A story for every day...

Some years ago, a young girl named Mina, fourteen years old, knew the Catholic Church only through the slanders and prejudices of Protestant books. She belonged to a wealthy English family. A small book of Catholic prayers fell into her hands and she read the Ave Maria, which was unknown to her. She was charmed by it, she spoke of it around her, she repeated it at every opportunity. She was told that the cult of the Blessed Virgin was idolatry, and she was severely criticized. Mina defends her Hail Mary as best she can and remains faithful to it in spite of everything. The more she says it, the happier she is. From mockery and criticism, they came to abuse. Her obstinacy is accused of insulting her family’s religion, of rebelling against her father’s authority. The young girl endured everything, and instinctively continued to greet Mary, reciting, not from time to time, but very often the Angelic Salutation. She insensibly drew from it antipathy against Protestantism, as well as love for the Catholic religion.

She had reached this point when the month of Mary arrived. A beautiful musical mass was to be performed in a nearby church. Mina, an excellent musician, obtained permission to attend as a concert. She was almost sixteen years old at the time. “I, who usually stood so proudly, and who had never consented to kneel in the Protestant church, as soon as I got to the church, fell prostrate, and during all the songs of that mass I stood on my knees. Then I listened with respect to the preacher. It was the first sermon that spoke to my soul. From that moment on, the disgust I felt for Protestantism was joined by a true love for Catholicism. Until then I had been passionately in love with ballet dancing, the toilet and the vanities of the world; I no longer found the same attraction in them. ‘My God!’ I often said to myself, these pleasures are certainly not the purpose for which You created me.” And the girl recited with more devotion than ever her Hail Mary, her only spiritual treasure. Soon afterwards, her father died, and her mother brought her to France. Mina’s first concern was to go and learn from a distinguished Catholic priest. Soon she was instructed and abjured the heresy with her mother’s consent. Her mother soon followed her in her new path, and both persevered in the practice of piety, never tiring of blessing Mary and repeating the angelic greeting that had led them to the only true religion.