One cannot be devoted to the Holy Wounds of Our Lord Jesus Christ without acknowledging the role played by a Visitation nun of Chambery, France, Venerable Mary Martha Chambon, in the renewal of this devotion.
This humble and illiterate lay Sister was mystically commissioned by Jesus during her lifetime (1841-1907) to renew our attention and reverence of the Sacred Marks of His Passion, and she wholeheartedly complied, even as she served her cloistered community as refectorian in the boarding school of the Monastery, gardener and sacristan.
Drawn to a deep contemplation of the Lord’s Wounds, she lived an intense prayer life; during the Holy Mass she could be especially immersed in God. She passed into eternity after 66 years of life.
The following promise typifies her prayer life and mission:
Oct. 17, 1867
“I, Sr. Mary Martha Chambon, promise our Lord Jesus Christ to offer myself every morning to God the Father in union with the divine wounds of Jesus crucified, for the salvation of the entire world and for the well being and protection of my community. I will adore him in all hearts which receive him in Communion. I will thank him for deigning to come to so many hearts which are so little prepared. I promise Our Lord, with the help of His grace and in the spirit of obedience, to offer every ten minutes, the divine wounds of his sacred Body to the Eternal Father, to unite all my actions to his Sacred Wounds according to the intentions of His Sacred Heart for the triumph of holy Church, for sinners and the souls in purgatory, for all the needs of my community, those of the novitiate, the school and in expiation for all the faults committed there.”
An invocation followed: Eternal Father, I offer thee the wounds of our Lord Jesus Christ, to heal those of our souls. My Jesus, pardon and mercy through the merits of thy Sacred Wounds.”
(To be continued)