May 25: Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi
The mysticism of the love of God
Perhaps they took her for a madwoman when she pealed the bells of the monastery to call her Sisters and all creatures to the love of God. She shouted: “Come, souls to love love!” It was May 3rd, 1592, when Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi, running through the corridors of the monastery, invited people to love Christ.
Impressed by her “excesses of love for God”, the religious authorities of the time asked the nuns of the Carmelite monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence to faithfully transcribe the words she pronounced during her ecstasies and to document what she saw and felt.
Daughter of one of the most influential families in Florence, Magdalene de’ Pazzi was a childhood friend of the future queen of France, Maria de’ Medici. She was born on April 2nd, 1566, and was baptized with the name of Caterina. From an early age, she was raised as a Christian and developed a particular sensitivity to spiritual things. So much so that when her mother returned home after Mass, Catherine would stay close to her saying that she “felt the taste of Jesus in her”.
During the summer, when the family moved to their cooler country property, she would happily meet with girls her age to whom she would teach “the things of God”.
At the age of 10, on March 25, 1576, she received her first Holy Communion, and on Holy Thursday of that year, she gave herself forever to Jesus, making a vow of virginity.
At the age of 17 she entered the Carmelite monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli, taking the name of Mary Magdalene. At the beginning of March 1584, she became seriously ill, so much so that the doctors’ prognosis was dire and they invited her superiors to have her make her religious profession. It was May 27th, 1584.
On the following July 16th, she was healed through the intercession of Blessed Maria Bagnesi, a Dominican Tertiary who, having died in 1577, was buried in the monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli. On the day of her profession, Magdalene fell into ecstasy. It was the first of a series, which concluded on August 15th, 1584, and which were noted in the “Forty Days.” On the evening of March 24th, 1585, the eve of the solemnity of the Annunciation, Saint Augustine wrote the words in her heart: Verbum caro factum est.
Her union with God was marked by love: “If it proceeds from the Father: love; if it proceeds from the Son: love; if it proceeds from the Holy Spirit: love. Your power: love; your wisdom: love; your goodness: love; your eternity: love; I will dare to say that your justice is also love” (II, 756).
On April 15th she received the invisible stigmata, while on the 28th the Lord gave her a wedding ring. Between June 8th and 15th, 1585, day and night she had ecstasies collected in “Revelatione e intelligentie”.
From July 20th, 1586 until the end of September, she had other ecstasies on the Renovation of the Church. Mary Magdalene perceived the need to commit herself to the renewal of the Church promoted by the Council of Trent. She wrote several letters to Pope Sixtus V, to the Cardinals, to the Archbishops including that of Florence, Alessandro de’ Medici, to whom she prophesied that he would be elected Pope (Leo XI). She insisted on the need for the “renewal of the Church”, also to combat the “lukewarmness” of the baptized. The letters, dictated in ecstasy and perhaps not even sent, were twelve and in them she emphasized that she wrote "to be a bride and not a servant" of God.
On March 7th. 1594, she experienced spiritual matrimony. On May 1st, 1595, she asked the Lord to grant her "nude suffering". In the autumn of 1602 she became seriously ill with pulmonary tuberculosis.
On June 24th, 1604, she had her last ecstasy and entered into "nude suffering". She lived like this "with great desolation" until her death on May 25th, 1607.
Her fame of sanctity, which already surrounded her in life, increased even more after her death. She was beatified in 1626 by Pope Urban VIII and canonized, on April 28th, 1669, by Pope Clement IX.