Onomastics to celebrate today: the saints of Friday, March 10

A few decades, even centuries ago, the ancestors used to name their children with the name of the saint of the day of their birth, not in vain in the famous “Mañanitas” there is a stanza that says: “Today, because it’s your birthday, we sing them to you here…”.

He onomastic alludes to the day when a saint is celebrated, although it is common for many people to use it as a synonym for birthday, which is wrong, because when they talk about it, they only allude to the list of holy names.

Like every day of the year, today also commemorates the women and men who stood out for having special connections with the deities, who did good deeds for their neighbors and who had high ethics and morals, reasons that led them to to be canonized or beatified and be among the saints.

It is the day of the saint Friday March 10.

Born into a bourgeois family in 1817 in Metz (France), after Napoleon’s definitive defeat and the Restoration of the Monarchy, Anne-Eugénie Milleret did not seem destined to follow a spiritual path in the Church of France.

His father, liberal and follower of the ideas of Voltaire, developed his activity as a banker and in political life. Ana-Eugenia, gifted with great sensitivity, received an education from her mother which gave her an assertive character and a sense of duty. Family life developed in her an intellectual curiosity and a romantic spirit, an interest in social issues and a broad open-mindedness.

This education, far from the Church, from Christ, from school, is marked by great freedom coupled with a great sense of responsibility. The kindness, generosity, rectitude and simplicity learned from his mother, will lead him to say later that his education was more Christian than that of many pious Catholics of his time. According to custom, like her contemporary George Sand, Ana-Eugénie attended mass on feast days and had received the sacraments of Christian initiation without committing herself to anything. Her first communion was however a great mystical experience for Ana-Eugénie in which all the secret of the future was already found. It is only later that he will grasp the prophetic meaning of this experience and will recognize in it the foundation of his journey towards total belonging to Christ and to the Church.

He lived a happy youth, even if the suffering was not lacking. The death of an older brother that she, that of a little sister, fragile health and a fall that will leave scars, marked her childhood. Ana-Eugenia will show maturity beyond her years, she will know how to hide her feelings and face what is coming. Later, after a period of glory, he will have to face the failure of his father’s banks, the incomprehension and separation of his parents, the loss of all security. Ana-Eugenia must leave her childhood home and go to Paris with her mother, while her brother Luis, her great playmate, will go with their father.

In Paris, with her mother whom she adored, she will see her terribly affected by cholera which will kill her in a few hours, leaving her 15-year-old daughter alone in the world, in a worldly and superficial society. In this situation and through an anguished and almost desperate search for the truth, Ana-Eugénie will achieve her conversion thirsty for the Absolute and open to the transcendent.

At 19, Ana-Eugénie attended the Lenten Conferences at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, preached by Father Lacordaire, young but already known for his talent as a speaker. A former disciple of Lamennais, inhabited like him by the vision of a renewed Church playing a new role in the world, Lacordaire understood his time and wanted to change it. He knows the questions and aspirations of young people, their idealism and their ignorance of Christ and the Church. His word reaches Ana-Eugenia’s heart, answers her own questions and awakens great generosity in her. Ana Eugenia sees Christ as the universal Liberator and his Kingdom on earth through a fraternal and just society. I felt truly converted, she writes, and I felt the desire to give all my strength, or rather all my weakness, to this Church, which henceforth seemed to me to be the only one here below which possessed the secret and the power of good.

At this time, he met another preacher, also a former disciple of Lammenais, Abbé Combalot, whom he chose as confessor. Father Combalot realizes that he has before him a privileged soul and appoints Ana-Eugénie founder of the Congregation of which he had long dreamed. Insisting on the fact that this foundation is the will of God and that God has chosen her to carry out this work, Father Combalot convinces Ana-Eugénie to take charge of this project: a work of education. Fr. Combalot is convinced that only education will make it possible to evangelize minds, to make families truly Christian and thus to transform the society of his time. Ana-Eugénie accepts this project as a wish of God and allows herself to be guided by Fr. Combalot.

