By the age of 16 Serafina exhibited the brightness of an intelligence that would penetrate situations and things in all areas of life; she acquired a practical way that would make her qualified to carry out any task.
“Jesus – she said – He taught me to do everything to make myself useful and be able to serve everyone.”
The change in the environment of silence and prayer of the Sanctuary of the Sacred Heart and the noisy school, made her suffer a lot, but she knew how to protect herself from the casualness of human affairs. She was part of this little community of the Sacred Heart begun by Mother Carmela and was involved in it.
Meanwhile a need for a life of silence and prayer became more urgent in Serafina’s heart, a hidden life. She dreamt of joining a Monastery but waited on the Will of God. Mother Carmela urged the involvement of the Bishop Calabretta, to make contact with the Monastery of the Visitation of Acireale in order for a new foundation in Rosolini to become a reality.
On 30 June 1959 the papal decree sealed the new foundation of the Visitation in Rosolini. On the same day Sister Serafina received the religious habit of the Visitation Order, along with Sister Maria Elena. Mother Carmela, retaining her red habit, lived in a room adjacent to the Monastery. The new structure of this foundation engaged in charitable works of charity, as the orphanage and kindergarten, that Mother Carmela had begun. It did not require papal enclosure immediately, but the Sisters endeavored to strive for this goal.
After the death of Mother Carmela in 1968 Sister Serafina was given the mission of the Sanctuary of the Sacred Heart, now that her spirit seemed to have found rest in the seclusion of the monastery so longed for.
She was many, many times a day called out of her silence to listen to the groans of those who flocked to the shrine of the Sacred Heart. All, without exception, simple people and learned, the poor, the sick, the workers, went to the grating of the little parlor where Sister Serafina welcomed them with her sweet, motherly smile.
For her every word had a clear, decisive message of the Sacred Heart, a call to conversion, to holiness. It was not eloquence that captivated the hearts, as the humble Visitandine said only a few words, but a supernatural force that gave authority and that came from a heart that beat in unison with the Heart of Christ.
Grace worked miraculously, but the small Apostle of Divine Mercy had to experience the violent recoil of the enemy of all good things. One morning she obviously understood what had happened: her face was swollen and in pain.
And that same day a new, surprising conversion was to glorify the Merciful Heart of Christ through the humble instrument that had offered the assistance of her sacrifice.
The pilgrimages to the Shrine followed each other almost daily by many areas of eastern Sicily and became more numerous in the months of June and September, two or three per day with an average of eighty devotees each.
Mother Serafina remained for hours pinned to her place of martyrdom, tireless. Finally,she went to unwind in the silence of the chapel for a few minutes, then joined the Community and continued the regular life with the most natural simplicity.
In a small page of her poor yellowed notes we read:
“I keep locked in my heart feelings both for fear of being misunderstood, and to avoid chatter. They are so few souls that are discrete!
I learned this from experience and I decided that the big secrets will be for God alone. With the world it is better to remain silent. Better is God alone.
In May 1976, the Community elected Sister Serafina to assume the role of Mother of the Community.
Nothing escaped her vigilance and her care. She gave an impetus to the work of masonry which had been suspended for lack of means: everything in the house must respond to the dignity and simplicity of God’s house.
Meanwhile, the cross was planted permanently in the life of Mother Serafina. A sharp fall had caused the fracture of the shoulder and arm and had started a problem that would take her to the grave.
She felt the formation of nodules and swelling that foreshadowed the harsh reality. When she was able to go to the hospital for radiological monitoring she already brought with her a suitcase because she understood that she would be back soon.
And they marveled that this was the first case that a patient did self-diagnosis. Histological examination left no doubt, it was a carcinoma.
Since then, the sleepless nights of acute pain were more frequent. The poor Mother could not rest at all, walking in silence; praying; she loved that time because she could “keep company” in Jesus alone and in agony in Gethsemane on the night of betrayal. In the morning she punctually resumed her place of prayer in the choir and was available to “do the will of God.”
During Lent of 1982, something extraordinary introduced her totally to the Passion of Christ. She told with naive simplicity, almost to want to explain and justify the new state of affairs, that she was in the choir for the evening prayer when she saw Jesus, in the guise of ‘”Ecce Homo”, who walked here and there and seemed to be looking for someone. He was wearing the crown of thorns. He approached her, saying: “leave me alone? ” then hugged her bending over her aching head with thorns; Mother felt at that moment that a thorn was sunk in the eye causing her acute pain. Since then, the eye was flushed and tearful, and gradually became fixed in stillness.
The doctors, unaware of these mysteries, diagnosed it as metastases and revealed the serious spread of the disease.
But her time to go Home had come. After only a short while she expired, without disturbance, nor any effort, while the nurse and the new mother whispered a few short prayers to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Standing beside her with her arms to support her was her religious friend, Sister Maria Elena, with whom she had grown up in the shadow of the Sacred Heart, a faithful witness of the humble heroism of her virtues.
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