June 23, 2024 - "Blessed Elena Guerra"

Blessed Elena was born in 1835 into a noble family in Lucca, Italy.  She was well-educated and well-formed in her faith.  Elena was bedridden with a serious illness for most of her twenties.  During this time, she meditated on Scripture and the writings of the Fathers of the Church.  After her recovery she went on a pilgrimage to Rome with her father. During the course of this pilgrimage Elena felt the call to consecrate herself to God.  Against the wishes of her family, she formed a religious community dedicated to education, which in time became the Oblates of the Holy Spirit..
 
One of her students, St. Gemma Galgani, wrote in her autobiography about the strong spiritual impact of her education by the Oblate Sisters.  Elena personally taught Gemma French and Church history and waived the monthly school fees for Gemma when her father fell into bankruptcy.
 
With the encouragement of her bishop and spiritual director Elena began to correspond with Pope Leo XIII in 1886 to urge him to renew the Church through a return to the Holy Spirit. Between 1895 and 1903, she wrote a dozen confidential letters to Pope Leo XIII.  She told him of her desire to see the whole Church unite in constant prayer like Mary and the Apostles in the Upper Room. One priest-commentator remarked that reading her correspondence with Pope Leo XIII reminded him of the passion with which St. Catherine of Siena used to exhort Pope Gregory XI to leave Avignon and return to Rome in 1376.  Elena’s passion was in enkindling devotion to the Holy Spirit in the Church.  In one letter to Pope Leo XIII, she wrote:
 
“Pentecost is not over. In fact, it is continually going on in every time and in every place, because the Holy Spirit desired to give himself to all men and all who want him can always receive him, so we do not have to envy the apostles and the first believers; we only have to dispose ourselves like them to receive him well, and He will come to us as he did to them.”
 
She also wrote, “The mystery of Pentecost is a permanent mystery.  The Spirit continues to come to all souls who truly desire Him… if they only want Him… if they only invoke Him… if they only prepare a place for Him in their hearts… Who is hungry enough? Who is thirsty enough? Who is zealous enough?... it is necessary that we return to the Holy Spirit so that the Holy Spirit will return to us.”
 
Pope Leo XIII heard the Lord’s call through these admonitions of Blessed Elena.  He responded to her first letter by publishing Provida Matris Caritate in 1895, in which he asked the Church throughout the world to celebrate a solemn novena to the Holy Spirit each year between the Solemnity of the Ascension and the Solemnity of Pentecost. 
 
After her third letter, the pope issued the encyclical Divinum Illud Munus in 1897, which also discussed the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.  She wrote to him that she was pleased with his efforts but disappointed in the poor response by the bishops to the Pope’s call for an annual novena. Following her ninth letter to Pope Leo in 1902, the Holy Father wrote a letter to the bishops, Ad Fovendum in Christiano Populo, reminding them of the obligation to pray the novena annually.  During her correspondence with Pope Leo XIII, she also composed prayers to the Holy Spirit, including a Holy Spirit Chaplet, asking the Lord to “send forth your Spirit and renew the face of the earth.”
 
During the last years of her life, some of the sisters in her community accused her of bad administration.  This prompted her to resign from the duties of superior of the Oblates of the Holy Spirit.  She died on Holy Saturday on April 11, 1914—a few months before the outbreak of World War One. Let us pray with Blessed Elena: “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.”
 
Until next week,
Fr. John