Sister Leonella, Consolatine Woman - WORDS to Consolata

A filial, tender, and profound love for the Consolata was the characteristic of St Joseph Allamano, Founder of the Consolata Missionaries. During his forty-six years as Rector of the Shrine of Turin, he learned to love Our Lady Consolata as a true mother to whom he entrusted not only his life but also all his projects and desires for good. It was natural that he entrusted to her the founding of the two missionary institutes, which he named Consolata. Because of this, Blessed Leonella Sgorbati, as a most devoted daughter of Allamano, could not help but have an equally great and authentic love for the Consolata.

For her, the Consolata was first and foremost a mother to whom she confided her deepest desire to belong entirely to the Lord; finding in her the model for achieving total belonging to her spouse for the coming of the Kingdom.

The Consolata was also the mother of consolation, a concrete presence in which everyone, especially those most in need, could find a listening ear and solace in their suffering. She reminded her Sisters, gazing at the icon of the Consolata, that the Founder had given his daughters three important tasks: “to be the face and heart of the mother,” and the “mission” of bringing consolation, Jesus, the Father’s Love, to those who had never known Him.“

For Sister Leonella, the Consolata is the most tender mother, to whom she addresses her confident prayer:

“Most tender Mother, teach me that beautiful dance of giving everything to you and letting myself be guided by the arms of your Son in the steps He shows me” (Blessed Leonella Sgorbati, diary II, 2006).

The Consolata is also the mediatrix and most humble mother, whom Leonella, in deep contemplation, admired as she embraced her dead Son. And turning to her she said:

“My Mother, your embrace holds the world’s Redemption itself close to your breast. Mother, her lacerated body becomes one with yours in a union of ardent love, of pain, of total self-giving. My Mother, your lips rest on that most pure forehead… All the sufferings of human sin, of anguish, of loneliness grip your being… unification with the Son” (Blessed Leonella Sgorbati, diary I, 1995).

In her journey with Mary Consolata, Sr Leonella learned that faithfulness to God is the total gift of self, a gift without return, because what is given becomes the property of the recipient of the gift. Sr Leonella found in this affirmation the confirmation that the exercise of belonging was a surrender without return in Mary’s “yes.” In meditating on the “yes” of the Annunciation and the “yes” of surrender beneath the cross, she found the deepest meaning of her self-giving.

Finally, Consolata is for Sr Leonella the model of life to follow.

Contemplating the most beautiful moments of Consolata’s life, our blessed, as a daughter attentive to her mother’s teachings, learns to shape her life in such a way as to achieve perfect union with the Lord and, at the same time, participation in his Passion.

Even though this participation would have led her to suffer and give her life for the love of Jesus, she did not turn back because she knew that such union with Christ generated love, salvation, and redemption.

by Sr. Gloria Elena Lopez, mc