Dominican tradition tells us that Imelda Lambertini was born of a noble family in Bologna, Italy in 1322. Her parents raised her to love her Catholic faith, and through their influence she developed a love for prayer, especially for the Mass. Often she would attend Mass and Compline (Night Prayer of the Divine Office) at a nearby Dominican Church. Her mother also taught Imelda to cook and sew for the poor and cultivated in her child an eagerness to perform the corporal works of mercy. Even so, her mother and father, both of whom were getting on in years, were surprised when Imelda asked permission at the tender age of nine to go to live with the Dominican nuns at a neighboring monastery. As difficult a decision as this was, her parents evidently sensed the depth of their child’s desire and entrusted her spiritual formation to the Dominicans at Val di Pietra.

In 1915, one year after the beginning of the war, while the fighting dragged on in the trenches, all the families in France knew that a visit from a government official meant that someone had been killed in battle. When, therefore, on July 25th 1915, Madame de Guigné opened the door to the Mayor of Annecy-le-Vieux, she knew at once that her husband, who had already been wounded three times, would never return home.

This great pope’s name was Joseph Sarto. He was born in 1835, the son of a mailman in Riese, Italy. When Joseph felt that God wanted him to be a priest, he had to make many sacrifices for his education, but he didn’t mind. He even walked miles to school barefoot to save one good pair of shoes. After he was ordained a priest, Father Sarto labored for the people in poor parishes for seventeen years. Everybody loved him. He used to give away everything he had to help them. His sisters had to hide his shirts or he would have had nothing to wear. Even when Father Joseph became a bishop, and a cardinal, he still gave away what he owned to the poor. He kept nothing for himself. When he was elected pope, he took the name of Pius X. He became known as the pope who loved the Holy Eucharist. One of his quotes was, “Holy communion is the shortest and safest way to Heaven.”

Dorothy was inspired by journalists like Jack London and Uptown Sinclair who detailed the horrors and injustices of America’s industrial age. She loved the Russian anarchist Kropotkin and was inspired by the stories of saints. “Whatever I had read as a child about the saints had thrilled me. I could see the nobility of giving one’s life for the sick, the maimed, the leper,” she said. She recognized that American religion lacked the saints’ heroic witness. Preachers did not make a connection between Sunday services and the pain of working men and women. “Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves but to do away with slavery?” Dorothy wondered. In 1916, she got a reporting job at the socialist newspaper The Call. After many tragic relationships and becoming a single mother, Dorothy began to pray daily, which eventually led to her and her daughter being baptized.

All three children, Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco, received the same messages from heaven. Yet, each of them had a special part of it they stressed, while not forgetting the other parts. The life of Francisco Marto shows us the proper and true Catholic devotion to the angels, the saints and Mary, the Queen of all. Francisco was awed at the beauty and goodness of the angel and of the Mother of God, but it was especially Jesus that occupied his attention. Francisco preferred to think mostly of consoling Our Lord and Our Lady, both of whom seemed so sad at sin.

Blessed Carlo Acutis was born in London and raised in Milan. Carlo’s wealthy parents were not particularly religious. Antonia Salzano, his mother, said that before Carlo, she went to Mass only for her first Communion, her confirmation, and her wedding. After Carlo made his first Communion, he went to Mass as often as he could, and he made Holy Hours before and after Mass. One of his famous quotes was: “The more Eucharist we receive, the more we will become like Jesus, so that on earth we will have a foretaste of heaven.”

St. Peter Julian Eymard’s Eucharistic love began very young. One day when he was five years old, his parents couldn’t find him and sent out his older sister Marianne to look for him. She found him in the church, where he had used a stool to climb up on the surface of the high altar and was leaning his head upon the tabernacle door. When Marianne, astonished, asked what he was doing, with childlike simplicity he replied, “I am near Jesus and I am listening to him!” Before he was able to receive his first Holy Communion, he used to do something similar with his sister. He would sit next to her at Mass and, after she had returned from the Communion rail, he would put his head on her breast and say with joyful fervor, “I can feel his presence!” When he made his first Communion at 12 years old, he embraced Jesus within and told him, “I shall be a priest, I promise you!”

Most people know St. Teresa of Calcutta, commonly known as Mother Teresa, as the woman who dedicated herself to the love and care of the poor in Calcutta, India. Her desire to serve these people, many of whom were dying on the streets, led to her fame throughout the world. However, most people miss the reason for the initial calling and the continuation of this call until her death. It was Jesus in the Eucharist.

Gemma had the most passionate love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. On the day of her first Communion she remarked: "I feel I am burning. I feel there is a fire kindled in my heart." This fire never went out, but in time became a devouring flame, so that one day the saintly girl could exclaim: "I feel love will finally conquer me, and that my soul, unable to love Jesus enough here on earth, will be in danger of being separated from my body. How blessed to love Jesus alone .... Oh father, if you could say in a few days time: 'Gemma was a victim of love and died of love.' What a blessed death! I would wish to be dissolved and that my heart might become ashes so that all could say: 'The heart of Gemma has been consumed by Jesus.' "

Clare was the first woman who followed St. Francis and his way of life. St. Francis appointed Clare as the women’s superior of the first convent they founded in 1215. Her community would soon be known as the Poor Clares. Wearing no shoes, fasting often, perpetually abstaining from meat and sleeping on the hard wood floors the sisters radically embraced a life of poverty and penance. Their embrace of poverty was only equaled by their embrace of prayer. Taking a vow of silence they rarely spoke except to sing God’s praises in the psalms and in prayer. As tough and extreme as their lives were, it did not stop the community from growing in numbers. Some in turn returned home and founded convents of Poor Clares in their own towns and cities.