St. Gianna Beretta Molla

This month our bookclub is reading St. Gianna Beretta Molla: A Woman's Life by Giuliana Pelucchi.  I usually don't like to discuss bookclub readings before the meeting, but this book made such an impact on me I would feel remiss if I didn't recommend it to all of you.  This book gripped me right from the beginning--it took me one day to read, and I am not a fast reader.

St. Gianna is a modern day saint (1922-1962).  She married when she was 33, had 3 children, and during her fourth pregnancy doctors discovered a large tumor on her uterus.  She instructed the doctors to remove the tumor, but not the uterus, and if medical treatment required a decision, her baby's life was to be saved before her own.  The initial surgery was succesful and she carried the baby to term, delivering a healthy baby girl.  However, complications from the tumor and delivery caused her to die days after delivery.  The other option on the earlier surgery was to remove the entire uterus which would have surely saved her life but killed the baby inside.  She was decidedly against this route. 

For a few years I have known the brief 1-2 sentence story of St. Gianna--she sacrificed her life for her unborn child and her name is a favorite among Catholic babies recently-- but I knew little else.  This book focuses mostly on her life prior to her sacrificial decision, a life that is one of an every day saint.  She prayed incessently, visited the Blessed Sacrament (if not mass) daily, and was so practiced in making decisions according to God's will, not her own, in her daily life, the big decisions later on came easily.  In everyday life she lived to serve others, her husband, her children, the poor in her community, her parents, her siblings, her friends-- that when she was asked to die for another, she was able to peacefully submit.  She was an everyday, ordinary saint who was also ultimately heroic.

Perhaps the most surprising fact about St. Gianna (for me), was that this pious, devout wife and mother was also a full-time practicing physician.  She had a relatively late vocation, getting married at 33, and when she met her husband she already had an established practice of her own and loved the work.  She continued working after they were married, after their first, second, and third baby.  All the while, the description of her home was warm, welcoming and organized.  I truly feel like I could not manage to work full time and mother full time (much less keep a warm, welcoming and organized, ahem, functioning, home), so this woman doing both in the 1950's is an amazing and inspiring picture of a strong wife and Christian.  I think we are sometimes too quick to put people into boxes--I know when I first heard of St. Gianna-- the saint of pregnant women, wives and mothers-- the possibility of her working full time didn't even cross my mind--of course she had to be a stay-at-home mother to be a saint.  This is proof that God works in everyone, and sainthood is not reserved to those women who choose to work or choose to stay home.  Women can be eachother's worst (most judgmental) critics-- so we would all do well to remember that God does not discriminate between stay at home moms and working moms.

Often people ask whether St. Gianna's decision to give her life to spare her unborn baby's was in fact an unjust decision, given that it left 3 other children motherless (not to mention a husband left to raise 4 babies on his own).  Is it a moral decision to save one if it means abandoning three (plus husband)?  Some argue not.  This is how I think of it though: If I were playing with my children outside and one ran into the road, where a car were about to hit him (excuse the male pronoun, but I only know boy-babies), I don't think I would hesitate to throw myself in front of the car to save him.  I daresay any mother out there would throw herself into the line of danger to save her child.  Why should that decision be any different because the baby is still inside you?  If you believe that the child inside is just as much his own human person as your other children (which I do), would you not make the same sacrificial decision for that child?  As for St. Gianna, I think the calculus was actually a little more optimistic--there was at least a chance both she and the child would survive after the initial surgery.  Being a skilled doctor though, many say that she knew the full weight of her situation as she made her decision. 

In addition to being a heroic picture of sacrificial motherhood, and a full-time doctor, St. Gianna was pretty!  She was very attractive, she wore nice, trendy, feminine clothes and string of pearls.  She was athletic and fit--she skied and hiked regularly.  She loved her husband passionately and often wrote him letters expressing her love in no uncertain terms.  The pearls, the athleticism and the passionate love for your man, I can all relate to.  I think these little details make her more accessible to me, and make me want to follow her daily example of prayer and sacrifice for others that much more (or at least make me think that I can be more like her).  A string of pearls or a detail of her marriage make her seem more real, and less saint-like to me. 

Yet, I have found myself wondering this week how a saint, however "real" to me, actually ran a home.  I wonder if St. Gianna's "firm" voice when disciplining her children ever crossed that line of frustration and turned into yelling, or if she ever turned her back on a full sink of dishes, or left hair in the bathroom sink when she knew her husband hated that.  Did she ever leave a basket of clean laundry in their bedroom for a week and get dressed out of its contents?  Did she hate brushing the baby's teeth, or have a "hot spot" of clutter on the kitchen counter where the day's and week's junk mail, kaleidascopes, baby hairbrushes and markers gathered?  She was real, yes, but did she encounter the daily failures that I do everyday, or did this "everyday saint" have a different way of approaching these seemingly trivial, yet very trying details? Whatever the reality of her home was, I can keep her simple joy as an example in my daily life, and I can do a better job to make my work my prayer and joyfully submit to it, knowing that I am serving my family and fulfilling God's vocation for me.  Even when brushing the baby's teeth. 

Years before her ultimate decision, St. Gianna said, "Our task is to make the truth visible and loveable in ourselves, offering ourselves as an attractive, and if possible, heroic example."  Living fully and joyfully we can indeed make the truth of God's love visible to others, even in our most mundane and tiresome daily tasks. 

St. Gianna, pray for us!