Blessed James Alberione

Opera Omnia

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SOME WORDS OF INTRODUCTION

1. - These words of Msgr. Mermillod1 addressed to women and young ladies had a singular impression on me: You have a mission to accomplish in the world: a family to lead, society to build, the Church to serve and to console. You have to be apostles.2 Meditating on them, I deeply felt the truth: and I tried to pour some of my persuasion in these pages in order to communicate it to the priest and to women.
2. - Two thoughts are dominant in the entire book. God created woman in order not only to be of material help3 but especially of moral help to man. It is a help that she alone can render on condition that she is sincerely religious, virtuous in practice. Under this aspect everyone sees that woman comes to cooperate with the priest in his noble mission. From here follows, a duty, so obvious, as much as serious on the part of the clergy: to form woman to a high level of virtue, to an ardent zeal, in conformity with today's needs: to lead her in an enlightened, prudent, constant work, for the moral-religious welfare of the family and of society.
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3. - In order to be more clear, I had to distribute the material into three parts:
A) Woman can and must be of moral and religious help to man. This comports that woman places herself alongside the priest's mission in order to cooperate in it according to the times, the circumstances, her gender. Frassinetti4 says: This time, single ladies are called by Providence to a quasi-priesthood, to a true apostolate...
B) Woman's area of work. Here I made a draft of the multiplicity of the activities that await the delicate and fruitful zeal of woman: at home and outside the home, in private and in public, as a free woman (that is, not in organization) and as woman in organization.
C) Lastly, I spoke about the task that belongs to the clergy: to train woman for the whole of her mission, prudently guiding her, thereby making an apostle of her.
It presses on me, however, to say: I do not do other than propose an outline of a great study that has to be done better by others and I pray the Lord that he raises soon one who does it. To gain much of it is God's glory and of souls!
4. - While writing I had as aim what is useful, hence I flew over what is already known and practiced, while I stopped more at length on what is important that we know today; I did not believe removing some
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repetitions because, it seemed to me, they would pour out better my thought; I did not study much the style and language: I referred to many works to confront, especially at the last part. I am profoundly persuaded of the zealousness that animates our clergy: they shall know how to see deepl through its uncultured form in order to find in it the practical means thereby benefiting souls.
5. - I entrust this book to Jesus master and model of priests: to Mary most holy, the loftiest ideal of the mission of woman and counselor of apostolic zeal: to the Guardian Angels of the venerable readers and mine: to the goodness and benign sympathy of my Confreres, from whom I shall receive with all the liveliest gratitude whatever observation.
Alba, (Feast of Mary Immaculate) 1914.

The AUTHOR


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1 Mermillod Gaspard, Swiss cardinal, was born in Carouge, in the diocese of Geneva on 22 September 1824, and died in Rome on 23 February 1892. He had sensed the importance of social issues and advanced with words and with writings that they have to be resolved with the help of religion.

2 In DA we have apostoli (masc) (apostles) instead of apostole (fem).

3 Alberione often speaks on the concept of woman as help to man: cf. DA 9-10; 24; 32; 40; 45; 47; 61; 64; 68; 97; 98; 118; 160; 192; 194; 198; 289; 339, where he expresses the usual manner of thinking in his environment.

4 Cf. also DA 70; 91; 110; 184; 187; 216; 225; 228; 287; 323. This priest from Genoa has influenced Fr. Alberione in delineating the kind of pastoral and spirituality of a parish priest. Born in Genoa on 15 December 1894 and died there on 2 January 1868, Giuseppe Frassinetti was the elder brother of blessed Paola Frassinetti (Genova, 3 March 1809 - Roma, 11 June 1882), foundress of the Sisters of St. Dorothy. Ordained priest in 1827 and designated prior-parish priest of Santa Sabina in Genoa in 1839, Giuseppe founded the “Pia unione dei Figli di Santa Maria Immacolata” (Pious Union of the Sons of Holy Mary Immaculate (not the Sons of Mary Immaculate started instead in Brescia in 1849 by Lodovico Pavoni). He published no less than a hundred books, often addressed to persons who could not be parts of real religious congregations while desiring to undertake an apostolate. To these he suggested that they dedicated themselves to the apostolate in the parish, in association with the parish priest.