Expand your heart to hope with Mother Morano

Rome (Italy). On 15 November 2024, occurs the liturgical memory of Blessed Maddalena Caterina Morano (1847-1908), Daughter of Mary Help of Christians of Piedmontese origin, called to accomplish her service in Sicily, where she gave a great impulse to the educative and pastoral works of the FMA Institute.

On the 30^th anniversary of her Beatification, which took place on 5 November 1994 in Catania, and just over a month after the opening of the Ordinary Jubilee 2025, Mother Morano today would suggest that we live this great event of the Church with the phrase that she often repeated and that thirty years ago accompanied the celebrations for her beatification: “expand your heart to hope”.

Which hope? The one that has its roots in Heaven, but is experienced on earth. The one that gives us the courage to dream, enthusiasm, and initiative to reach as many young people as possible. It allows us to open new road; it is joy in welcoming and accompanying new vocations.

For her, as for every FMA and educator, it is the certainty of being held by the hand and supported by God on our earthly journey, with the great goal of Paradise, even when the road is tortuous and rugged. It is a theological virtue and is rooted in the certainty of being in the hands of a good and almighty Father, who allows suffering, but does not abandon us. Hope is manifested through a positive outlook on life and people.

Mother Morano, in the footsteps of Don Bosco, suggests the recipe to make it possible: live with eyes on Heaven, feet on the ground, and hands at work.

Eyes on Heaven: is the faith and love that envelops each one and makes us ‘see’ the source, the strength, and the goal of earthly existence. Without this faith, there cannot be hope. Eyes on heaven, to the God who created each one and entrusts a mission; to the God who wants all to be saints; to the God who will welcome each one in His embrace forever.

Feet on the ground: is healthy Salesian realism. Deep faith illuminates reality in its consistency. If a situation is difficult, one must know how to say it and look for ways of dealing with it and overcoming it or integrating it. For Sister Maddalena Morano to go from Piedmont to Sicily must not have been easy. It was certainly not easy to enculturate herself and change relationship styles and educative methodologies, making them her own in order to enter into the heart of the people.

Hands at work: is the well-regulated but intense activity at the service of education, in guarding the spirit of the Charism in catechesis. Maddalena Morano starts with the oratory, but immediately after she opens schools. She knows that culture is a privileged way to get women out of the inferior condition in which they find themselves.

She begins with catechism for the girls, but then opens it to boys as well, in a kind of mirror response to that of Don Bosco in the Foundation of the FMA Institute. Our Lady had said to him, “the girls are my daughters too”. Mother Morano felt in her heart the call that “the boys are my sons too” and thus she opens the catechism, although in different places and times, to the boys of Alì Terme, Catania, Vizzini, where the boys had come to throw stones against the door of the FMA house to make themselves be welcomed.

Hands at work: The presence in Bronte, Trecastagni, Alì terme, Catania is not enough. Mother Morano looks around, listens – with her heart, before than with her ears – to the educative needs. She travels and always builds new houses in all areas of the island, even those most distant from its see; there are 18 at her death. She knows how to get help, but she does not stop until the eve of her death. And Mary Help of Christians is the beacon in all her seeking for what God wants.

After many moves, she finds in Catania the first real home for the boarding school, in front of the church of Saint Mary of Help. And she does not stop there. The place is too small to accommodate all the young women that Our Lady sends her. She looks for a larger space, capable of becoming home for hundreds of them and she finds it!

Following the example of Blessed Maddalena Morano, every FMA should ask herself what it means for her, for her people, for the mission she carries out, to open their heart to hope, to live with their heart in Heaven, feet on the ground, and hands at work.

Each one is called to find concrete guidelines that, step by step, affect the life of the Educating Communities and put more and more decisively on the paths of Salesian holiness, on the path traced by the Blesseds, Venerables, Servants of God of the FMA Institute, by so many Sisters whose cause for beatification may never be opened, but who are already saints.

It is the path that must always be traced anew by each one with her own personal characteristics, with the uniqueness of her call within the Institute, with the expectations and deep needs of the place where she lives and works.