Spirituality
“Love! Oh, Love! That is the divine seed which produced the fruit of the Cross. It is love that burdened Jesus with the wood of sacrifice and gave Him the strength to fly to the holy mountain”. “Yes, our Jesus is all love: He is the perfect model of love, enraptured by the charms of this Spouse of love, our souls burn with desire to resemble Him and walk in His footsteps; they choose the mountain of myrrh and the hill of incense for their dwelling in exile”. (Mother Catherine Aurelia)
On her mother’s lap, little Aurelia soon learned of the suffering Christ and that made a lasting impression on her. As time went on, in her reflections of Christ on the Cross, she was deeply touched by Christ’s words on the Cross “I Thirst”. The more she was impelled to meditate on these words, the deeper she was touched as she felt this as a personal thirst for her love. This cry of thirst echoed in her whole being a she in turn thirsted!! Catherine Aurelia experienced God as pouring his love into her being, and it is like she hardly knew what to do with so much love!
But as her love and appreciation continued to deepen the ” I thirst” of Jesus on the cross, became for her a thirsting cry of God cry for all his people. Her response to this thirsting love was an increasing desire to have others love him She wanted to love him with every fiber of her being and she wanted many to follow her in this vocation of love, so that there will be an ever greater response of love. She saw in the manner of the shedding of his Precious Blood, a sign of his love unappreciated and of the gift of salvation reject by many. Yes, so many reject that love of God or is it that the worldliness attracts them away from him or is it that they just haven’t got the time for him. She says, “Others must devote themselves in their place.” No matter what! God must be loved. This became a great inspiration to begin a community of Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood. In and through Christ, she and the members of her community would devote their whole lives to monastic prayer life and thus reach out to all God’s people.
Mother Catherine Aurelia felt greatly inspired by her patroness St. Catherine of Siena who had such a great devotion to the Precious Blood and was filled with a deep love and concern for the church. She wanted her Spiritual Daughters to follow her example – so that too, became a part of her spirituality and our vocation in the church. It is through the church of which our congregation is a living part that we continue Christ’s redemptive mission.
She prays; “Following the example of St Catherine of Siena, the Sisters will work diligently in the buffeted barque of the Church, will pour the balm of prayer on her deep wounds and draw down graces for which the earth is athirst.”
It was her experience of the infinite love of God expressed in Christ’s passion and death, that Catherine Aurelia was blessed with the unique appreciation of the love in which Jesus shed his Precious Blood. This love expressed through suffering became the source of her spirituality: The Precious Blood shed on the Cross and now present in the Eucharist.
