One
of the reasons I like to explore the lives of modern holy people is, due to our
information technology of the past 30 + years, we have so much that is
documented. When dealing with the lives
of saints that lived centuries ago, one is never certain what is fact and what
may be myth. One such saint I recently
found is a BENEDICTINE nun,BLESSED GIOVANNA MARIA BONOMO.
She
was born in 1606 in Asiago, Italy, of a
wealthy and noble family at her family’s country estate, the first of four
children born to John, a wealthy merchant, and Virginia Ceschi di Santa Croce,
who hailed from the nobility.
Her
mother, Virgina, died from a malignant fever when Giovanna was six. Knowing she was to
soon die, she urged her husband to give their daughter “every convenience so
she can consecrate herself to God.”
Even
in her early childhood, Giovanna was already achieving a high degree of
holiness. God was always in her thoughts and actions.
When
she was 10 months old, it is said that she could already talk. At age five, she
could speak Latin without ever studying it and was able to understand the
Eucharistic mystery and predict future events.
It
was no surprise, then, that at age 12 she informed her father, Giovanni, of her desire to become a nun.
Three
years after Virginia’s death, her father, unable to give Giovanna a suitable education, took her to the Poor Clare monastery of Santa Chiara in
Trent. The Sisters provided her with a fitting education due her rank, according to customs of the time. She studied religion, literature, music,
embroidery works, and dancing.
At
night she would kneel in front of the altar rail before the chapel’s sanctuary, ignoring sleep or the cold. In this way she discovered her
vocation to the contemplative and penitent life.
Because of her piety, her confessor discerned she should receive her
First Holy Communion, despite her being only nine, an age that was
exceptionally young at the time for reception of the sacrament. On that
occasion, Bl. Giovanna Maria later recalled, she felt like she was in heaven,
and pronounced a vow of virginity to Our Lady .
When
Giovanna told her father of her desire to enter religious life, he did
everything he could to thwart her intentions. When he saw that Giovanna was
determined to enter the religious life, he gave in. Finally, at age 15, on June
21, 1621, she entered the Benedictine monastery of San Girolamo in Bassano
del Grappa (in the region of Veneto, in northern Italy). Her
father chose this place because the family had several relatives who were
already here.
During
her profession, she was so immersed in God that she fell into ecstasy for the
first time. There, she intensified her prayers and mortifications, fasting and
whipping herself with a knotted rope.
God
granted Giovanna many mystical gifts, including visions, bilocation, and the
Stigmata. The Blessed Virgin and numerous saints appeared to give her
consolation and inspiration. In one vision, Jesus put a ring around her finger
in a mystical marriage.
These
did not sit well with her ill-informed spiritual director and fellow nuns in
the community (shades of St. Fustina). They
branded her visions as anti-church teachings and ways to attract attention. She
was even forbidden from receiving Communion. Thus, an angel
appeared and gave her the Eucharist.
Bl.
Giovanna bore all these accusations with silence and humility. She prayed
intensely until she was granted the grace that the stigmata disappeared. Also
from that point on, the ecstasies and experience of the passion happened only
at night. Thus she could lead a normal life in the monastery.
Eventually
she became novice mistress and was elected abbess three times. She taught her
nuns that holiness did not consist in great things, but in doing small things
perfectly, with love. During her time in office, she reformed the abbey’s
spiritual practices, making them much more in line with the Rule of St.
Benedict, and she increased the Sisters’ charitable works.
What is interesting
about this is that she inherited a large debt, which kept the abbey from making
even necessary repairs to its crumbling infrastructure. But the more she had
the monastery give, the less it lacked for anything. When
she died of natural causes in 1670, she left behind writings, including the
“Meditations on the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
She
was beatified by Pope Pius VI in 1783. Her feast is celebrated March 1. Amazingly,
during the First World War, when, despite the furious bombardment that
destroyed all of Asiago, the statue dedicated to her in 1908 and which stood in
front of her birthplace, inexplicably remained intact.
