20 SEPTEMBER BLESSED MARY TERESA OF SAN GIUSEPPE. Today's prayer

Blessed Maria Theresa of St. Joseph, aka Anna Maria Tauscher van den Bosch, was born on 19 June 1855 in Sandow, Brandenburg (today in Poland), to deeply believing Lutheran parents. At a young age she lived years of intense, troubled religious research that led her to Catholicism: a choice that cost her exclusion from the family and dismissal from the psychiatric hospital in Cologne, which she ran. Left homeless and without work, after a long wandering she found her "way" in Berlin: she began to devote herself to the many "street kids" "many, children of Italians" who were abandoned or neglected. To this end, he founded the Congregation of the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus, which soon began to dedicate itself to the elderly, poor, emigrants, homeless workers, while new communities were born in other countries of Europe and America. The charism: putting the contemplative spirit of Carmel at the active service of the direct apostolate. The founder died on September 20, 1938 in Sittard, the Netherlands. Also in Holland, in Roermond Cathedral, she was beatified on May 13, 2006. (Avvenire)

PRAYER

O God, Our Father,
You purified the Blessed Mother Maria Teresa of San Giuseppe
through the sufferings and trials that he passed -
with great faith, hope and selfless love -
making it, in Your Hands,
an instrument of Your Grace.

Fortified by his example
and trusting in his intercession,
we ask for your help.

Give us the grace to be able to face,
like her, the difficulties of life,
with the power of faith.

We ask you for Christ, our Lord.
Amen.