June 9: Blessed Anna Maria Taigi, Mother and Laywoman
Marriage as a Path to Holiness
A woman, a layperson, a wife, a mother of seven children and a member of the Third Order of the Most Holy Trinity—this is Blessed Anna Maria Taigi, who achieved holiness through marriage. She was born in Siena on May 29, 1769 and baptized the following day. Due to financial difficulties her family—her father Luigi Riannetti and mother Maria Masi—moved to Rome when she was six years old. In the capital she was entrusted to the religious order of Maestre Pie Filippine, where she received a full education in just two years.
To support her family Anna Maria took on various jobs, most of them very humble. While still young she married Domenico Taigi, a devout man with a difficult character. She accepted all difficulties with a Christian spirit, always striving to live out the virtues. For 49 years, thanks to her kindness and balance, she lived a marriage rooted in deeply Christian principles, practicing patience and charity daily.
She viewed marriage as a mission entrusted to her by God and transformed her home into a sort of domestic sanctuary where God always held first place. She was always respectful toward her husband, trying to avoid conflict and maintain peace in the household.
Anna Maria Taigi’s home was often visited by people from various social and cultural backgrounds. Cardinal Pedicini, who, along with Monsignor Raffaele Natali, was her spiritual director, would send many faithful to her seeking spiritual advice and guidance for their own interior lives.
She was a humble and hardworking woman, attentive to the needs of her family but also generous toward the poor as much as her means allowed. She had seven children, three of whom died young. She raised the other four in the faith.
She had a deep devotion to the Most Holy Trinity, to Jesus in the Eucharist, to the Passion of Christ and to the Virgin Mary, toward whom she had a tender and profound love.
On December 26, 1808, she entered the Third Order of the Trinitarians and fully embraced its spirit. She received extraordinary charismatic gifts from God the most remarkable of which was the vision of a mystical sun that she saw before her eyes for 47 years. Within this sun she was shown events as they occurred in the world and the states of souls, both living and deceased.
She died on June 9, 1837, and was beatified by Pope Benedict XV on May 30, 1920. Her body is venerated in the chapel dedicated to her in the Basilica of San Crisogono [Saint Chrysogonus] in the Trastevere district of Rome.