Her suffering

After the restrained outpour of her personal feelings in the postscript to her letter to the Mother Superior, she seems to regain control of herself because she does not want her sufferings to be a burden to other people.

Milan, the boarding-school in Via Quadronno where Sr. Sala died.

Sister Marianna was always like that. Only the people who lived in close contact with her were able to understand to some extent her participation in the mystery of the Cross to which God calls His disciples.

Undoubtedly the inevitable human miseries of fife in a community, which she accepted with serenity, distressed her. Mother Videmari’s frequent rebukes, because she thought in good faith that saints must be put to the test, were added pain to Sister Marianna.

She suffered physically as well. The illness that would be the reason of her death appeared at least eight years before it, when she was in Via Quadronno. She had cancer of the throat which caused a swelling in her neck. To hide it she wore a little black scarf without any embarrassment. After violent attacks of acute pain that forced her to interrupt her lessons, her sweet smile made people forget how much she suffered. And indeed she got into the habit of referring jokingly to the ugly disfigurement as «my string of pearls». She never confessed how much she suffered, not even during the last months of her life.

«I am well» she wrote to her sister on July 26th, 1891.

She was now living what she had written many years before, with the logic of those who greatly love Christ Crucified:

«We must be brave, my dear Genoveffa, and serve God as best as we can even when He wants a sacrifice from us: if we can cal/ sacrifices the little difficulties we have to face when trying to be virtuous. In fact what is our suffering in comparison to what Jesus, our dear Bridegroom, suffered for us? On the contrary, we must be happy and thank God when He gives us the opportunity to prove our love and faithfulness to Him. Oh, we must give ourselves completely to God and He’ll help us to become saints.»

(letter to her sister Genoveffa. 16/10/1874)

To become a saint was to Sister Marianna a matter of truth, faithfulness and perseverance: it was her pledge through her baptism and her vows, so she fulfilled it with apparent simplicity, though under great ascetic stress which was not revealed in anything striking but in practicing the usual virtues with remarkable continuity, sweetened by the comforting hope of Heaven.

Her longing for Heaven, in which she always involved her pupils as well, seemed to become stronger towards the end of her life, which she felt near.

On August 10th 1891 she wrote to Annunciata Crosti:

«Have courage and faith, be sure that 1 really pray for you and your dear ones and, please, say a few words in prayer to Our Lady for me, especially at this time, as we are preparing ourselves for the beautiful solemnity of the Assumption.

Sursum corda, my dear, Sursum corda
The price of Heaven is never too high!» .

In the autumn of 1891 Sister Marianna had resumed her numerous activities and the teaching in the senior classes. But after the first few days of the school term she had to interrupt her work and was sent to the school infirmary. Her illness overcame her physical and moral strength and she underwent terrible suffering for fifteen days.

On November 24th, while the other nuns were reciting the Litany of Our Lady in the Chapel, Sister Maria Anna Sala passed peacefully away as the words «Regina Virginum» were uttered, and on her deathbed she seemed graced with new beauty: even the signs of her illness had disappeared.

The fame of her saintliness was spread by Sisters and pupils alike: to the Sisters she was the perfect religious always faithfully observing the Rule; to the pupils she was the teacher who by word and-example had so impressed and influenced them.

And when, in 1920, her exhumed body was found still intact, the interest in the never forgotten Sister Maria Anna Sala was renewed and her former pupils joined the Sisters of St. Marcellina in earnestly petitioning that the case of beatification should go forward. At the subsequent informative trial many bore witness to her heroic virtues and saintly life.