Whoever humbles himself will be exalted
Homily in the beatification of the Venerable Servant of God Elisa Martinez
“Rejoice in the Lord always,” we heard at the beginning of the second reading, and St. Augustine explains: “rejoice in the hope of eternity; for all the time that you are here below, rejoice in this way and everywhere” (cf. Sermo 171,5: PL 38, 935). It is with this joy that we find ourselves together, under the gaze of the Virgin Mary, to praise with Her and like Her the Lord for the gift that our land of Salento receives today: the beatification of the Venerable Servant of God Elisa Martinez, founder of the Congregation of the Daughters of St. Mary of Leuca. We rejoice as sons and daughters of the Holy Mother Church, but also as men and women of our beautiful land of Salento. In a recent speech, in fact, the Holy Father Francis had the opportunity to recall that God does not make saints in a laboratory, but “builds them on large construction sites, in which the work of all, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, contributes to digging deep, to laying solid foundations and to realizing the construction, taking every care so that it grows in an orderly and perfect way, with Christ as the cornerstone” (Speech of 3 June 2023).
With these words the Pope intended to highlight that holiness, even if it has its call from Above, however normally has its roots in human habitats; in stories “of land and Church” so, addressing the pilgrims to the Pilgrims who came from Concesio and Sotto il Monte, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the death of John XXIII and the election of Paul VI, he continued: “From your roots comes the sap to move forward, to grow, and also to give a history and a meaning of life to your children and grandchildren. Love your roots, do not separate the tree from the roots: it will not bear fruit. Always try to progress in harmony with your roots, in tune with your roots”. He concluded by exhorting: “Loving your roots means for you loving the Gospel of Jesus and loving as Jesus loved in the Gospel”.
I make the same invitation to you, having come here to Our Lady of Leuca to fulfill the Pope’s mandate to proclaim, in his name, the beatification of Mother Elisa Martinez. It is the first time that such a Liturgy is celebrated in our land and this can become for all of us a signal, a reminder, a pressing invitation to be saints: “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is honorable, whatever is virtuous and praiseworthy, think about these things”, the apostle Saint Paul encourages us. It is a “breviary” of Christian action (cf. Cyprian [?], De singularitate clericorum, PL 4, 870).
“Whatever is virtuous and praiseworthy”. This is precisely what the Church has examined when considering the life of our Blessed. The virtues. Those that have been recognized are the theological virtues (faith, hope and charity), the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance), the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience, plus those virtues that we call “annexed”, among which a place of primary importance is occupied by humility.
The Holy Curé of Ars said of this virtue that “it is similar to a scale; the more one lowers oneself on one side, the more one is raised on the other” and this is what also happened for our Blessed. Some testimonies in the process for beatification say that humility was her characteristic. We will say that this virtue was like the cement with which Mother Elisa built her spiritual edifice, so that she did everything with joy without expecting human compensation and appreciation; accepting, indeed, those humiliations that the very service of others entails. “Humility can take root in the heart only through humiliations. Without them there is no humility or sanctity”, writes Pope Francis (Gaudete et exsultate, n. 118).
Moreover, it was precisely humility that pushed Mother Elisa preferentially towards the humble, the poor, the sick and the suffering. “I would like to expand my heart to embrace all creatures scattered throughout every corner of the earth,” he said, “especially the neediest and most marginalized.” This reminds me of a medieval saying, which says: “There are three steps by which man ascends to heaven: poverty, humility and charity: Hi sunt tres gradus, per quos homo ascendit in coelum: paupertas, humilitas, charitas” (Alanus of Lille, Lib. Sent: De Sancta Maria, 32: PL 210, 248).
This was said of the Virgin Mary, but it also applies to our Blessed. She loved the poor, but why? Because in them she discovered the face of Christ more clearly. Saint Paul VI, whose LX of election to the Chair of Peter we have been commemorating in these days, told them in the homily of the mass celebrated on August 23, 1968 for the Colombian campesinos: “You are a sign, you are an image, you are a mystery of the presence of Christ. The sacrament of the Eucharist offers us his hidden living and real presence; but you too are a sacrament, that is, a sacred image of the Lord among us, as a representative, but not hidden, reflection of his human and divine face”.
During the proclamation of the Gospel page we heard this promise: “Even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not be afraid: you are worth more than many sparrows!”. Jesus did not say this so that the good Lord would be there to count our hairs, commented Chrysostom, but so that – he explained – “do not believe that you suffer what you suffer because you are abandoned” (In Matth. Hom. 34,2: PG 57, 401). Mother Elisa felt exactly this way: always protected by the hands of God, even in moments of misunderstanding, suspicion and rejection. She was well aware that God welcomes us in all that we are and in all that happens to us.
Of this we must all be very certain. I repeat to you some words spoken by Benedict XVI, of dear and holy memory, during the homily of the Holy Mass celebrated on the day of the Assumption, in the parish of Castel Gandolfo on 15 August 2010. As Bishop of Albano I was sitting next to him and had the opportunity to observe him well. I watched him, therefore, as he spoke off the cuff, absorbed and with his gaze fixed on a mysterious horizon, almost as if he were reading a handwritten text. He said that we exist because God loves us and in Him we exist not only in our “shadow”, but in all our reality. “Our serenity, our hope, our peace are founded precisely on this: in God, in His thought and in His love, not only a shadow of ourselves survives, but in Him, in His creative love, we are protected and introduced with all our life, with all our being into eternity […]. God welcomes into His eternity what now, in our life, made of suffering and love, hope, joy and sadness, grows and becomes […]. Christianity does not only announce some salvation of the soul in an imprecise afterlife, in which everything that in this world was precious and dear to us would be erased, but it promises eternal life, “the life of the world to come”: nothing of what is precious and dear to us will go to ruin, but will find fullness in God. All the hairs of our head are numbered, Jesus once said». This is what the Holy Church wants to tell us when it presents us with the figure of a saint, a blessed.
«On the basis of such interior solidity – Pope Francis reminds us –, the testimony of holiness, in our accelerated, fickle and aggressive world, is made of patience and perseverance in good. It is the faithfulness of love, because those who rely on God (pistis) can also be faithful before their brothers (pistós), do not abandon them in difficult moments, do not let themselves be dragged down by anxiety and remain close to others even when this does not bring them immediate satisfaction” (Gaudete et exsultate, n. 112).
Let us also ask for the gift of this “interior solidity” for ourselves today, while we are here in Leuca in front of the Sanctuary dedicated to She who, “humble and high” (Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, 33,2), stands out among the humble and the poor of the Lord (cf. Lumen gentium, n. 55); let us ask for the intercession of Her, whom we invoke with all our heart, Holy Mother of God, Mother of the Church. In the meantime, let us say to her: Our Mother, pray for us, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Sanctuary of Our Lady of Leuca, 25 June 2023
