At Marienhaus in Germany, Blessed Blandina Merten (Maria Magdalena), virgin of the Order of Saint Ursula, who joined care for the human and Christian formation of girls and young people with the contemplative life.
Lifespan: 1883–1918
Beatified: 1 November 1987 by Pope John Paul II
Memoria liturgica: 18 May
“Jesus and I are so very close.”
Maria Magdalena Merten was born on 10 July 1883 in Düppenweiler, in the German region of the Saar. After qualifying as an elementary school teacher, she entered the Ursulines of Calvarienberg-Ahrweiler at the age of twenty-five, taking the religious name Blandina of the Sacred Heart.
She professed perpetual vows in 1913 and, on the counsel of Jesuit Father Merk, offered herself as a victim soul as well. She continued to devote herself to the school apostolate and to the Christian education of children. But her religious life was brief. After her transfer to Saarbrücken, an incurable tuberculosis declared itself in 1916 — an illness that brought her to her death in 1918 in Trier, where she had been taken in hopes of the milder climate.
She spent her last two years in the infirmary, living the cross of suffering. “Jesus and I are so very close,” she would repeat. She slipped away quietly, at only thirty-five years of age, on 18 May 1918, while fierce fighting from the First World War raged over the German town.
Blandina Merten was beatified by John Paul II in 1987.