Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi

Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi was a Carmelite nun of Florence and a mystic. Her sisters wrote down the words she spoke in ecstasy, and she herself prayed and suffered for the renewal of the Church. The Church commemorates her on May 25, the day of her death.

She was born on April 2, 1566, in Florence, into the distinguished Pazzi family, and at baptism received the name Catherine. As a girl she was sent to be educated at the convent of the sisters of the Order of Malta, where she made her First Communion on March 25, 1576. A few days later she promised her virginity to God. At home she grew in the life of prayer with the help of the Jesuit fathers.

In December 1582, at the age of sixteen, she entered the Carmelite monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence. On January 30, 1583, she received the habit and the name Mary Magdalene. In March 1584 she fell gravely ill and asked to be admitted to profession early. On May 27 of that year, the solemnity of the Holy Trinity, she was carried into the choir on a bed and made her vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience.

From then on she experienced many ecstasies, and her sisters recorded her words in five manuscripts. In 1585, over eight days from the vigil of Pentecost to the solemnity of the Holy Trinity, the nineteen-year-old nun spoke in rapture of the whole work of salvation. Then came five years of severe inner trial: she lost the felt consolation of grace and struggled with many temptations.

During this trial, in the summer of 1586, she came to know in the light of grace the true state of the Church after the Council of Trent. In ecstasy she dictated twelve letters to Pope Sixtus V, to cardinals, to the archbishop of Florence, and to other churchmen, calling for the renewal of the Church, beginning with the clergy and religious. The letters were probably never sent. When the trial ended at Pentecost 1590, she devoted herself to serving her community, especially to the formation of novices. She called her sisters with the cry “Venite ad amare l’Amore!” which means “Come and love Love!”

The last three years of her life were marked by tuberculosis. She gradually withdrew from the life of the community and bore great sufferings of body and spirit, offering them out of love for God. She died on Friday, May 25, 1607, at about three in the afternoon, at the age of 41.

Less than twenty years later, in 1626, Pope Urban VIII, himself a native of Florence, declared her blessed, and on April 28, 1669, Clement IX enrolled her among the saints. Her body has remained incorrupt and rests in the monastery that bears her name in the Careggi district of Florence. The monastery in which she lived now houses the seminary of the Archdiocese of Florence, which venerates her as its patroness.