The little white and crimson rose of Jesus The name of Maria Goretti has a special place for me. I would judge that almost everyone in my generation has grown up hearing the story of the little crimson and white rose of Jesus, Saint Maria Goretti.

Her story inspires us with so many emotions, such a desire to take us to Jesus and his Mother Mary like pure buds, ready to flourish in whatever vocation they wish us to be, whether religious, secular or as in the case of little Mary. Saints who gave their lives as martyrs rather than stain their immortal souls by committing a sin. And in that way, saints like Maria Goretti become role models for young people in these modern times. We know the story of Maria Goretti with superficial knowledge.

She is famous for what she obviously did, dying rather than allow her relationship with Jesus to be compromised by giving in to sexual temptation. This is the obvious cause of her sainthood, just as St. Maxmilian Kolbe’s obvious reasoning for her sainthood was to take the place of a fellow prisoner in the Auschwitz death cells during World War II. But this is only apparent.

There is so much more in every life that calls us to revere them as special servants of God, true role models. We have written about Saint Maximilian Kolbe in two different books, trying to tell the story of this powerful man in the Church.

There were two other virtues of Santa Maria Goretti that are so subtle that they get lost in the shadow of giving life. One of them was disinterest. She cared more about her eternal soul than the safety of her body. And possibly even more than that, she cared more for the soul of her attacker than for her own life.

As we delve into the painful story of his life and death, we can’t help but realize that part of the reason for his determination not to give in to Alessandro Serenelli was for his salvation.

Maria Goretti was a good girl, a pure girl. At eleven years old, she had such a loving relationship with Jesus that she would rather die than allow her chastity to be compromised, rather die than risk breaking her relationship with Jesus. But how can that be? How could she understand which way her Yes to Jesus would take her? We are not talking about Saint Agnes or Saint Cecilia or early Church Saints who gave their lives for Jesus.

This was the 20th century. She was a product of that century. Where have we gone, how low have we come, that our young men cannot understand how a girl of her own century can sacrifice her life for her morals? Girls as young as eleven are “sexually active,” have become pregnant, have had abortions often with the help of their own mothers, in many cases, and those who did not die at the abortionist’s table have died of AIDS. in many cases.

We are at a moment in our society in which morality is practically not taught or practiced in the classrooms of our schools, in the pulpits of our churches or in the homes of the parents of these children.

Our schools give boys condoms and parents give girls the birth control pill. They are teaching us safe sex in an effort to prevent the spread of dangerous diseases and keep the world’s population down.

Last on the priority list is preventing the spread of a civilization’s moral decay, which in its final analysis will be far more deadly than any physical disease our children may contract. Maria Goretti is definitely a contradiction in terms. It is surely a paradox. It is not possible for it to exist in the last decade of the 20th century, at the end of the second millennium, and yet it is a product of our century.

Either she is completely out of sync, or we are doomed by the apathy we show our children by our behavior. Either María Goretti is wrong or we are wrong. Is it possible that we are wrong?

But we are getting way ahead of ourselves. To start at the beginning of this brief but brilliant life in the Lord, we have to go to the extreme north and east of Italy, to the Marches, the rough area around Ancona and the Adriatic Sea. For those of us who visit the Santa Casa de Loreto, it seems like a most pleasant place.

The month we usually choose, July, is not hot yet. The warm Adriatic breezes make it a highly desirable time to visit our Lady of the Holy House there. But that’s July in Loreto. Not far away, in Corinaldo, where our little Saint was born, things are not exactly the same.

Winters are brutal. Howling winds from the Adriatic Sea batter the land rock-hard, making it nearly impossible to work on farms. If this isn’t enough, spring and fall bring heavy rain and flooding, ruining any small amount of crops that might be planted. No matter how hard the farmers tried, this was not a good place to make a living. For Maria Goretti’s parents, Luigi Goretti and Assunta Carlini, it was home. They had lived here all their lives, just like their parents before them and their parents before them. But that didn’t make their lives any more bearable. It was just consistent.

And this is where our little Santa was born on October 16, 1890. She was the second living daughter of the Goretti family, the first child dying as a baby. She had an older brother, Angelo, and would have more brothers and sisters as time went on. When we wrote about the Little Flower of Lisieux, Saint Therese, we said that Saints beget Saints. Maria’s mother in particular, Assunta, was a holy woman. She had no formal education, but her Church powerfully taught her and gave her, we believe, Holy Spirit-infused knowledge.

This love for God and his Church was passed on to his children, especially little Mary. She was baptized the day after she was born. Assunta did not want her son to carry the stain of Original Sin any longer than necessary. Under the tutelage of Assunta and Luigi, Maria grew up as a generous and selfless girl. She cared more about pleasing others than her own comfort. Little things meant a lot to Maria.

Perhaps because the family had always been and always would be very poor financially, she did not have a great need for possessions. They were not available to the family; Maria did not think of them. Instead, she tried to do everything she could to make life for her family more enjoyable. She was a very normal girl, she enjoyed playing games and running through the fields. But her mother noticed a strong spirituality in her from an early age. She never left her; she just got more intense. Little Maria and her family lived a happy life in Corinaldo, but always on the edge. The land was too small and difficult to farm. Luigi did the best he could, but he wasn’t good enough. He insisted that he could not properly care for his family under these conditions. He argued that they would have a better chance in some faraway land, perhaps the great city of Rome. The grass was always greener elsewhere. Also, anything was better than what they had.

Assunta, for her part, was determined not to leave the place of her birth and that of her children, especially for a decadent place like Rome. But Luigi was determined to give his family a better life. To strengthen his case, his very close friends and neighbors, Domenico and his sister Teresa Cimarelli, were also planning to leave. This gave Luigi the courage to convince Assunta that they and her children should leave Corinaldo and head towards Rome.

The lure of the big city always drew people from the farms. But it hadn’t helped those who left in most cases. Although there was work, very often there was no life. Wages were just above slave labor; the living conditions were impossible; the whole family had to work in different factories. The work of Saint Don Bosco in the slums of Turin in the last fifty years of the 19th century had been irrefutable proof that in big cities there were no streets lined with gold, but only heartbreak and, very often, family breakups.

Reference “Holy Innocence”