Love for children

Monday, April 28, is the feast day of Blessed Gianna Beretta Molla, who loved her children more than she loved life itself.

She was a very modern mother, born in Milan, Italy, in 1922.  Like so many of our young students here in the Philippines, she was a very active member of Catholic Action.  And she served the old and the needy in the apostolate of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society.

She went to medical school, specializing in surgery.  She received her degree in Medicine in 1949, when she was 27 years old.  During the next year, she opened her own clinic.  In her medical practice she preferred to help mothers and children.  And she continued to reach out to young people as a leader in Catholic Action.

When she was 33, she married an Engineer — Pietro Molla — and had four children during the next seven years.

But, when her fourth baby was only two months in her womb, she underwent surgery for a fibrous tumor in the uterus.  Being a doctor and a surgeon herself, she knew how dangerous this was for the life of the child in her womb.  She asked the surgeon to save her pregnancy.

The surgeon went far out of his way to do this, and the life of the baby in her womb was saved.  But it left her with the possibility of very dangerous complications in childbirth.  She knew this.

A few days before she was to be delivered, she told her doctor:  “Please!. . . .  save the life of my baby!. . . .  Do not even consider aborting my baby, in order to save my life!. . . .  This I beg of you. . . . Save my child!”

On April 21, 1962, Gianna Emanuela was safely born — a beautiful little girl. . . . But seven days later, on April 28, her mother, Gianna Beretta Molla, died.  She went home to God peacefully, willing to give up her own life so that her baby would live.

She was beatified by His Holiness Pope John Paul II. . . .  Present at the beatification was her husband, Engineer Pietro Molla. . . .  And her son, who had become a priest, concelebrated the Mass with the Holy Father. . . .  And Gianna Emanuela, the child whose life she saved, was kneeling there, praying for her mother, in tears.

Emanuela means:  “God is with us.”

Gianna Beretta Molla was only 39 years old when she died.  She did not live long, but she lived well!

The Catholic Church teaches that, if a mother dies giving birth to her child, she goes straight to heaven.  Because “Greater love than this no man hath, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

And when Gianna Beretta Molla stood all alone before the great white throne of God to be judged. . . . .the only criterion of the judgment is: “So long as you have done it for the least of these, my little ones, you have done it for Me!”

In giving life to her child, she was giving her life to God.

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