A soul in accordance with the Heart of Jesus

Throughout history and through an infinite gift of His mercy, God chooses souls to become living receptacles of His love and His graces, making them an extension of His own Person in this world. We can contemplate such graces of intimacy with the Heart of Jesus in the life of Lucilia Corrêa de Oliveira, whose earthly days, in the solitude of a family home, were marked by and showered with torrents of affection from God Himself.

Lucilia was born on April 22, 1876, the first Saturday after the joys of Easter. She was the second of five children of Dr. Antônio Ribeiro dos Santos and Mrs. Gabriela Rodrigues dos Santos, descendents of old lines of São Paulo aristocracy.

It was in her youth that Lucilia received from her father the splendid and pious image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which would play an enormous role in her inner life, accompanying her until her last Sign of the Cross. Through this image, she recognized, admired, and adored the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is always extremely kind, merciful, willing to forgive, but deeply serious!

Lucilia overflowed with affection, but rarely smiled, always showing a hint of the sadness of one who knows the wickedness of men to the depths, and suffers greatly because of it. Hence, her Sacred Heart is surrounded by a crown of thorns and pierced by the spear of Longinus. Through her devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Lucilia developed even more in her soul the desire to do only good. In Him was the source of the enormous affection that overflowed in her relationship with others. It was an affection composed of joy, of hope, which contained, too, a degree of friendship, forgiveness, and kindness so deep-rooted and generous that it would be difficult to conceive of anything to equal it.

Two paths

During long hours of quiet contemplation, interspersed with vocal prayer, an aspiration for religious life was taking shape within Lucilia, with increasingly distinct features. However, above her virtuous propensity for the elevated and the sublime was her robust determination to fulfill God's will, even at the cost of restraining the good impulses of her soul.

She was ready to follow the voice of the Holy Spirit at any moment, no matter how much it cost her, and she was certain that this voice often manifested itself through the advice or orders of her beloved father. Thus, at her father’s suggestion, she married Dr. João Paulo Corrêa de Oliveira, a descendant of an illustrious family from Pernambuco.

The event was celebrated on July 15, 1906, when Dona Lucilia was 30 years old. On the eve of that day, she had received her First Communion in the company of her fiancé. The Lord blessed Lucilia's home with the splendid gift of two children: Rosenda, who was born in 1907, and Plinio, who came into the world in 1908. From then on, the mother's life would merge materially with that of her two beloved children.

The marriage

The children were educated for social life and were meticulous in their behavior. Dona Lucilia instilled in them, at the same time, the deepest Christian courtesy and compassion and desire to help the needy. When it came to fulfilling their duties, her attitude was inflexible, yet it was also full of gentleness and sweetness. She insisted, above all, on their religious education, centered mainly on charity and love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Immaculate Virgin, and the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

Countless were the sufferings, afflictions, and pains that pierced the soul of this noble lady, especially during the struggles her son fought on behalf of the Holy Church. Despite all her trials, abandonment, and loneliness, however, she knew how to face these difficulties with serenity and peace of mind, characteristics proper to the Catholic spirit.

A sunset full of light

As Dona Lucilia approached eternity, her thoughts, her gestures, and her way of being increasingly resembled those of her Good Jesus.

From her understanding of the infinite goodness of the Heart of Jesus towards mankind and, above all, from the deep love she devoted to Him, Dona Lucilia left us a new conception of life: “To live is to be together, to look at each other and to wish each other well;” a beautiful and luminous phrase that invites all those who encounter it to enter this Divine Paradise that is the Heart of God Himself, thus inaugurating a new Historical Era!

On April 21, 1968, God wished to call this soul so dear to His Heart to Himself. Lucilia’s countenance revealed the gentleness of a pure soul and the peace of mind and the joy of a duty fulfilled: characteristics of one who has made every sacrifice. She radiated the lofty unpretentiousness of one who has sacrificed herself entirely. On this occasion, to express in words the indescribable love that united mother and son, Dr. Plinio commented, “She was truly a Catholic lady... No one can imagine the good she did for me... I studied her beautiful soul with constant attention, and that is why I loved her. To such an extent that, if she were not my mother, but someone else's mother, I would love her just the same, and I would find a way to live with her. My mother taught me to love Our Lord Jesus Christ, she taught me to love the Holy Catholic Church.”

An example to the faithful

In this twilight of Christian civilization in which we live, in which all values are crumbling—even those most deeply rooted in the human soul, such as maternal affection—what was Providence's intention in raising up this chosen soul?

Our Lord Jesus Christ, when He opened His human eyes to this earth, wanted to gaze upon something that was the summary of all the wonders of the universe: the gaze of Our Lady. From the top of the Cross, as He bid farewell to this life, His gaze met Hers once again. The love of the Blessed Virgin was greater, without comparison, than the hatred of those who perpetrated the deicide.

Jesus, at His birth and at His death, wanted to receive from His Blessed Mother manifestations of maternal affection, thereby indicating the role that this should play in the formation of men. Between one gaze and another, what a magnificent connection! What an incomparable inference!

Starting with Our Lady, Catholic mothers—given the unfathomable proportions that separated that One from the others—began to have the calling to mirror in some way this sublime love of the Mother of mothers: love of God and love of neighbor, that is, charity.

To make the sublime maternal love of the Mother of God shine even today...wouldn't this be the intention of Providence, in arousing in so many good souls a healthy curiosity to know this Catholic and exemplary mother, Dona Lucilia? Would it not please the Heart of Jesus that this chosen soul was an archetypal model of a whole way of being, of a whole spirit, of the whole balance of the Kingdom of his Most Holy Mother?

In fact, she was one of those people whose existence helps us better understand the passionate words of St. Paul in his first Epistle to the Corinthians:

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

“Love never ends.”

(1Cor 13: 4-8).