The Life of the Venerable Anna Maria Taigi Book

General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1873 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: 39 CHAPTER IV. Anna Maria's Behaviour As A Wife. Had Anna Maria been free from the ties of marriage, there can be little doubt but that her attraction would have led her to the religious life. What her vocation would have been it would be idle to inquire, for vocation is not a matter of our own taste nor even of our attraction; the attraction being not unfrequently sent where the vocation (which is God's call) does not exist. For vocation is not even fitness (as we understand the word), with which it is often confounded in common parlance. It is God's call -- no more, and no less. To ask, then, what Anna Maria's vocation would have been, had she not been bound by her marriage, is to ask what it would have been if it had been other than it was. For her union with Domenico Taigi bore all the marks of being designed for her by Divine Providence. It was entered into after prayer and with an entire reference to God's will, and she had never, at the time she contracted it, been inwardly moved or drawn to embrace a higher state. God, in fine, we may well believe, purposed to set before the world in this chosen soul an example of the highest degree of sanctity, not only in the married state -- such examples had already been given in all ages of the Church -- but amidst what would be generally regarded as the vul- garest cares and the homeliest surroundings. ' It is sufficient' (says P. Bouffier, one of Anna Maria's biographers) ' to read the decree of the Roman Congregation to feel convinced that this mission was special and altogether providential. God willed to use Anna Maria Taigi as an instrument for...Read More