Transformed by grace

Amalia Frances Rose Streitel, Foundress of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother, aka Sister Angela Streitel:  Sister Angela was strong in the practice of virtue already in the early years of her religious life, as evidenced by the way she handled rejection, misunderstanding, and human heartache, experiences in every person’s life.  As indicated in the last blog entitled “Bitterness transformed into holiness,” through her sufferings she was transformed into the heart of Christ. When her pain was so great that she believed “mind and body would have suffered ruin,” she was still able, through grace, to show love and grace to her fellow Sisters.  “I had a cordial manner, and, in all this, in a house with a hundred persons of every type, with a heart steeped in sorrow….for in the motherhouse no one was regarded with less favour than I….I came to the [Marian] Institute, but what a flood of pain and suffering, of harshness and humiliation followed me” (Ibid.). She tells us in a letter to Bishop Pancratius that her goal, in all of this, was to increase her praying and to draw closer and closer to Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament. What she accomplished at Marian Institute in a few short months revealed the potency of her prayer, the depth of her faith and strength of her trust in God. (Source: Walk in Love, p. 29)