Missionaries Of Divine Revelation (They Have Green Habits)

[sistersintigo]

Translated from the Italian: chapter 19, on Madre Prisca, first mother general of the Missionaries of Divine Revelation.

The followin' are the reminiscences of sorella Zacchea, a "little person" (we all know politically incorrect names for this, I won't print them). She be an old woman when the book be published, by now she may be deceased. Here is how she met Madre Prisca.

"I, as a child, wanted to become a nun, but nobody wanted me because I be a little person, unfortunately. I found understandin' and love only in Madre Prisca. I come from the province of Pescara, we were four children, we lived out in the country; in those days thar be no medical treatment for a child to continue growin' in height. I lost me father when I be nine years old. Abandoned and left alone, we had to work hard on our own land, because if we did not work, we did not eat. I had to be the Mamma and to do everythin'. But I suffered because I felt rejected. I thought to myself, "If me ship ever comes in, I want to found a religious congregation where "little people" are eligible to enter."
"I came to Rome where I had found a job. I wanted to visit the creches, the nativity scenes, includin' the one in the Tre Fontane Grotto. While I be in the Grotto, Signor Cornacchiola arrives in the company of three Brothers (religious brothers). They start to say the Rosary, and then I recite it with them. At the end, I say to a lady next to me: "I would love to go to him, but to me shame, he is a Seer, he has seen the Virgin, and I be only a poor creature." I touch him from behind, on the shoulder, and say, "Excuse me, you matey be Signor Cornacchiola?" "aye, I be Signor Cornacchiola," he says, turnin' around, "but you matey be not on your knees!" "I be not on me knees," I protest, I be a 'little person'!" "So it is you matey that the Virgin, last night, told me would have to come!" "And I have come then," I replied. "Very well, leave everythin', telephone Madre Prisca, and tomorrow come to the community."
When I presented myself at the Via Virginia residence, carryin' three bunches of buttercups, sorella Debora, who be present, laughed: "what can you matey do!" "It makes no difference," countered Madre Prisca, "if she can do nothin', she will then keep me company." At the moment Madre Prisca be cleanin' the floor. As I be used to far more brutal work, I said, "Excuse me, signorina, maybe you matey be tired. Give me the mop. I'll do it." With the mop and the broom, I cleaned and swept the floor of the entire home. I'm good for nothin', but with God's help I can do as much as that, and from that moment I entered the community."

"When we had nothin' to eat, and Madre Prisca, in the daily paper, saw a picture of a chicken, she would cut it out, put it on the kitchen table, and say, "Today we will have this to eat." If St Joseph in his providence did not send us a chicken, as we prayed -- and we prayed to him all the time -- then she took his icon and put it in the corner facin' the wall. "When you matey give us somethin' to eat, we will turn you matey around again." And then, truly, Providence would come through.
"How many times Madre Prisca and I had to collect the small change with which to scrape together enough money to make the required payments on the house! And then we went to the market, and went to the discarded vegetables that cost us nothin' to take home, in order to save on spendin' money...
"Many times the community group went on a parish mission, in areas where the parish be even more destitute than we. In the winter months, eight or ten people, and the poor priest had nothin' to feed them."

"Madre Prisca be a simple, good and humble person, very humble. She loved, and faced so many sacrifices in doin' so. In the early years, when we were so poor, Madre Prisca went beggin' with the smallest child in the family; sometimes the community Founder himself sent them to go around to the houses of the wealthy, to knock on the doors and ask for somethin' to eat. "Oh, you matey want to take somethin' to eat? Then take THAT," and she be spat upon, kicked, ill-treated...

Sorella Perside recalls:
"Madre Prisca be me catechism teacher from the time I be fourteen, and I can attest to how humble she be, and how she did not rebel or protest, even when people thought they were entitled to torment her. Once one of these people even slapped her. She then went weepin' to the Founder; only, he asked her, "Is this perhaps the first time you matey get slapped?" "No," she admitted. "Then carry on."
"thar were times when we were very hungry. Holdin' the youngest son by the hand, she would walk the streets, prayin' to the Virgin all the time, cryin': "Madonna, Our dear Lady, do not abandon us, do not make us die of hunger!" Once she be goin' on like this, she looked down, and thar, beneath the mud and the animal ordure in the street, a crumpled banknote, a bill, can be seen. She took it, she ran to rinse it and dry it, and with that bill we had enough food for a week."

[sistersintigo]

[quote name='sistersintigo' timestamp='1316099762' post='2305040']
Of particular interest in this book:
a chapter about Madre Prisca Mormina who led the women who became the first Missionaries of Divine Revelation; a native of Sicily, now deceased.
a few chapters about the "community" in the decades before the religious congregation became official, when they were living a common rule but had to do so as laypersons.

Actually much of the book is about the apparition at Tre Fontane grotto of the Virgin of the Revelation, and about the man to whom She appeared, Bruno Cornacchiola.

Anyone want to read more?
[/quote]
"La Vita Di Bruno Cornacchiola
e la Nascita Della Chiesa di Santa Maria del Terzo Millenno:
la Grotta delle Tre Fontane"
author Anna Maria Turi
published Felletto Umberto, 2005

chapter 19, pp. 155-156 about Madre Prisca Mormina.
These quotes are from sorelle Perside.

Sorelle Perside confirms the great availablity of Madre Prisca in dealing with those plagued with problems.
"Many had problems, doubts, displeasures. They went to her and asked, 'Give me some advice, pray for my son.' Sometimes, if the matter was truly serious, Madre Prisca went to the Founder, and said: 'What must I do to help this person?' He told her to go to the chapel and pray. She prayed in the chapel, but still nothing came to her mind as to how to help the person who had accosted her. She returned to Bruno [Cornacchiola] and repeated, 'I do not know what to say to that person.' And he told her to go and pray again. And then she comprehended, that the best advice was that given to her by Jesus.
Early in the morning she went to eucharistic adoration. Her source was Jesus, because she was assiduous in praying in the chapel. In the residence at Via Veturia, where the community moved when they grew larger, a small altar had been prepared. Madre Prisca was the sacristan, and she discovered the smallest fragment of a consecrated host. With the maximum delicacy, she lit the lamp to Jesus in the Eucharist, and practiced adoration and prayers of thanksgiving, for the grace to have found that fragment, the source of her life and inspiration.
"She was always speaking of the necessity to deal with things, to deal with the problems and the difficulties of life, but to do so without worry and preoccupation, because the main thing was to think of the Lord. She was truly motherly and maternal to all, because she was a person of a pure heart."

[sistersintigo]

[img]http://www.stpauls.it/madre/701m25a.jpg[/img]

Madre Prisca Mormina, in the habit