On this day in 1902, the 12-year-old Maria Goretti lay on her deathbed, her life running out of her body through the seventeen stab wounds inflicted by her thwarted rapist, the 20-year-old Alessandro Serenelli. Someone asked her whether she would forgive him, and at once she answered: “Of course I forgive him! From heaven, I will pray for his conversion. For the sake of Jesus who forgave the repentant thief, I want to have that man with me in Paradise.” It seems that already by age 12, this extraordinary child had patterned her life, words, and deeds on those of her beloved Jesus. No less than the great, seasoned apostles in today’s gospel (Mt 10:1-7), little obscure Maria too, by her powerful witness, went out “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” and proclaimed that “the Kingdom of heaven is at hand”.
Will you and I ever have the faith,
fortitude,
and clarity of vision of this peasant child? Let us pray for our own
conversion, following the example of Serenelli, who attended the Saint’s
canonization in 1950. By then he had spent 27 years in prison and then, until
his death in 1970, led the life of a Capuchin oblate.
Meditation by Father Simeon.
