ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN APRIL
Saints celebrated on the 9th of April
Prayer to the Angels and the Saints
Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.
In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.
Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.
Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.
BL. LINDALVA JUSTO DE OLIVEIRA, VIRGIN AND MARTYR
Blessed Lindalva, a Religious Sister of the Society of the Daughters of Charity, was born on October 20, 1953 in Brazil, and died on April 9, 1993 after being stabbed by a stalker.
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"... I am eager to rejoice with the Church of God in São Salvador da Bahia, with the Daughters of Charity from the six Brazilian Provinces and with all the People of God. In this young Religious of our time they will feel a strong sense of belonging, since she was one of them. She lived in a slum in Northeast Brazil as part of a large, poor family, and her mother is here with us today. She is a martyr of our time to be held up as an example, especially to young people, for the witness she bore to simplicity, purity and the joy of living, of giving herself to Christ.
In an important chapter of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI underlined the fundamental connection between the celebration of the Divine Mysteries and witness of life, between the experience of encountering the Mystery of God, a source of wonder and inner joy, and the dynamism of a renewed commitment that leads us precisely to be "witnesses of his love". Today, Bl. Lindalva makes us more convinced than ever that the consistent and luminous witness of believers is itself "the means by which the truth of God's love comes to men and women in history, inviting them to accept freely this radical newness" (Sacramentum Caritatis, n. 85).
With her Beatification today the Church has consecrated the bloody sacrifice of Sr Lindalva, who we can be certain will now be able to intercede for us who can follow her together with St Vincent de Paul and St Louise de Marillac in the footsteps of Christ, in order to make our own the reference to the essential values of being Christian and consecrated: absolute and consistent love for Christ and his Gospel, the preferential charismatic option for the poorest people of this earth, prayer as a fruitful, hidden root of our actions, the optimism of hope, joy and the spontaneous delight that should always accompany our witness in the world.
To someone who asked her the secret of such joy, Bl. Lindalva one day answered: "My heart is mine and can suffer, but my face belongs to others and must be smiling".
I wish for all and invoke from the Lord for everyone that joyous vitality which she transmitted to others, which is a most beautiful legacy of Bl. Lindalva and her devotees, and may they be able to involve those who are beside them so that they may be deeply rooted at the foot of the Crucified and Risen One, knowing well that as children of God we are all called to become holy and that the path of holiness is a path of freedom for everyone...
(From the homily of Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, December 2, 2007.
For the full homily please see
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/csaints/documents/rc_con_csaints_doc_20071202_beatif-lindalva_en.html)
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