Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi

Caterina de' Pazzi at the age of sixteen

Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi, OCarm (In Italian: Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi; born Caterina Lucrezia de' Pazzi; 2 April 1566 – 25 May 1607), was an Italian Carmelite nun and mystic. She has been declared a saint by the Catholic Church.

Detti e sentenze memorabili

Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, Detti e sentenze memorabili, traduzione dal francese di Padre Giuseppe Fozi della Compagnia di Gesù, 1669 (in Italian)

General sentences and sayings taken from her Life and writings, useful to all, but particularly to religious people

• One must have envy of the land of Calvary wet, and soaked by the Blood of Jesus Christ.
• And you must not go, but run; you must not run, but fly perfectly.
• The cursed human respect is a hungry wolf, an enraged lion, who devours himself and swallows most good works.
• Dying to oneself and losing oneself in God is a sure commitment to eternity.
• Imagine that everything you do is the last act of your life, decisive in an eternity of good or an eternity of evil.
• Religion is an earthly paradise in which the soul unites with God more closely, participates more abundantly in the treasures of the Church, enjoys a very sweet peace that divinely embalms it and makes it become a small deity on earth.
• When the priests live badly, the sun eclipses and the light turns to darkness, filling everything with disorder.

Sayings and sentences useful for those entering religion

• You must enter religion with the purest intention, and not be dragged into it by force or by fine and worldly interest.
• The eyes of the religious person are closed and clenched to all things of the earth and open to those of heaven so as not to see that Jesus Christ.
• Religion is a traffic and a shop: you earn a hundred for one when you know how to handle its talent.
• Religion purges, illuminates and perfects all internal and external man.
• The vocation to religion is the greatest gratia that God can give to his elect after baptism.
• Or how much better it would be to stay in the century, than to damn oneself in religion.

Sayings and sentences regarding the three religious vows

• Chastity is a rose, which blossoms only in closed gardens and among thorns.
• Religious poverty is little known and also less observed.
• Evangelical poverty not only commands one to leave, but to give as much as one has.
• The truth is indeed pure that if one were to admit a mixture of other things she would no longer be truth.

Quotes about

• She declared herself ready to offer «a thousand times a day» her life, and to renounce Heaven, if she could save even a single soul with this, [...] she said of herself that she would like «to melt all in water to wash all the hearts».

• Hans Urs von Balthasar, quoted in Sperare per tutti (translation by Maria and Luigi Frattini), with the addition of Breve discorso sull'inferno (translation by Carlo Danna), in the appendix Apocatastasi (translation by Ellero Babini), Jaca Book, Milano, 1997. ISBN 978-88-16-30323-2, p. 77.