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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