Rosa Venerini: moving in the ocean of the Will of God

From an early age, Rosa Venerini felt called to serve God in the religious life, but she struggled to find a congregation that matched her vocation. Just as she was about to resign herself, without joy, to joining her aunt in the Dominican community in her home town of Viterbo, her father's death and the poor health of her mother and brother forced her to leave the convent. She accepted what she regarded as the divine will and dedicated herself to caring for her sick relatives. Then she waited, patient and trusting, for God to show her what he wanted her to do. The revelation of her special calling and its implementation were fraught with pitfalls and setbacks, but Rosa never doubted or feared, in perfect abandonment to the good will of Heaven, which she entered on 7 May 1728, after completing her mission here on earth.

Les raisons d'y croire :

•  Rosa was naturally gifted with intelligence and had a thirst for knowledge. She received a very good education, making her a singular case among women in 17th-century Italy.

• The choice of the consecrated life is not something one could have expected. Yet she made it at a very young age, and never wavered from it, despite many trials and difficulties, proving that her choice had been inspired from on high.

• She was seven years old when she secretly vowed to consecrate herself to God. This childish commitment could have been considered invalid through no fault of her own. In fact, when she reached adolescence, she was extremely reluctant to enter religion. But Rosa chose to remain faithful to it, whatever the cost. She was deeply convinced that she was doing God's will and, despite her young age, it was all that mattered to her.

• In 1676, she decided to join one of her aunts at the Dominican convent of Santa Caterina in Viterbo. She soon realised that this spirituality and this way of life were not for her, but she had the wisdom to turn this experience into a time of apprenticeship with a view to another future, which she could not yet see. The disappointment of not finding in the convent what she had hoped for did not lead her to renounce religious life: this is further proof of the solidity of a vocation that was truly dictated by God, and not by personal whim.

• In the early 1680s, a series of family difficulties forced her to leave Santa Caterina. However, even though Rosa devoted herself exclusively to those close to her, she remained firmly convinced that God would give her a sign sooner or later, and she entrusted her future entirely to him.

• In this way, she developed what was to become her personal mystical path, what the Church calls "holy abandonment": a total renunciation of her own will and an absolute trust in Providence.

• Later, she would say: "I am so immersed in the divine will that neither life nor death matters to me. I want to live when God wants me to and serve him as he pleases. I want nothing more than that." This programme of self-denial and self-emptying is one of the most difficult to put into practice and demonstrates, even if it was not accompanied by any extraordinary graces, Rosa's very deep union with God.

• In order to keep herself busy, since she still received no sign that she was on the right path, Rosa took the initiative of gathering the local women and their children every day to say the rosary together and to give them a course in religious instruction. She then found her vocation: to create free Christian public schools for girls, and to educate them so that, through them, she could reform society. In this way, she demonstrated her ability to interpret the signs God was sending her and to obey them.

• With the support of her bishop, Rosa opened the first public school for girls ever founded in Italy. Within a short space of time, she had alienated not only high society, who criticised her for depriving them of servants and prostitutes, but also the clergy, who would not tolerate a laywoman competing with them in education and catechesis. The obstacles were such that anyone else would have given up out of discouragement. Rosa held on, certain that she was doing God's will.

• In 1706, Rosa thought the time had come to move to Rome with her teachers. But what should have been the high point of her life's work ended in bitter failure, making her the laughing stock of the city and, as she was threatened with ridicule, should have led her to give up, if not all her work, at least this project. Ever faithful to her policy of abandoning herself to God, Rosa persisted, and the foundation finally met with success.

• The mystery of this improbable success lay entirely in Rosa's deep prayer life, centered on the Eucharist.

• When Rosa died in Rome on 7 May 1728, she left behind more than forty schools in Italy. Her daughters spread throughout the world, following the major Italian emigration of the 19th and 20th centuries.

• Rosa Venerini was canonised by John Paul II in 2006. In so doing, the Church officially recognised the validity of this very special path of perfect abandonment to the will of God.