Pilgrim progress- a disciple on a journey!

  Lust’s opposing virtue, chastity, deserves an equally unforgettable advocate. St. Maria Goretti knew the importance of chastity for union with God and its necessity for the wholesomeness of both personal and social life. Today we commemorate her in the liturgy of the Church. In every age, the saints of God have proven that they were God’s servants by their lives of faith and purity of soul. In St. Maria Goretti, youth have a heavenly patroness who, in Pope John Paul’s words, is "a model of Christian life," "a model of authentic holiness," and "the Agnes of the 20th century." Not yet 12 years of age, she was a countercultural sign to a world in the process of rejecting God and genuine love.  In the 1947 Decree of Beatification of the Congregation of Rites (a section of which was transformed in 1969 into the Congregation for the Causes of Saints), we read the following concerning the heroic virtue of the young girl who died after being stabbed 14 times...

At the Shrine of St. Maria Goretti, Nettuno In every age, the saints of God have proven that they were God’s servants by their lives of faith and purity of soul. During my time in Rome recently I had the opportunity to visit the shrine of St. Maria Goretti, where she is buried and where many pilgrims come to ask the intercession of this child-saint. The story of St. Maria Goretti is the story of a martyr-saint and a young one at that. It does not make for easy reading. In 1950, she was canonized in a ceremony attended by twenty-five million people, including her mother, the first mother ever to see her child canonized, and Alessandro Serenelli, her killer. Her feast day is the 6th of July so I thought it would be good to share her story on this day. The Holy Father observed during her canonization that Maria longed "to ascend to heaven by the only road that leads there, which is religion, the love of Christ and the heroic observance of his commandments."  The shrine ...