Today is also the feast of St. Margaret of Cortona. Yes it is.

St Margaret of Cortona.

In the new calendar, as well as the Franciscan calendar, the feast day was moved to May 16.

Our Lord told the Saint about his presence during her sinful life. She was never out of his sight, as it were. I find that consoling, because no matter how far we fall - he is there already. That is how I understand the falls on his way of the cross ... he fell to the level of our gravest fall from grace - to meet us there.

But at the same time, the old serpent, seeing you driven forth by your father, to his shame and for your destruction, seized this opportunity to make you vain of your beauty and your youth. He suggested to you that, abandoned by fortune, you had every excuse for giving yourself up to sin: that, wherever you chose to go and live, you would find rich and voluptuous masters to love you for the sake of your exterior loveliness.

But I, the Maker of your inward beauty, which you had deformed and which I wished to renew, I bore Myself towards you with a true love. By My inspirations and My light I touched your conscience. I urged you to set out immediately for Cortona, and there to submit to the obedience of My Friars-Minors.

You were filled with strength, and you set out on your journey. In obedience to My commands, you presented and offered yourself to My Friars; and with great zeal and courage you brought your soul under subjection to their rules and instructions.

Think of how, at the very outset of this career of salvation, you found balm for your heart, in the respectful, filial fear with which I filled your soul towards the religious to whose care I confided you.

This fear vanquished the invisible enemy, who had the hardihood to present himself to you in the hour of your affliction. Did you not tremble from head to foot, were not your cheeks suffused with blushes, when a friar of the Order of our ever-blessed Father appeared in the Church, in the house, or in the street? You dared not sit down or speak in their presence.

Think of how I molded your soul; how, from that moment, I inspired you with a supreme contempt of worldly ornament, and drew you, little by little, for My love's sake, to a most lawful position in relation to your fellow-creatures. - Source

"You dared not sit down or speak in their presence."

I believe my sins are so much worse that those of St. Margaret. So how do I dare speak of the evils of others?

The Lord drew the Saint - 'little by little' to a most 'lawful position in relation to your fellow creatures.' See, that is what happens after a good confession - otherwise, living in sin is all disorder, placing us in an unlawful position in relation to our fellow creatures.

Margaret suffered all her life from gossips who never forgot her sinful past and accused her of continuing indiscretions even after so many years of penance.  That just happened to me again, and once again I forgot to thank God for such a special grace.