ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN DECEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 18th of December
BLESSED GIULIA NEMESIA VALLE, VIRGIN
Giulia was born June 26, 1847 in Aosta on the 26th June 1847 and was baptised on the same day in the ancient collegiate church of Saint Orso. Her mother died when she was a child. Aged eleven, she was sent to France in Besançon, to a boarding school run by the Sisters of Charity. When she had grown up, her father suggested she should marry, but Giulia replied that she had promised her life totally to God: she wished to become a Sister of Charity.
Therefore, on September 8, 1866 her father accompanied her to the Monastery of Santa Margherita in Vercelli where the Sisters of Charity ran a noviciate. Joyfully, Giulia began her new journey. Every day she prayed: "Jesus strip me of myself, let me be wrapped in you. Jesus I live for you, and I die for you."
At the end of the noviciate, together with the new habit she receives a new mane: Sr Nemesia. It's the name of one of the earliest martyrs of the church. She is happy with the name and makes out of it a life's programme: to witness at all costs, totally and for ever her love for Jesus.
Sr Nemesia then was sent to Tortona, to St Vincent's Institute. They run an elementary school, cultural courses, a boarding school and an orphanage. She taught both in the elementary school and French in the higher classes. There she had ample opportunity to sow kindness. Sr Nemesia was there when humble work had to be done, where there was pain to be relieved, where apprehension hindered good relationships, where fatigue, pain and poverty put limits to life.
When she was nominated superior of the community at the age of forty, Sr Nemesia felt perplexed, but she remembered this: to be a superior means "to serve", and therefore she could give herself without any limits.
This is what she thought and lived: "Keep a quick pace, without looking back and concentrate on the one goal: God Alone! To Him the glory, to the others joy. Never make others suffer. I shall be very strict with myself and full of charity towards the others : love gratuitously offered is the only thing that remains."
Her charity had no limits. In Tortona she was known as "our angel". Her novices recalled later: "She knew each one of us, she understood our needs, she treated us according to our characters. Afterwards Sr Nemesia spent thirteen years in Borgaro, instructing about five hundred novices. Having given up everything - an existence fully offered to Love - Sr Nemesia went to her eternal reward on December 18, 1916.
Source: https://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20040425_valle_en.html
PRAYER:
Grant, we beseech you, almighty God, that the venerable feast of Blessed Giulia may increase our devotion and promote our salvation. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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