"#TheMummicogblogOfMalta Amazon Top and Flash Deals(Affiliate Link - You will support our translations if you purchase through the following link) - https://amzn.to/3CqsdJH
Compare all the top travel sites in just one search to find the best hotel deals at HotelsCombined - awarded world's best hotel price comparison site. (Affiliate Link - You will support our translations if you purchase through the following link) - https://www.hotelscombined.com/?a_aid=20558" "A Life That Almost Wasn’t: The Pro-Life Witness of Sister Maria Bernadette of the Cross BOOK FEATURE: The compelling story of a Polish nun who was a near-victim of abortion — and whose vocation was confirmed by one of John Paul II’s homilies. ‘The issue of the unborn was always important to Sister Bernadette.’
Just days before new reports began circling this spring regarding the leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, it was announced that Arouca Press had published a timely translation of the biography of a Polish nun who herself was the near-victim of abortion.
For Their Sake I Consecrate Myself, by Benedictine Sister Jadwiga Stabińska, gives the English-speaking world a glimpse into the life of Sister Maria Bernadette of the Cross, whose relatively short life was an inspiring testimony to the religious vocation as well as to pro-life causes.
An Energetic, Talented Youth Born Róża Maria Wolska on July 3, 1927, the girl who would become Sister Bernadette in religious life was the third child — and first daughter — of Kazimierz and Anna Wolska. Growing up near Lviv, Poland (in what is now western Ukraine), her childhood was spent enjoying the outdoors and playing with the farm animals on their family estate. Relatives and friends described her as an exceptionally active child; her mother noted in a journal entry that “she was always rushing around like a young hound dog … she climbed hazel trees like a squirrel.” Her cousin Danuta described her as “strong-willed” and a “spitfire.”
In her teens, Róża took to playing volleyball in the summer months and grew to develop a variety of other hobbies and talents, including poetry, singing, sewing and reading. A descendant of several well-known and gifted Polish painters, Róża fostered a great gift for painting that remained active through the rest of her life.
A Journey in Faith Religion was certainly present in the Wolska home, but possibly in a sense more cultural than overly pious during Róża’s youth. She had vague memories of her first Holy Communion and felt that she had not been very well prepared for receiving Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Writing as a religious many years later, she did recall an illustrated Gospel book at the family estate, a memory of which she said saved her “from many misfortunes.”
In her formative years, she was a witness to the Second World War, and it was during the later years of the war that Róża’s attention to and interest in religion began to grow. Even though she acknowledged periods of her life when she “closed [herself] off from God,” she recognized “His Mercy persistently chases after us in spite of everything.”
Living as a young adult in southern Poland, near Kraków, Róża took advantage of local spiritual retreats and was introduced to the Benedictine Order, which had a community of monks in Tyniec. After the war, she became a lay oblate of Tyniec, choosing the name Bernadette after the saintly visionary of Lourdes.
The religious life grew more and more attractive to Róża, and a pivotal moment in her discernment came as the fruit of listening to a sermon about the Blessed Virgin Mary by Father Karol Wojtyła (later Pope St. John Paul II), who was then a vicar of St. Florian parish in Kraków. Father Wojtyła was giving a series of May reflections on St. Louis de Montfort’s spiritual classic, True Devotion to Mary. This devotion emphasizes the necessity of humility, “which God loves above all other virtues.”
“A soul which exalts itself