This blog will periodically offer you short episodes of Dina Bélanger’s life. If you want to liven up your life, don’t fail to read them… or write your comments.

The REPUTATION OF THE SANCTITY of Dina Bélanger became universal after her beatification.

Monday 31 October 2016

She became a saint

The fame of Dina’s holiness soon spread. Almost immediately after her death much information about her life was received and was read by many. This was especially true of her Autobiography, translated into various languages and already having reached the 5th edition in French. Those who read it are amazed at the work of God in a simple creature.
Her remains are in the chapel of Convent in Sillery, Quebec, and the number of visits to her tomb in order to pray and ask for numerous favours increase.
On 20th March 1993 in the Basilica of St Peter in Rome, Pope John Paul II proclaimed Dina to be ‘Blessed’. In his homily he quoted St Paul who said: “I exhort you not to receive the grace of God in vain”. This is what Dina did throughout her life, giving us also a shining testimony of intimate dialogue with Jesus, whom she always sought with the greatest delicacy and sensitivity. Dina’s gift for music prepared her to welcome the Divine Presence with praise for God that goes far beyond words. Dina found the hidden pearl, the treasure of which the Gospel speaks, and for which she is prepared to sell all.
The perfection of the charism of the Foundress of her Congregation became incarnate in her life, to reveal the active goodness of God. Her apostolic heart is consumed, burning to make Jesus and May known and loved to the ends of the earth. Even this is not enough for her; she wants to continue her mission throughout eternity, begging love for the benefit of all souls for the greater glory of Gd.
By means of her prophetic witness, written at the request of her superior, Dina reaches out to young people, adults, priests, consecrated souls, artists, the sick, in a word to all those who seeing her, open themselves to the love of God , who is the only one capable of transforming lives and of giving true happiness.

Thus is the trail that the saints leave behind them. Their lives on earth end, but their light continues to illuminate the pathway so that we do not let ourselves become imprisoned or bogged down in the mud on the way. The saints knew how to glimpse beyond everything. If we allow them to do so, they can raise us up on their shoulders, so that we too may see further, as a father lifts up his son when he cannot see because he is too short… Dina is prepared to do this. Let yourself be lifted up by her!

Thursday 20 October 2016

Who was Dina?

Dina was a simple person, noted for her great artistic sensitivity, who only desired “to love and let Jesus and Mary have their way”. She was not just a young pianist, composer, apostle and mystic, gifted with a great musical talent, applauded and praised, with a brilliant future which she renounced in order to give herself completely to Jesus, but she was also the religious who let herself be totally captivated by Jesus in silence with an intense spiritual experience. God alone was her all and she never said “no” to him. Her whole existence was consumed by him with constant and faithful correspondence with grace.
 We cannot grasp what it means to go deep into the depths of a God who is Trinity. Neither can I explain it to you. God gave this gift to Dina and with simplicity she tells us about it in her Autobiography with all the beauty and sensitivity of the artist, always attentive to the interior voice of Jesus. But you see Dina’s holiness does not lie in these extraordinary aspects which are comparable with those of many great mystics. She was holy because she never denied anything to God, she made her life a rhapsody interpreted  in the key of love, written on the score of the gospels: ”If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him  and we shall come to him and make our abode with him”.

After her death there was unanimous agreement in declaring that the holiness of her life corresponded to what she had written and that, thanks to her great reserve, she was able to hide from the eyes of others, without anybody being able to imagine what she was experiencing interiorly. The testimonies received speak of a constant fidelity to grace, of having always been very sincere, of being unable to recall any occasion in which Dina had spoken ill of anyone, of always, when something was being said against  another , of knowing how to take their part , of never having seen her to be disheartened in moments of difficulty or, during her long illness, of never complaining, accepting everything without showing either her likes or dislikes, taking on what is hard and continuing to be joyful afterwards, being ingenious in passing unnoticed and bringing out the worth of others, of seeing the amount of work she had to do in spite of being ill and isolated in the infirmary, of having always been very good to her students, of doing everything with great simplicity and not drawing attention to herself in anything, of not ever boasting of her musical talent, always emphasizing that of others.
Perhaps you can say the same as a young lady who had lived with her expressed it; “I had a saint for a friend and did not know it”. Dina can be your friend today and you will not regret it.

Monday 10 October 2016

The end arrives

Another important moment in Dina’s life approaches. The time comes in religious life when the vows that were made five years previously are renewed forever. In her heart she had already made them forever on the 15th August 1923, but now it will be done publically. The years have passed and Dina is aware of being totally absorbed by Jesus and she only seeks to let him have his way; grace fills her life and she makes great efforts always to respond faithfully.

Dina enjoyed and enjoys the experience of God and the desire to communicate it to others burns within her. If her apostolic activity was reduced because of her illness, her missionary spirit was not. Her apostolic impulse to work for the salvation of all mankind takes on the dimension of the whole world. She wants to travel through the universe and she discovers that her mission for all eternity, from now until the end of time, is and will be to irradiate the love of Jesus to everyone, through the Virgin Mary. Jesus said “Ask and you will receive…” Certain of this, Dina says: ”In heaven I shall be a little mendicant of love; this is my mission and I begin it immediately”. She understood that people are united with one another as much in the spiritual as in social life, and she feels at one with the whole world, loving and letting Jesus and Mary have their way. Dina desires that all may be saved, that no one be lost; that is why she affirms, “I would like to close hell forever”.
To be one with others is not always easy. It is enjoyable when solidarity entails sharing success and happy moments,  it  is hard when it must be suffered in silence, alone without visible results. This is what Dina lives in her simple room in the infirmary. Her life is ebbing away and her apostolate remains in the joyful silence of anonymity, accepting in faith whatever Jesus offers her in each moment and which she desires to give him because she continues to let him have his way.

Her illness follows its course but the suffering does not in any way reduce her concern for others. At times the suffering is so intense that she has to cry out, “Jesus come quickly and give me strength”. From July 1929 Dina writes no more, she is too weak to do so. She continues, however, to faithfully tell her superior what she is experiencing in her inner life. Those who visit her suspect nothing but admire her serenity, her joy and the kindness she shows to all who approach her. She does not lose the smile for which she once fought at the beginning of her religious life. Her parents visit her and she suffers to see their suffering.

Having lived an ordinary life filled with an extraordinary love, the 4th of September 1929 arrives. At about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, a few very calm, imperceptible breaths mark for Dina the final encounter with Jesus.