This Aug. 15 will mark 90 years since the Sacramentine Sisters of Don Orione were founded to offer something very particular for the salvation of the world: their blindness. They are a community of blind nuns consecrated to perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and wear a distinctive white habit, a red scapular, and a white Host embroidered on the chest. “I intend to offer with this new branch of the religious family, as a flower before the throne of the Blessed Virgin, so that she herself, with her blessed hands, offer it to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament,” Saint Luigi Orione told them when he founded the order in Italy Aug. 15, 1927. This branch of the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity (LMSC) has as its mission, according to its constitutions, to offer to God “the privation of sight for those who do not know the truth yet so that they may come to God, the light of the world.” In addition they seek to support with Eucharistic Adoration and sacrifice “the apostolic action of the LMSC and the Sons of Divine Providence,” the two congregations founded by Saint Luigi Orione. The congregation is present in Italy, Spain, the Philippines, Kenya, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile.
Read it all. And give thanks to the extraordinary witness of these women.
Pope Francis imparted a message to the sisters in May:
Along with the other Institutes and Movements founded by Don Orione, you form a family. I encourage you to walk the paths of cooperation with all members of this rich charismatic family. No one in the Church walks “alone”. Nurture amongst yourselves a spirit of encounter, the spirit of family and cooperation.I shall conclude by offering to you as an example for your mission and for your service to the poor the icon of the Visitation. Like the Virgin Mary, set out in haste — not the hastiness of the world, but that of God — and, full of the joy that dwells in your heart, sing your Magnificat. Sing the love of God for every creature. Proclaim to today’s men and women that God is love and can fill the heart of those who seek him and who let themselves be encountered by him.
And today we celebrate...