Ofiarniczy charakter życia duchowego Świętej Teresy z Los Andes oraz Błogosławionych Hiacynty i Franciszka Marto

Abstract

Juanita (St. Therese of Jesus of Los Andes) and the Fatima visionaries, Hiacintha and Francis Marto, achieved salvation through their penitential life. The three lived very short lives and died within one year. The paper aims at stressing sacrificial character of their lives and looking for similarities and differences in the selected sphere. The basis for research has been their motivations and external and internal forms of penance. The main motivating factor in the three cases was obedience as a duty to God. Another common feature was love for Jesus and the desire to suffer for Him. In the life of the saint from Chile it was a dominant and extended motivation and in the Fatima children one of the factors that emerged and marked the process of their maturing in faith. This was accompanied by their desire to reform and redeem sinners and fulfil their faults. Both the saint and the blessed stressed soteriological and practical dimension of penance motivated by the love of Jesus, however, they performed it in different ways. They were extremely demanding in breaking their wills for the love of Christ and they did not miss any opportunity to sacrifice themselves. The thesis of the paper is that the spirit of penance was their permanent disposition and an integral part of their daily lives. As for external acts of mortification, both Theresa and the children of Fatima were very spontaneous and inventive, looking for what went far beyond generally accepted forms. All of them paid much attention to mortification of taste, e.g. limitation of food. Their acts of penance had the quality of active asceticism. The analysis above leads to the conclusion that the spirit of penance dominated the lives of St. Theresa and the Blesssed Fatima children. Despite some motivational differences the ‘three little saints’ performed it in a similar way.