How to Tell a Tree by it's Fruit
April 9, 2014
She was actually engaged to a young man from her hometown,
Virgilio Rizzo, but even though she loved him, she realized she could not
live next to him as his wife.
He did not believe anymore, did not go to Mass, and he could not have taken Holy Communion, not even on his wedding day.
He lost the Christian path in life.
Yet Virgilio’s faith was awakened by Angelina’s love.
His relationship with Angelina, even if short, brought him to rediscover God’s image within himself, and to ask himself seriously what God might want from him.
Children used to watch the couple as they often strolled on Via Roma in Marianopoli, to get to the parish gardens and then to the city park.
Angelina used to talk to Virgilio about the beauty of faith and of prayer, and about the holiness of God, reading the Gospels and the life of the saints.
Virgilio, after a while, decided to enter a convent, to be totally consecrated to God, but he had to leave the order to take care of his family.
He still helped Angelina to take care of the old and the sick.
Angelina had chosen to give herself completely to help her brothers, just like Francis of Assisi whom she was totally devoted to.
After contracting tuberculosis because of her service to the sick, she hid her suffering behind the smile of faith.
From her bed she did not see anything else but the Cross.
In a letter to her uncle the priest, Father Luigi Immordino, one of her relatives describes how: “she was praying with the Cross to her lips, and she died praying,”....
On November 5, at 4 o’clock in the morning, she fulfilled her long held dream: to die of love, to slip away from the world to finally join God in Christ.
“Cupio dissolvi et esse tecum” (I desire to depart and be with you) was her last wish, her final testament, poor and rich at the same time.
Source: How to Tell a Tree by Its Fruit: Angelina
LoDico, Franciscan Sister - by Luciano Calabrese
[Luciano Calabrese entered the Catholic priesthood on June 29, 2010, in part, by inspiration by the life of Angelina LoDico]