Someone Special

Written by: Sr. Augustine Weilert, ASC
Illustrated by Sr. Salmme Herman, ASC

Br..rrr!
It was a very cold day
in the little village of Vallecorsa, Italy.

John and Octavia De Mattias
were waiting for a gift from Heaven.

God loved them very much
and gave them a beautiful baby girl
with pink cheeks and pink toes.

That very day, February 4th,
the baby was taken to Church to be baptized.

It was so cold outside that all the little snowbirds
flew away to warm their noses under their wings.

The parents loved our Mother Mary
so much that they named their new baby
Maria.

Maria grew stronger and taller everyday.
She liked to sing, to play games,
and run to meet the shepherds in the evenings
when they were coming home with their sheep.
She would clap her hands and say:
"O Mama!
I love the little lambs!
Someday I want to take care
of little white woolly ones!"

But most of all,
Maria loved to sit on her father's knee
and listen to him tell stories
about Bible people.
She would often ask for one more story at bedtime
and as she drifted into dreamland,
Abraham and Isaac and the baby Moses
all seemed to come alive.

Sometimes
Maria was puzzled by big words,
like PASCHAL.
She could hardly wait to get out of Church
that one Easter morning after hearing the priest
talk about the PASCHAL LAMB.
"What is it?" she asked her father.
"The Paschal Lamb," he said,
"is the Easter Lamb.
Jesus was like a gentle lamb
that was made to bleed and die."
"But, why?" Maria kept asking.

Then, sadly, her father told the story
of how Jesus bled
and gave all of His life for us
so we could go to Heaven.
Big, big tears rolled down Maria's cheeks.
From then on,
Maria kept the poor, helpless Lamb, Jesus,
in a warm place within her heart.

One beautiful day
when Maria was ten years old,
she received Jesus in Holy Communion.
From that day on, she was so happy
that it seemed everything was happy too...
the sun,
the dogs and cats,
the flowers and birds.

Maria liked her pretty clothes and pretty earrings.
She loved to dance
and have a good time with her friends.
But because she wanted to give Jesus
much more love and attention,
she tried to find a way to do it.

One evening when the guitars were playing
and the boys and girls were dancing and singing,
Maria went up to her room.
She looked at her pretty jewelry. 
She looked at her pretty clothes
for the last time. 
She took off her earrings and put them away.
Then she knelt down beside her bed
and promised Jesus
she would not waste her time
on unimportant things.

At another time
when Maria was combing
her long reddish-blond hair
and tying it with a red ribbon
she heard a voice that said:
"Come to me."
Maria looked up in surprise.
It seemed Holy Mary
was speaking to her
right from a picture
in front of her dressing table. From that day
Maria stopped spending  so much time
fixing her hair.

Maria was loving God
so much now that
she just had to keep
talking about Him
to the other children in the village.
She invited them to her house.
They would play games
like cops and robbers,
hide and seek,
and hop-scotch.
Sometimes they would just
have a party
and sing and eat cookies.

Maria was becoming a lovely lady.
Her smile was beautiful:
she was patient and kind; she prayed;
she worked and people just loved her.
Jesus had a lot of plans for her.
One day, a Bishop in Italy
asked Maria to go to a little town
called Acuto,
which was high up in the mountains.
The people living there were very poor.
They needed someone to care for them.
Maria was thrilled and excited.
However,
her father didn't want her to go alone.

Maria Tullio, the maid, said she would be happy
to go with her.
There was so much to be done before leaving.
They cleaned the house, sewed,
packed their clothes and made sure they had
enough bread and sausage.
Maria's brother, Michele, thought he'd better go too
because Maria would need help in business matters.

It was time to leave and say
good-bye to the neighbors who
were waiting outside.
As they were about to go,
Maria took one last look at her dear
father. He blessed her,
and they never saw each other again.

Away they went, the three of them,
Maria and Michele on horses,
and Maria Tullio on a little
sure-footed donkey.
Clop-cloppyity-clop
Clop-cloppity-clop, clop, clop.
The sun was warm.
They rode round and round,
in and out of the stony trails
passing farmlands,
when....There it was!

The little town of Acuto
on the hillside!
Everything seemed to shout, "Come!"
The houses with their red roofs
looked as if they were clapping and dancing
because SOMEONE SPECIAL
was coming.
The Mayor of the town invited them to dinner.
The pizzas tasted so good.
Then he showed them a three-story
stone building where the Marias
could stay and teach.
There were three rooms on the first floor
that could be used.
The other two floors were occupied by a family.
This seemed like a fairly good deal.

Of course,
spiders, and all creepy creatures had to be chased away
and the floor needed to be mopped
a hundred times.
The place was dark and muggy too.
Michele seemed to think everything would be all right.
So, he jumped on his horse and went home.
Just two days later,
Maria opened her first school.
Children came from everywhere.
They sat on little stools
and on the floor listening spellbound
to the Jesus stories she told them.
Each year since then,
Maria's sisters celebrate
March Fourth.

In a very short time nearly all the people of the town were talking about the DeMattias girl. They like the way she spoke to them about LOVE. Because Maria was so special, many young girls wanted  to be just like her. They begged to help her. They listened carefully to all she had to say so they would be able to teach and help others just the way she was doing.

