- Birth: April 30th, 1897 – Québec, Canada
- Religious Profession: August 15th, 1923
- Death: September 4th, 1929 – Sillery, Canada
- Words: «Love Jesus and make Him loved»
- Beatification: March 20th, 1993 – Rome, Italy
- Feast : September 4th
Blessed Dina Bélanger
(Mother Mary Saint-Cecil of Rome)
Religious of Jesus and Mary
She said yes to love…
The whole of Dina’s life is a song of love, a hymn of thanksgiving to the Lord who called her and to whom she responded with a total and unreserved YES.
Her fidelity in her loving response to Love plunged her into the depths of the Trinity so that she became “a canticle of praise to the glory of God the Father”. Her life is a song of thanksgiving and praise in previously unimagined harmonies. She personifies the love that is so well expressed in the motto of her beloved Congregation:
“Praised forever be Jesus and Mary”.
She was born into a well-to-do family of which she was the only and beloved daughter; she was gifted in her studies particularly for music and a brilliant future presented itself before her: numerous friends, a pleasant social life and a most promising musical career. At the Lord’s summons she left everything and answered the call of Love with love.
As a child and young woman, Dina led an ordinary life; nothing seems to have distinguished her from the others. She was carefree, sociable, a lover of beauty and of nature, and good with that goodness which gives preference to the most weak and deprived. There was no hint of that interior life which dwelt and sang within her. She already felt the call of Love and responded to it with a motto that contained a whole program of life: “Love and let Jesus and Mary have their way”.
As a religious she tried always “to live in a spirit of praise, joy of heart, liberty of soul and generosity”. “To refuse God nothing” was the leitmotiv of her days. Although illness soon reduced her apostolic activity, her missionary zeal was not however diminished. “Would that I could gather up the whole universe and consume it in the infinite flames of his Sacred Heart. Nevertheless I want to be an apostle according to the wishes of our Lord”.
Consumed rather by love than by illness, she died on September 4th 1929, promising to be at the service of her brothers and sisters on earth:
“In heaven I shall be a beggar of love:
that is my mission and I am beginning it here and now.
Prayer
Father of everlasting goodness, You put into the heart of Blessed Dina Bélanger the burning desire to offer you on behalf of all mankind, the infinite riches of the Heart of Jesus present in the Eucharist, and, to live, like Mary, closely united to Him whom she loved with an undivided heart.
May we, like her, find our joy in faithfully doing your Will, and since you revealed to her your great desire to pour out upon the world the abundance of your graces hear the prayer which we make for your greater glory, and which we entrust to her intercession.
Amen.
