Saints This Month - 13 May: Blessed Imelda Lambertini

In parishes up and down England we are entering the First Communion season. Over the past six months I have assisted in preparing a group in a parish in Oxford. One of the highlights this year was a session which concluded with exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. After a boisterous and noisy session, the group entered the church and for the next twenty minutes there was reverent and respectful silence. Afterwards the group had a brief discussion on how they found the period of adoration. One of the boys spoke up and said it was amazing to be able to look at Jesus and talk to him face to face and the feeling was so good that he couldn't wait until he made his communion.

It always amazes me how perceptive children can be. Imelda Lambertini is a fine example of this. Born into a Bolognese noble family in 1322, from an early age Imelda showed great piety. The young girl arranged a small oratory in her house, where she would pray frequently. Determined to enter religious life, her parents finally permitted her early entry into a Dominican convent at age 9. During her two years in the convent she developed a great devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. However she was too young to receive her first communion. She often commented: "How can anyone receive Jesus into his heart and not die of love?" So strong was her desire to receive the Sacrament that she constantly prayed that she might be allowed this great gift.

On the Feast of the Ascension, after the Conventual Mass she prayed that she might have a share in the Eucharist. The nuns were preparing to leave the church when some of them were startled to see what appeared to be a Sacred Host hovering in the air above Imelda, as she knelt before the closed tabernacle absorbed in prayer. Quickly they attracted the attention of the priest who hurried forward with a paten on which to receive It. In light of such a miracle the priest decided that she should make her first Communion there and then. The sisters left her to make her thanksgiving in private.

As time passed, they began to worry and they returned to the chapel and found that she had died. She is said to have "expired in an ecstasy of pure love." Her thanksgiving had been well completed, and she had nothing left to desire. Her uncorrupted body was interred in San Sigismondo, Bologna. She very quickly became the patron for First Communicants. Blessed Imelda understood instinctively what many of us have forgotten: that it is the single-hearted who are blessed and that unless we become like children we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It is only when we become uncomplicated enough that we become intensely and truly Eucharistic.