Who are these seven FMM who, on 9th July 1900, gave their life for the Lord and for those they loved?
Marie Hermine de Jesus, Maria dells Pace, Maria Chiara, Marie de Ste. Nathalie, Marie de St Just, Marie Adolphine, Marie Amandine
Who were they?
Seven women like ourselves, coming from different countries sent to China for the service of their brothers and sisters for whom, on 9 July 1900, they gave their lives.
Seven religious animated with the desire to serve God, the Church, the mission with their gifts, their limitations, their temperament, their history.
Seven Franciscan Missionaries of Mary having one common characteristic: the earnest desire to open their lives to the Spirit and to respond to God’s call to the end.
They were beatified on 24th November 1946 in Rome by Pope Pius XII and canonises on 1st October 2000 in Rome by Pope John Paul II.
(Jn 15,13–17)
A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you.
Meditation
The martyrs invite us to silence,
to strain the ears of our heart
to listen to their voice.
Perhaps they tell us that…
Life is beyond and above this life,
A simple truth, which has great power
to transform this life.
These are values for which one should be ready to give one’s life, because they are what makes life worth living.
To give one’s life is to love unconditionally: to love friend and foe, victim and torturer.
Because to love is to believe in the person:
to believe that in each man, each woman, there is the image of God.
The Pasch of Christ, his passage through death in order to give birth to life, is the only paradigm to live a true life;
it is the only logic to proclaim the Good News and to save the world.
Open your eyes and see the “passion” of today, the martyrs of today: innocent victims of the logic of violence and of various powers.