There were good days
and Bad Days for Maria.
Sometimes she would
have to move all her belongings
to another house
and start all over again.
Even the poor donkeys got terribly
tired lugging so much
up and down the stony hills.
But Maria's Helpers did not leave her
because they loved her very much.

Spring was in the air!
Flowers were blooming. Birds were chattering.
Gardens were growing. The sun was shining.
Maria was in for a surprise.
There, up on a green hill stood a large,
roomy house which a Bishop said they could use.
The house was inviting and seemed to be waiting
for someone.
Someone did come!
SOMEONE SPECIAL!
Maria and her friends took over at once,
dusting, scrubbing, polishing, and making up beds.
What a joy it was to have a home big enough
and airy enough.

They sang and danced and promised
one another that they would always,
always be true and stay together.
They promised to stand
by the cross of Jesus
and tenderly love
and care for all his people.

It was the month of May, Mary's month.
Four more girls joined Maria.
That made twelve in all.
The first thing they did was work out a way to show
the whole world that they were special lovers of Jesus.
Here's what they came up with.
They all knelt in front of a picture of Mary
and made three more big promises:
Doing without a lot of things
that weren't really necessary,
Loving Jesus and everybody else more,
Doing what Jesus wants.
They then all agreed to wear
a simple black dress.
Later they wore a veil, too.

These girls had become true sisters!
Together they faced fair weather,
and together they faced stormy weather.
One Day,
the Bishop asked them to do a hard thing.
They had to give up their large
and airy home on the hill.
The sisters were sad the people were sad,
THE DONKEYS WERE SAD,
and the house was sad.
Maria soon put everyone at ease
and told them not to get upset
because she would find
another house for them.

Since Maria had a way with God
and trusted Him so much,
she believed she could build a home
with his help.
So Maria and her sisters carried heavy stones
from the mountainside,
and the townspeople helped too.

But they had a problem.
The donkeys would bray and kick
because the great big stones
were just too much!
It seemed their stubbornness
was a way of telling Maria
that another donkey
was needed
to help carry the loads.

A good mule cost about forty dollars
and there wasn't even a penny
in their money box.
She told one of her sisters,
Marina, to pray.
There was a knock of the door.
Wonder of wonders!
A man from another town
stood there with exactly forty dollars!
Marina was stunned.
Maria only smiled and said,
"Always, always trust in God.!"

Everyone around the town
soon heard about the new donkey.
He was tricky.
The workmen tried riding him,
the sisters tried riding him,
other men tried riding him,
but each time he bucked.
However, when Maria came near,
he was gentle as a lamb.
She was the one person
who could get on him and stay on.
She knew all his tricks.

Now that the home
for the sisters was completed,
Maria had more happenings on her list:
More girls wanted to help,
More schools had to be opened,
More trips across the mountains,
Preparing teachers,
Being kind to priests and bishops,
Teaching people to pray,
Helping the poor

Day after day
Maria would count her blessings.
She would glow while praising Jesus.
She knew Jesus would be on hand
when she needed Him.
Sometimes big bills had to be paid.
Sometimes there was no soup for dinner.
Sometimes the kitchen cupboards were bare.
Once when the sisters were at the table,
they had no food to eat.
They were very hungry
and they wondered what was going to happen.

Just then, they heard a knock at the door.
All was quiet.
One of the sisters went to the door.
When she came back,
she was carrying a basket,
full of food!
Bread, tomatoes, macaroni, figs,
olives, cheese and beans!
The sisters clapped their hands and sang a song.

But, who had come to the door?
They remembered, Maria had prayed.

One evening Maria
and another Sister went down to the cellar.
Sister was carrying a little lamp,
when, POOF, it blew out!
"Oh, what shall we do?"
asked the sister.
Maria said: "Bring me the lamp."
Surprise! Surprise!
The little lamp lighted up
and the two of them found their way back again.
Jesus can do all things.

One hot summer day, a sister came running to Maria and said:
"There is no water in the well!  All I get is mud!"
Maria said: "Bring me the bucket."  Maria let the bucket down, down, into the well.  Creekity, creek!  Creekity, creek
it went, all the way down.  When Maria pulled up the bucket,
it was full of clear, cool, sparkling water!
From that day on, the well never went dry again.
At another time, when it was winter,
some people across the street saw a man riding a donkey loaded
with something.  The man rode up to the sister’s home
and delivered two big sacks of flour.  When the people looked again, the man and donkey were gone, they had just disappeared.  There were no tracks in the snow,  not even one!
No one knew the man.

Maria had a heart of Gold.
She wanted her sisters
to have hearts of gold, too.
So now, even to this day,
the sisters of her convent wear
a little heart
to remind them to be very kind
and to help other people.
There is a little cross on top of the little heart.
When the sisters look at it
they think about the time
when Jesus died on a cross for all of us.

Time was running out for Maria.
For many years she had gone
up the mountains and down the mountains;
from one town to another town.
Now she was very tired. She was worn out
trying to make Jesus known and loved.
Soon there would be hundreds of her sisters
all around the world.
They would be doing so many things
in so many places....
cooking, baking, sewing, teaching,
taking care of poor people,
and trying to help sick people get well.

Jesus was very pleased with Maria's work.
He wanted to have her in His home in Heaven.
So, one beautiful summer day,
when the earth was blooming with flowers
and the sun was bright and warm,
Jesus called softly, and said:
"Come Maria."