The Servites of Mary and Maria Valtorta
The Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata (Most Holy Annunciation) where Maria Valtorta rests was erected at the place where the seven holy founders of the Order of the Servants of Mary (o.s.m.) first withdrew.
The Order of the Servants of Mary (osm)[edit | edit source]
In 1233, seven wealthy Florentine merchants, all laymen, decided to leave the city then torn by fratricidal struggles between Guelphs and Ghibellines to live a religious life. In 1250, they founded their first oratory at the current location of the Basilica. It was consecrated on March 25, the day of the Annunciation, from which the Basilica would later take its name. This day was so important in the Middle Ages that it marked the start of the new year and the arrival of spring. This feast remains central for the Servants of Mary, as their name suggests.
The burial site of Maria Valtorta is therefore the epicenter of a great spiritual and Marian movement. The Servants of Mary today number 800 brothers and sisters, spread across the five continents. Rue des Blancs-Manteaux, in Paris, preserves the memory of their establishment.
The seven holy founders are celebrated on February 17.
The Servants of Mary are at the origin of the devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows (Maria Addolorata). On March 25, 1239, the day of the Annunciation, the Virgin Mary appeared to them surrounded by Angels, one of whom held a black garment. The Virgin asked them to wear this habit with a large scapular in remembrance of the passion of Christ and the seven sorrows of Mary.
This scapular gave rise to confraternities. Indulgences are attached to it. The recitation of the Rosary of the Seven Sorrows is intimately linked to it.
Maria Valtorta becomes a tertiary of the Order[edit | edit source]
It is probably this scapular that Maria Valtorta had in mind when, bedridden, she mentioned her “taking of the habit of tertiary in the third order of the Servants of Mary” on the date of March 25-31, 1944, in her spiritual calendar.[1] She did so at the initiative of her confessor, Father Migliorini, but out of a genuine vocation connected to her devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows.
"I will tell you[2], my Father, that I was very moved by the kindness of God by which your letter came to me. It is Jesus who inspired you. I so much desired to belong to the third order of Our Lady of Sorrows! If I had not been a fervent follower of Saint Francis of Assisi since my youth, and if I had not had many painful experiences with Servite priests when I decided, in 1926, to enter a third order, I would have turned to that of Our Lady of Sorrows (= Servants of Mary) or that of Carmel. Indeed, I wanted to belong to Mary even when... I was a donkey, as Jesus said[3]. I loved her poorly because I knew her little but, instinctively, I went towards her. Now, since I have seen her suffer, I love her as I love her Son: "with all my strength," and my desire to belong to Our Lady of Sorrows had become more intense. I kept silent, but I had the thorn of desire stuck in my throat. Thanks to Jesus and His Mother who told you, and thank you for understanding. It is now unnecessary. Since last year, I told you that Our Lady of Sorrows has always acted powerfully towards me. She wanted me to be spiritually guided by one of her sons (Father Migliorini, her confessor), she wanted for her altar a work made for other altars[4], she now wants me to die wearing her habit[5]. Oh good! Let us hope she will want on behalf of her Son what I ask for all (peace) and what I ask for myself: the salvation of my poor soul. Thus, she will have, too, her Fernanda Lorenzoni[6]."
It is noted that her vocation as a Tertiary of this order was thwarted by the adverse testimony of some Servites in 1926. This was the time when she entrusted her life to the Virgin Mary through her “enslavement to Mary according to the Blessed Louis Grignion de Montfort.” An act of consecration she pronounced on May 4, 1928.
This sheds new light on the soul of Maria Valtorta: her very strong connection with Jesus, which she symbolically sealed on Holy Thursday 1943 by the vision of the violet at the foot of the Cross, the starting point of her visions of the life of Jesus. But her co-redemption also extends to that of Mary. Indeed, it was eleven months after this foundational vision that the vision of Our Lady of Sorrows prompted Maria Valtorta to become a Tertiary of the Servants of Mary, a mendicant order dedicated to her.
Notes and references[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Spiritual Calendar, The Notebooks from 1945 to 1950, February 10, 1946.
- ↑ The Notebooks of 1944, March 16, 1944.
- ↑ See the dictations of June 4 and 24, in The Notebooks of 1943 as well as the last paragraph of the dictation of March 15 in The Notebooks of 1944.
- ↑ This was a lacework done by Maria Valtorta for the cloth of an altar.
- ↑ Tertiary habit, i.e., with the scapular
- ↑ Fernanda Paola Lorenzoni, tertiary of Our Lady of Sorrows (= Servants of Mary) (1906-1930). She is newly mentioned in the dictation of February 16, 1946. Father Roschini wrote a work about her well before knowing Maria Valtorta. Having died young, it seems she had a similar victim soul life to that of Maria Valtorta.