St.
Gianna Molla:
Role Model for Mothers, Wives, Professionals
By
Marcy Stenstrom
We’re all supposed to dig a little deeper during lent to improve
ourselves through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. This year I decided that my
morning prayer ritual needs improvement. I’m learning some new prayers
including the prayer of St. Gertrude the Great so that I’m not only praying
for myself and my family but others as well. The second idea that I’ve worked
on occurred when Father told me that I
needed to learn more about the Saints. I admit that my history of Saints’
knowledge is very poor but the problem is that I’m not really interested in
the lives of Saints. Or so I thought.
Last
year, I made an effort and tried to find something short about a Saint I might
have an interest in but our public library was a let down. I’m sure that our
parish library and adoration chapel have something of interest but last year my
inspiration actually came from a painting. My husband and I visited the Shrine
of Our Lady of Guadalupe in LaCrosse last summer and in the Shrine’s church
are larger-than-life works of art depicting various Saints. The one that drew my
attention and amazement was a beautiful oil painting of St. Gianna Molla, a
modern doctor, wife, and mother. At the gift shop I bought the biographical book
about her life and Sainthood, “Saint Gianna Molla” by Pietro Molla and Elio
Guerriero.
Born in
Italy in 1922, Gianna was raised in a Catholic family and like most of us,
received the rites of the sacraments at the appropriate times in her life. She
continued higher education and received a degree in medicine and surgery in 1949
and a degree as a pediatric specialist in 1952. She met her husband, Pietro in
1954 and they were married a year later. Gianna died in 1962 one week after
giving birth to her fourth child. She was diagnosed with a uterine tumor when
she was two months pregnant yet refused to terminate the pregnancy for
treatment. She sacrificed her own health and life so that the baby would live.
The biography is written in three parts. The first
two are authored by Elio Guerriero who talks about Gianna’s and her
husband’s backgrounds and family histories. The second part is done in interview fashion with
questions from Guerriero and answers from Pietro. The third part is by Pietro
which reveals his reflections of Gianna as his wife, a pediatric doctor and a
mother. The book also describes her canonization process, quotes from Pope John
Paul II in regards to Gianna’s life and sacrifice, and excerpts of prayer,
religion and personal thoughts from Gianna’s journals.
After reading about her life, I felt like I could relate to her: the
yearning for a vocation, the call to wife and motherhood, using your God-given
skills to the best of your ability, making a sacrifice for another. I think we
can all relate to these phases in our lives. St. Gianna, as someone rather
ordinary, gives me courage and hope that someone like me has a humble calling
from God and my pursuit of Him takes many avenues of which I must continue to be
persistent like she was and face whatever I am up against with courage and
sacrifice. I have also learned that Saints are role models and provide us with
inspiration. We merely need to find
ones that speak to us and offer us insight to get through our challenges of
today. (To learn more about St.Gianna, see the website www.saintgianna.org.)