And Inspired A Sister Of Life . . . How The Eucharist Entered The Heart Of A 13th-Century Saint
By COURTNEY MARES
ROME (CNA) — This is the story of how an obscure thirteenth-century saint from Florence inspired a young religious sister in Manhattan — and then utterly surprised her.
“It was not so much that I discovered St. Juliana, as that she found me, and showed herself to be a friend to me, a ‘big sister’ in the spiritual life,” Sr. Juliana Faustina told Catholic News Agency.
“St. Juliana has taught me that it is through the Eucharist, particularly through Holy Communion, that our hearts are day by day transformed more into the Heart of Christ,” she said.
Born just six years after Pope Urban IV instituted the Feast of Corpus Christi, St. Juliana Falconieri (1270-1341) devoted her life to prayer and works of mercy as the foundress of the Servite nuns, until she became so sick that she was unable to receive Holy Communion.
Devastated by this loss of union with Christ’s True Presence in the Eucharist, St. Juliana asked a priest to lay the Eucharist upon a corporal over her heart.
When the priest did this, the Eucharist disappeared and Juliana died. Branded on her skin above her heart was an image of the Eucharist with a crucifix in its center and rays surrounding the Host. The Eucharist had entered her heart.
A large marble statue in St. Peter’s Basilica, to the left of the twisting columns of Bernini’s soaring baldacchino, captures that exact moment. St. Juliana is seen with her arms outstretched in ecstasy as rays of gold radiate from a Sacred Host above her heart.
The feast of St. Juliana is on June 19, the same day that many Catholic dioceses will celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ this year.
The Sisters of Life are a religious order dedicated to protecting the sacredness of human life, particularly by caring for women who are pregnant and their unborn children.
As Sr. Juliana Faustina was discerning her religious name with the order, she noticed a convergence in the spirituality between two female saints: St. Juliana Falconieri and St. Faustina Kowalska, the 20th-century Polish nun to whom Jesus appeared with a message of Divine Mercy.
“When I was preparing to enter religious life, I read a section of St. Faustina’s Diary where she sees the rays of Divine Mercy radiate forth from the Blessed Sacrament during Adoration on the Feast of Corpus Christi.
“Jesus spoke to her and said, ‘These rays of mercy will pass through you, just as they have passed through this Host, and they will go out through all the world’,” she said.
“These words were a summons for me, as well, to let the Heart of Jesus be so alive in me that my heart could be another place where His love and mercy enter this world,” she said.
“I was struck by the thought of St. Juliana as a model of this, particularly since those who witnessed her Eucharistic miracle described the ‘rays’ around the image of the Eucharist imprinted on her heart.”