At the age of 22, María Eugenia became the founder of the Religious of the Assumption, dedicated to dedicating all her life and all her strength to extending the Kingdom of Christ throughout the world. In 1839, with two other young women, Anne-Eugénie Milleret began a community life of prayer and study in an apartment on rue Férou, very close to the Saint-Sulpice church in Paris. In 1841, they opened the first school with the support of Madame de Chateaubriand, Lacordaire, Montalembert and their friends. Years later, the community will number 16 sisters of four nationalities.

Maria Eugenia and the first Sisters of the Assumption wanted to unite the old and the new: to unite the ancient treasures of Church spirituality and wisdom with a new form of religious life and education that would meet the needs modern mentalities. . It is a question of assuming the values ​​of one’s time and, at the same time, of transmitting Gospel values ​​to the emerging culture of a new industrial and scientific era. The Congregation will develop a spirituality centered on Christ and on the mystery of the Incarnation, both deeply contemplative and deeply apostolic. It will be a life lived in search of God and in strong apostolic commitment.

The life of María Eugenia de Jesús was long, a life that lasted almost the entire 19th century. He deeply loved his time and wanted to actively participate in its history. Gradually all his energies united, in one way or another, in the development and extension of the Congregation, his life’s work. God sent her sisters and friends. One of the first was an Irishwoman, mystic and close friend whom María Eugenia, at the end of her life, called “half of my being”. Kate O’Neill, in religion Mother Thérèse Emmanuel, is considered a co-founder. Father Emmanuel d’Alzon, who became spiritual director of Marie Eugénie shortly after the foundation, would be her father, her brother, her friend according to the stages of her life. In 1845, Father d’Alzon founded the Augustins of the Assumption and the two founders helped each other for 40 years. Both had the gift of friendship and worked in the Church with many lay people. Together, following Jesus, men and women religious and laity have traced the path of the Assumption and are part of the immense cloud of witnesses.

In the last years of his life, Mr. María Eugenia de Jesús gradually experienced physical weakness, lived in humility and silence, in a life totally centered on Jesus Christ. On March 9, 1898, he received Communion for the last time and on the night of March 10 he fell asleep gently in the Lord. She was beatified by Paul VI in Rome on February 9, 1975 and canonized by Benedict XVI on June 3, 2007.

The lay branch – Asunción Juntos – made up of the Friends of the Assumption and the Communities or Fraternities of the Assumption, is numerous: a few thousand Friends and a few hundred Lay people committed to the Way of Life.

With this character is other saints and martyrs which are also celebrated this Friday, March 10 as follows:

San Attalo

San Droctoveo

Saint Macarius of Jerusalem

Saint Victor, martyr

Blessed Elias del Socorro Nieves del Castillo

The Catholic and Orthodox Church uses canonization to declare a deceased person a saint.which implies the inclusion of her name in the canon (list of recognized saints) and the authorization to venerate her, acknowledging her power before God.

During Christianity, people were recognized as saints without the need for a formal process; however, this changed in the Middle Ages.

In the case of Catholicism, the Church must make an exhaustive investigation of the life of the person to be sanctified and there are four ways to obtain the appointment: the path of heroic virtues; the path of martyrdom; that of exceptional causes, confirmed by an ancient cult and written sources; and the offer of life.

Moreover, it is an essential requirement who performed at least two miracles (or one in the case of being a martyr). Canonization is made in a solemn papal declaration and a feast day is assigned for liturgical veneration.

There is no set time limit for proceeding with the canonization of a character, since there is even cases like that of San Pedro Damián who was canonized up to 756 years after his death or, conversely, the case of San Antonio de Padua which was named up to 352 days after his death.

The last canonization took place in October 2019, when the pope declared Cardinal John Henry Newman and Sister Dulce of Brazil saints.