts of towns and in the villages, afflicted by economic hardship and moral decadence; she provided literacy programmes and catechism for the poorest ones and a broad religious instruction for everyone. Her ceaseless activities did not prevent her from living prayer moments of deep intimacy and intense adoration and true mystical experience as is clear from her many occasional writings, which are a real “diary of the ‘soul’.

When Sister Maria finally decided to take a period of rest, she unexpectedly died and so passed to the rest without end in the “eternal embrace” of her Lord. It was 7 July 1977.

The Holy Father John Paul II beatified her on 14 April 2002.

From the Common of virgins; or from the Common of women saints (noted for works of mercy). Psalms of the day as in the Ordinary.

Office of Readings