Saint of the day May 18: Saint Rafaela María del Sagrado Corazón. Catholic Saints

Every May 18, the Catholic Church celebrates Saint Rafaela María del Sagrado Corazón, a Spanish nun who was beautifully called ‘humility incarnate’ or ‘humility made flesh’, by virtue of her simplicity and always grateful attitude to everyone, no matter how. was treated.

An expression of her way of being was that kind of motto with which Saint Rafaela María used to encourage her spiritual daughters, members of the congregation she founded: “We must be within God and receive everything from Him.” It is understandable that whoever lives trying to achieve such an ideal will have to serve the Lord with inner peace and indestructible joy, proof of pain and bitterness.

Saint Rafaela María was founder of a religious institute of pontifical right, the Congregation of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, whose members are known as ‘slaves of the Sacred Heart’.

Pope Saint Paul VI, who canonized Saint Rafaela María, highlighted a distinctive feature in her, a model for any religious or consecrated woman: “The life and work of the saint, if we look at them from the inside, are an excellent apology for life. religious, based on the practice of evangelical counsels, traced in the traditional ascetic-mystical scheme, of which Spain has been a master with such notable figures as Saint Teresa, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Dominic, Saint John of Ávila and others” (Homily of the canonization Mass of Rafaela Porras y Ayllón).

Under the protection of our mother, the Church

Rafaela Porras y Ayllón – the saint’s first name – was born on March 1, 1850 in the Spanish town of Pedro Abad, in Córdoba (Spain). Her parents took her to be baptized the next day. Her father, Don Ildefonso Porras, was mayor of Pedro Abad, while her mother, Doña María Ayllón Castillo, was a generous and hardworking lady from one of the city’s wealthy families.

At three years old, Rafaela María lost her father, and when she turned fourteen, she also lost her mother. She, together with her sister, began the path of vocational discernment with the help of the Poor Clare sisters of Córdoba; and the following year she would enter the Congregation of the Sisters of Mary Reparadora. It was in this congregation where she took the name Rafaela María del Sagrado Corazón.

Sister Rafaela dedicated herself to prayer and caring for the sick and needy. Her relatives considered that her vocation was excessively early or hasty; However, she persevered and managed to overcome that initial resistance and show that her love for her Lord sprang from her maturity and not from a whim.

grateful love

Years later, already consolidated in religious life, she founded, together with her sister Dolores, the Institute of Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament and Daughters of Mary Immaculate, which would be the basis of the future Congregation of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart. The sisters had the support of the local bishop from the beginning.

The Institute was made up of sixteen nuns, with whom Saint Rafaela María moved to Madrid. There she was granted diocesan approval in 1877. Ten years later, Pope Leo XIII would approve the new congregation, under the name ‘Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus’. Mother Rafaela María would be elected superior general and she would make her perpetual profession on November 4, 1888.

Exiled in her own homeland

For 30 years, Mother Rafaela María lived a kind of exile within her own religious community, becoming an almost anonymous member of the institution that she herself had founded. For three decades, the saint took on the hardest jobs and the simplest occupations; She went through constant humiliation and, in the end, she suffered the aridity of isolation. And so she lived until God called her into his presence.

Even when circumstances were adverse, the saint conducted herself with humility and obedience, without demanding any special treatment, despite being the founder. She died on Epiphany Day, January 6, 1925, in the city of Rome (Italy). Her remains rest in the General House of her congregation in that city.

“Many last will be first” (Mt 20, 16)

Pope Pius XII beatified Rafaela María in May 1952. Years later she was canonized by Pope Saint Paul VI, on January 23, 1977.

Rafaela María died on Epiphany Day – an immutable date in the liturgical calendar of many countries -, which is why her feast day is celebrated on May 18, the day of her beatification and the transfer of her remains.