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.

Who is Dina?

Dina was born in Quebec, (Canada) on April 30th 1897. Her parents, who were devout Catholics, gave her an education which would later enable her to be a “high-flyer”; she was intelligent with a strong and attractive personality which was linked to a certain reserve and a sensitive awareness of others. She was tenacious and passionate about the things that were important to her, something that enabled her to achieve the goals she set herself.
While she was still young her talent for and love of music became evident and she began lessons when she was eight years old, completing them, about eleven years later, at the New York Conservatory of Music. On returning to Quebec she began a successful career as a concert pianist. An attractive future beckoned, many friends, an agreeable social life and a promising musical career.
From early childhood Dina had felt a great attraction for the person of Jesus and constantly spoke to Him in prayer.  Eventually hearing His invitation “Come, follow Me”  she responded to this loving call and joined the Congregation of Jesus and Mary as a novice and later, when taking her first vows received a new name, Mary of Saint Cecilia of Rome, the patroness of music.
Dina committed herself totally to her new life as a consecrated religious Sister. Every day she tried to be lovingly faithful in everything that was asked of her and took as her motto “To love and let Jesus and Mary have their way”.  Dina’s superiors, when they became aware of the depth of her spiritual life of prayer and love, asked her to write her autobiography. In this Dina describes the development of her inner life of loving service and prayer and says that she came to understand what St Paul said of himself, namely that Jesus was living in him.
Dina committed herself fully to the apostolic work of the Congregation of Jesus and Mary and became an enthusiastic and poplar music teacher. But soon illness brought this to an end . She had to give up teaching, but not apostolic activity.  Inspired by the spirit of the Congregation, even when direct contact with the students was no longer possible, when she could, she generously helped the other Sisters in their duties and responsibilities. Somehow the inactivity imposed by illness became totally apostolic. Dina expressed this ardent desire to make God’s love known in words saying that she wanted to go throughout the whole world and proclaim the infinite love of the Heart of Christ. She also expressed what she came to understand as being her mission in heaven, in eternity, “to radiate, with and like the Virgen Mary, the love of Jesus for all men.”
Dina died on the September 4th, 1929 at the age of 32, after eight years of religious life. She had promised that in heaven she would remain at the service of her brothers and sisters on earth, spreading, with the grace of God, both love and joy.
Dina lived an ordinary life with extraordinary love. Her holiness lies not in the mystical insights that God gave her in prayer but rather in her constant fidelity to God’s grace. Her life, characterised by a smiling reserve, hid from the eyes of others what God had given her and which she describes quite simply in her Autobiography, with beauty and artistic sensibility
Pope John Paul II declared her to be Blessed on 20 March 1993 in the Basilica of St Peter in Rome.

The Congregation of the Religious of Jesus and Mary was founded by Claudine Thevenet in Lyon, France in 1818. Claudine, had endured many terrible experiences during the French Revolution, among which was to witness the execution by firing squad of her two brothers after they had managed to pass their final message to her, “Forgive Glady, as we forgive”.  Claudine, who knew that the greatest misfortune is to “live and die without knowing God” committed herself totally to Him and the education of children and young people. And so the Congregation of Jesus and Mary began, the Congregation of which Dina was a member and which is present today in 28 countries.

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