Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich

Sister of Charity of St. Elizabeth, 1901-1927

Her life

+ Teresa was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, and was raised in the Ruthenian Rite of the Catholic Church.

+ She graduated from Bayonne High School in 1917 and wanted to become a Carmelite nun. However, because she had to help care for her mother, she remained with her family. After her mother’s death during the influenza epidemic of 1918, Rose began attending the College of St. Elizabeth in Convent Station, New Jersey.

+ Still discerning God’s call, she began teaching at St. Aloysius Academy (now Caritas Academy) in Jersey City. After making a novena in honor of the Immaculate Conception, she decided to enter the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth and entered religious life on February 11, 1925.

+ Known in religious life as “Sister Miriam Teresa,” she taught at the Academy of St. Elizabeth as a postulant and novice. She was well-respected within the community and her spiritual director asked her to write conferences for the novitiate. She wrote 26 conferences which were later published under the title Greater Perfection.

+ Miriam Teresa became seriously ill in November 1926 and was diagnosed with heart disease and acute appendicitis. Doctors were unable to operate because they feared she would not survive the surgery and her condition grew worse. Hospitalized for several months, she was allowed to make perpetual religious vows in articulo mortis (in “danger of death”) on April 2, 1927. She died on May 8 and was 26 years old at the time of her death.

+ She was beatified in 2014.

Worth knowing

A new shrine in honor of Blessed Miriam Teresa was dedicated on October 16, 2016. It is located in the Sisters of Charity’s St. Joseph Chapel in Convent Station, New Jersey. To learn more,

visit: http://www.scnj.org/index.php/miriam-homepage

Quote

"God’s purpose in my life is this in general: To teach men that Our Lord’s promise ‘If any man love Me, he will keep My Word; and My Father will love him and We will come to him and make our abode with him’ is held out to every soul regardless of calling; and is the perfect realization of His prayer and ours: Thy kingdom come…"—Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich

Prayer

O God, by whose gift blessed Miriam Teresa persevered in imitating Christ, poor and lowly, grant us through her intercession that, faithfully walking in our own vocation, we may reach the perfection you have set before us in your Son. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

(from The Roman Missal: Common of Holy Men and Women—For a Religious)

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Saint profiles prepared by Brother Silas Henderson, S.D.S.