Title: Unwavering Love
Sub Title: Mother Clelia Merloni
Author: Domenico Agasso jr
Publisher: Effatà Editrice
Date of publication: 2018
Unwavering Love: the title of this book reveals a great woman’s tenacious love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Congrega-tion for which she gave her life. She was a woman who did not measure the generosity of her complete self-offering for a noble cause, as she herself wrote in her diary: “we offer everything to Him to find everything in Him.” To live one’s life for a noble ideal is the most beautiful adventure of love that a human being can experience on this earth.
Mother Clelia left us an attractive example of this adventure. Indeed, by looking at the example of her life, many other young women had the courage to become Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, abandoning all human plans, all affection, all material goods and all opportunities for an autonomous life, in order to become a gift to God for the good of others and, in the footsteps of Mother Clelia, to sow love on the streets of the world like the first Apostles had done in following Jesus!
It is beautiful to feel called and involved in this plan of love that God had dreamed for Clelia and to help other young people to know, love, follow and serve the Lord as Clelia did. Jesus asks Clelia to be an Apostle of his Heart, as he did with the Apostles, his closest friends. He asked her to share his public life; to spend her life on the streets of today “from Galilee to Jerusalem.”
Jesus did not spare her the Road to Calvary, but he made her able to walk it with patience and with a generous heart, transforming it into a via amoris (a way of love).
Only those with a free heart and an immeasurable trust in Providence are capable of completely abandoning their own personal plans in order to welcome God’s plan for their lives. Throughout her life, Clelia tried to identify herself in everything with the Master Teacher and to mold herself to his sacred will, without keeping even the smallest part for herself. She was a giant in her faith and in her trusting surrender!
When she was young, Clelia did not behave like the rich young man in the Gospel who did not have the courage to sell everything he owned, to give it to the poor and to follow Jesus. The only daughter of Gioacchino Merloni, a rich businessman in Sanremo, she had been brought up as a princess under the care of her father who wanted to prepare her for a brilliant future. He wanted her to have a refined, intellectual education, to study French and English, to have special lessons in piano and embroidery in gold. She had beautiful clothes, she traveled, and young men courted her. Yet, she considered all these things to be a waste, when compared to her love for Christ. She gave everything up to follow her heavenly Spouse who was calling her to a divine ideal: to love Jesus with all her heart, all her soul, and her entire being, without exception. Her only desire was to follow Jesus closely, like the first Apostles John, Peter, James, Andrew…!!
She advised her spiritual daughters: “Let us learn to be Apos-tles not just in name, but according to the spirit of the Apos-tles… By wearing the habit of the Apostles, you assume its obli-gations and you must therefore have a love without reserve for Jesus. And you, oh daughters, know that love consists in sacrifice and in virtue. Be generous and the Sacred Heart will reward you for your suffering, in ways beyond your imagination. Always act with integrity, under the gaze of God, forgetting yourself, in order to help those who suffer. Be patient with those who distress you, and bear in silence all the suffering that you may feel in your heart, your spirit and your body” (Large Manuscript 1, p. 120 and Large Manuscript II, pp. 159-160).
The main desire of Mother Clelia was to “zealously work for the glory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, spreading this devotion and trying to make reparation for the insults that he receives from sinners, especially members of the Freemason sects and from Apostate priests” (Large Manuscript 1). She offered herself as a “victim on the altar” for the conversion of her father and sinners.
In the Manuscript Rules, under the heading “Directory”, she wrote the following: “The Apostle Sisters will offer to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus all the works of charity which they will carry out in obedience.” She then listed the works, high-lighting the mission with migrants, especially Italian migrants, who went abroad seeking a new life and who needed material and spiritual assistance. She also made room in the mission for migrants of other nationalities.
In Castelnuovo Fogliani, at the request of the Bishop of Piacenza, Bishop Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, Mother Clelia revised the Manuscript Rules in order to receive Diocesan approval of the Institute. She also modified the title to “Apostle Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.” Scalabrini himself approved the Constitutions. Both events occurred on June 10, 1900.
Mother Clelia was an emancipated woman for her times. She was forward-thinking, always looking towards the future. She lived her life between the end of the 1800s and the early 1900s, in a male-dominated society in which women were underestimated. Yet, through her concrete actions, she tried to make people see that women had a dignity that needed to be reclaimed, and thus, she spurred the Sisters to be well trained, so that they could educate women who would be free, autonomous and capable of creating good families and finding meaningful employment in society. She paid special attention to poor and ignorant women who had no intellectual training because she knew that they were seen as being the most fragile and vulner-able members of society, and thus were exploited for it.
The first works that she began manifested this concern. From the very beginning of her Apostolate, she welcomed not only orphan girls, poor girls in need of formation, and sick and marginalized elderly women, but also “derelict” girls that she found on the street who needed special care to begin a new life. Among the witness statements in the Positio, there is one by Sister Eletta Celi, in which she recalls a young prostitute that Clelia had welcomed. She found a job for her and taught her Christian doctrine, helping her to recover the dignity she had lost as a result of her extreme poverty and the lack of a decent job with which to support herself.
Mother Clelia’s heart was always attentive to the weakest, the poorest and the neediest. She embraced the corporal and spiri-tual works of mercy as a mission, and without considering their social condition, she looked at each person with a tender glance of love, helping them with their human, material, intellectual and spiritual needs.
She was a refined teacher and she dedicated herself person-ally to the formation of the Sisters and the young women by teaching music, piano, embroidery and Christian doctrine. She saw education as a work of charity and she taught the Sisters to treat everyone with kindness and firmness, in order to form strong, and at the same time, tender personalities.
The author of this book, Domenico Agasso, has captured well Mother’s personal life and has developed it with great knowledge. I thank him for this good work which will help us to know, in greater depth, the varied colors and sizes of the tiles that make up the “mosaic” of the life of this strong, willful and steadfast woman, Clelia Merloni. With all her strength, this courageous Foundress carried out this mission of love which the Lord slowly revealed to her through the events of her human and spiritual life in the silent daily moments of her existence.
Mother Miriam Cunha Sobrinha
Superior General
