Humility is the virtue that most characterized the life of Maria Berenice Duque Hencker, foundress of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Annunciation.
Redaction (30/10/2022 7:45 PM, Gaudium Press) On October 29th in Medellín, Colombia, the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, presided the beatification of the religious foundress of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Annunciation, who lived between the 19th and 20th centuries.
The cardinal, the Pope’s representative at the Mass with the beatification rite, explained in his homily that during the process that brought the nun, born Anna Julia to the honors of the altars, the theological consultants agreed to define her as “humble.”
“This is very important because the foundation of all Christian virtues is humility,” the cardinal continued, “St. Augustine said, ‘Do you want to be high?’ Start with the lowest. If you are thinking of building the high edifice of holiness, first prepare the foundations of humility.”
Originally from Salamina, the Dominican nun founded a new religious family in 1943 to concretely help the most needy in society. And later, she also wanted to establish communities in other countries.
Maria Berenice’s model: the Virgin of the Annunciation
Cardinal Semeraro recalled that Mother Maria Berenice always had “as model the Virgin Mary of the Annunciation,” to whom she dedicated her first religious foundation: the Sisters of the Annunciation. She herself lived her daily life in the essential, considering herself a “little worm”, a “trash”, a “nothing”. The Virgin is an example for us “in feeling small before the greatness of the mission of which she feels invested” in the Archangel Gabriel’s announcement, she remains humble and calls herself “the handmaid of the Lord”.
Mother Maria Berenice searched “day after day, with difficulty, with suffering, overcoming many trials” how to respond to God, amidst contrasts and misunderstandings. But she had the “good example” of Mary, Cardinal Semeraro noted, and also imitated her in charity towards the poor, who “were at the center of her existence, and also so that they could be evangelized, she founded a religious family. The cardinal concluded by stating that the Kingdom of God “begins down here with the little things.”
After the Angelus this Sunday, Pope Francis commented on the new Blessed: May her apostolic zeal, which led her to take the message of Jesus beyond the borders of her country, strengthen in everyone the desire to participate, with prayer and charity, in the spread of the Gospel in the world. Her long life, which ended in 1993, was lived entirely at the service of God and her brothers and sisters, especially the little ones and the excluded.
Compiled by Angelica Vecchiato
