Blessed Anne Marie Taigi
BLESSED ANNE MARIE TAIGI
Blessed Anne Marie Taigi was born in Siena on May 29, 1769 and baptized the following day. Because of financial difficulties, her parents, Louis Giannetti and Mary Masi, moved to Rome when Anne Marie was six years old.
In the Eternal City, Anne Marie attended the school conducted by the Flippini Sisters for two years. Following her schooling she worked at various occupations, even that of a maid, to bring financial assistance to her parents.
When still a young girl, she married Dominic Taigi, a pious young man but of difficult and rather coarse character. Disregarding these defects, Anne Marie was more concerned with his virtue and for the forty-nine years of their married life she conducted herself with the greatest affability and delicacy, finding ample opportunity to exercise continually the virtues of patience and charity.
Their marriage was characterized by the highest Christian principles. Understanding the profound social and moral values of Christian marriage and considering it, above all, as one of the highest missions from Heaven, Blessed Anne Marie transformed her home into a real sanctuary in which God had the first place. Docile to her husband in every way, she avoided anything which might irritate him and thus disturb the family peace. Serious and hardworking, she saw to it that nothing was lacking to her family and, in so far as one in her impoverished circumstances could, she was generous to the poor.
She bore seven children, three of whom died in childhood. Two boys and two girls grew to maturity and she provided them with the most accurate and complete religious and secular education.
Having sought to correspond to grace from her childhood, she now began to live a life of intense spirituality. She had one desire only: to love God and to serve Him in everything; she had only one preoccupation: to avoid the least shadow of the slightest voluntary imperfection. She was greatly devoted to the Holy Eucharist, to the Most Holy Trinity, to the Infant Jesus, to the Sacred Passion of Our Lord and ever had the tenderest devotion to our Lady.
God enriched her with many supernatural gifts. The most unusual of these was the apparition of a luminous globe like a miniature sun which shone before her eyes and in which, for forty-seven years, she could see present or future events anywhere in the world as well as the state of grace of individuals, living or dead.
She died on June 9, 1837, and was beatified on May 30, 1920. Her body is buried in Rome in the Basilica of San Crisogono.
