Some dates to remember, raising praise to God for the great gift that He has given to the Association:

November 30, 1989, feast of St. Andrew the Apostle, Archbishop Mons. Giuseppe Carafa, at 6:00 p.m., for the first time celebrated the Holy Mass in the chapel of the Association. It was not yet restored, but it was equipped with everything, starting from the altar down to the smallest detail to make perfect and solemn the divine moment.

It was a time of great emotion. As Jesus chose a shed to come to daylight, so He chose a small and poor abode to spread the truths of the Divine Will.

Finally, after the Mass, there was the permanent reposition of the Blessed Sacrament in the Tabernacle. In that occasion, His Excellency, addressing the faithful, said:

 “Now I leave you in good hands. Listen to Him and love Him as Luisa did. Now in this house there are two altars:  one on which the Eucharist is celebrated , the other is the bed of Luisa, on which she consumed her life, only  for God”.

The participation in the Holy Eucharist was quiet and full of faith despite the narrowness of the place.

There was a large participation including the civil and religious authorities, such as the vicar of the place, Don Luca Masciavè, and other priests.

Twenty-seven years later, the Association Luisa Piccarreta remembers that day with a day of prayer and Eucharistic adoration with praise and thanksgiving to the Lord.

Since that day, many hours of spirituality and Eucharistic days follow one another to feed the Eucharistic life that is the basis of the Christian life.

The chapel of the Association Luisa Piccarreta is the divine roof of the room where the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta lived and is the first stage for the pilgrims who come from all over the world and for hours of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.

Here is the homily of His Exc. Mgr. Charter during the Eucharistic Celebration:

“This little chapel, with the presence of Eucharist Jesus, of the Holy Immaculate Virgin, of Luisa “the Saint”, with all the sacred furnishings today becomes the heart of your beloved Association” Luisa Piccarreta “.

It’s the heart because there is Eucharistic Jesus, but upstairs   there is another church, another altar that is the bed on which the image of Luisa is placed.

It is the whole house now that has become a church, and the whole house has become an altar.

And, so, this is the strength that should support you, that should to encourage you to continue. Of course, the difficulties will not fail, there will always be the difficulties because we are on earth, but the Lord has to win …

Truly this chapel will be for you as Mount Zion, as Tabor, where the Lord is always there to give you consolations and graces …

But the most holy chapel that we want to remember tonight is Luisa’s  beatification. It will be the true Church. This is a beginning, a premise, a wish and as you have prepared so far and have conquered and overcome many obstacles, so the Lord will give you the grace to see the realization of the other Church, that is Luisa’s beatification and in her name I give to you, now, the holy blessing …

Now I want to tell you some memories that were within me, and now I see them in the unified plan of God.

I was 18-19 years old, around 1933-1934 ,  in  the Seminary of Molfetta, where I remained for thirty-five years. I had as prefect of the dormitory Don Ciccio Tattoli (Founder and parish priest of the Church Sacra Famiglia in Corato,) and as spiritual director Msgr. Luigi Doria (he later became Vicar General of the Diocese of Trani and Rector of the Mother Church in Corato) who not only in external forms but also in the private and personal conversations spoke of Luisa, as a privileged victim soul

I knew well Don Michele Marcone, Don Luigi Mintrone who were older than me, but we were always together.

But what I remember correctly were the inspired words of Msgr. Doria who remembered Luisa, he evidently had contact with her.

So here is the plan of God who sows, sows, the years pass and then His plans are realized

Certainly, they too will be, together with her, in Heaven because they have done so much good not only to me but to all seminarians who, then, were  four hundred in Molfetta. These ones , then, have become priests and wherever they are in Puglia, they know that there is Corato, that there is Luisa, they entrust  her, praying for her beatification. “

Sr. Assunta

The first Sunday of Advent, the Church begins a new Liturgical Year, a new journey of faith that on the one hand commemorates the event of Jesus Christ and, on the other, opens to its ultimate fulfillment. It is precisely in this double perspective that she lives the Season of Advent, looking both to the first coming of the Son of God, when He was born of the Virgin Mary, and to His glorious return, when He will come “to judge the living and the dead”, as we say in the Creed.

For Christians the word  Advent means a marvelous and overwhelming reality: God Himself has crossed the threshold of His heaven and has lowered Himself to man;

Jesus said to Luisa that God’s love for humanity was so much, that the Heavens abased themselves and the earth elevated itself, if the Heavens didn’t abase themselves, the earth had no virtue to elevated itself, it was the Heaven of the Supreme Being, that taken by an excess of love, the greatest not ever heard of, abased Himself, kissed the earth elevating it to Himself and formed for Himself the attire of Jesus’ Humanity in order to cover Himself, hide Himself, unite Himself together, in order to have common life with Her, and forming not only one excess of love but a chain of continuous excesses, He restricted God’s immensity in the little circle of Jesus’ Humanity; for Him the power, the immensity, the strength was nature, and to use it would not have cost Him anything, that which cost Him was that in His Humanity He had to restrict His immensity, and remain as if He might not have either power, nor strength, while they were already with Him and inseparable from Him, and He had to adapt Himself to the little acts of His Humanity, and only for love, not because He couldn’t. Hence He descended in all the human acts in order to elevate them and give the form and the divine order to Him. Man with doing his will destroyed in himself the way and the divine order, and Jesus’ Divinity covered by His Humanity, came to re-do everything man had destroyed; can one give greater love, toward a creature so ungrateful?”

Advent is the time of waiting and of the presence of the Lord. It is precisely for this reason in particular, it’s the time of joy, a joy that no suffering can erase.

Expectation or waiting is a dimension that flows through our whole personal, family and social existence. Expectation is present in thousands of situations, from the smallest and most banal to the most important that involve us completely and in our depths. Among these, let us think of waiting for a child, on the part of a husband and wife; of waiting for a relative or friend who is coming from far away to visit us; let us think, for a young person, of waiting to know his results in a crucially important examination or of the outcome of a job interview; in emotional relationships, of waiting to meet the beloved, of waiting for the answer to a letter, or for the acceptance of forgiveness…. One could say that man is alive as long as he waits, as long as hope is alive in his heart. And from his expectations man recognizes himself: our moral and spiritual “stature” can be measured by what we wait for, by what we hope for.

Every one of us, therefore, especially in this Season which prepares us for Christmas, can ask himself: What am I waiting for? What, at this moment of my life, does my heart long for? And this same question can be posed at the level of the family, of the community, of the nation. What are we waiting for together? What unites our aspirations, what brings them together? In the time before Jesus’ birth the expectation of the Messiah was very strong in Israel – that is, the expectation of an Anointed one, a descendent of King David, who would at last set the people free from every form of moral and political slavery and find the Kingdom of God. But no one would ever have imagined that the Messiah could be born of a humble girl like Mary, the betrothed of a righteous man, Joseph. Nor would she have ever thought of it, and yet in her heart the expectation of the Savior was so great, her faith and hope were so ardent, that he was able to find in her a worthy mother. Moreover, God himself had prepared her before time.

The Blessed Virgin Mary is our model and support, through her, the little Jesus was given to us. Advent calls us, in the midst of the difficulties of life and the world, to renew the certainty that God exists, that He came into the world to be our true Savior, the powerful Savior who saves us with His love. The Lord asks us to become a sign of His action in the world. Through our faith, our hope, our charity, He wants to enter the world again and again wants to shine His light into our darkness.

don Marco

http://www.luisapiccarretaofficial.org/gospels/first-sunday-of-advent/44