OUR FOUNDING MOTHER
Blessed Mary Magdalene of the Incarnation (1770-1824)
She was born in Porto Santo Stefano (Italy) on April 16, 1770, in the bosom of a fervently Catholic family. She was baptized the next day with the names of Catalina María Francisca Antonia.
She creates in an environment imbued with an exemplary religiosity. Her father, Lorenzo Sordini, promoted that in the parish church was exposed to public veneration, in special circumstances, with a spirit of love and reparation, the Blessed Sacrament, as on Thursday of Carnival. Therefore, from her adolescence, Catherine spent hours in adoration with Jesus in a sacrament.
At age 17, she received a marriage proposal from Alfonso, a man who made precious jewels. On one occasion, adorned with them, looking at herself in a mirror on the pained face of the crucified Jesus who invited her to give herself totally to him and said: “Catalina, do you abandon me for a human love?” In February 1788 she entered the monastery of the Franciscan Tertiary of Ischia di Castro. Wearing the religious habit took the name of Sr. Mary Magdalene of the Incarnation
On February 19, 1789, Thursday of Carnival, in the refectory he saw “Jesus as a throne of grace in the Blessed Sacrament, surrounded by virgins who worshiped him” and heard a voice saying: “She chose you for the job” of the perpetual Adorers, who day and night offered me their humble adoration to repair the offenses and the ingratitude of the humanity and the impetrar thanks and the help of my divine mercy. “That day became for her the day of light.”
On April 20, 1802, Abbess was elected, a position she held until 1807, when, following God’s will to want a new institute and write the Constitutions, she moved to Rome, with some sisters and the blessing of Pius VII, to the first monastery of the Perpetual Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament, in the convent of San Joaquín and Santa Ana, in Quattro Fontane. The foundation took place on July 8, 1807. On his initiative, the church was opened to the adoration of the lay faithful.
Thanks to their ever closer union with God, their great spirit of faith and their intense prayer in difficult times, by the invasion of the last days of the Revolution, achieving many works, for the benefit of the monastery and also many people who resorted to your
Mother Mary Magdalene prophesied before the deportation of Pope Pius VII to France: “But they are not afraid, no one can harm and return to glory in Rome.” The cross also came for the Adorers, in the form of suppression of the institute; and she was exiled to Florence.
The Napoleonic regime fell, in 1814 the mother returned to Rome with some young Florentines and on September 18, 1817 she wore the new religious habit, which she had seen in vision the “day of light”: white habit and red scapular, symbols of the virginal candor and the love of the crucified and eucharistic Jesus.
On March 10, 1818, the Holy See officially recognized the congregation, that Mother Mary Magdalene was placed under the patronage of the Virgin of Sorrows.
She died on November 29, 1824 in Rome, where his rest rests.
The Order now has more than ninety monasteries scattered around the world.
“Jesus, my Savior, I firmly believe and I am willing to bear witness to my death with this truth: that You, true God and true man, are true, real and substantially present under the kind of Sacrament. my heart in this high mystery in which an act of your wisdom of your power and your love, you remain on earth to be with us until the fulfillment of the world. “
Blessed Mary Magdalene of the Incarnation
Apostle of the Eucharist
