250 BIRTH ANNIVERSARY OF FATHER JOHN BONAL
On August 24 we celebrate the 250th birth anniversary, in Terrades (Girona - Spain), of our Founder, Fr. John Bonal Cortada, hero of Charity.
It is an event that fills us with deep gratitude and great joy, and invites us to be aware, once again, of the being and doing of Father John walking after the steps of the Lord Jesus, and to respond with the same fidelity that he and Mother Maria Rafols, to the call of God to be visible signs of the Kingdom, from the exercise of Charity and the proclamation of the Gospel, as Sisters of Charity of Saint Anne and as Laity of Saint Anne Family.
"The life of Bonal runs without pause at the service of the sick, or better, it is consumed for the sake of charity, of a charity authentically HEROIC.
If HEROISM appears apparently more brightly in moments that seem to demand even the last breath of human possibilities, as were those of the Sieges, it is no less in the long years of peace that followed that famous ephemeris in the annals of the Immortal City.
Only with HEROISM could one assist the plague-ridden prisoners of Torrero, ask for alms in the streets of Zaragoza, go through villages -some miserable ones- in demand of alms, without rejecting the more modest offers like rags for bandages and yarn to make linen cloths.
Only with HEROISM could suffer discomfort, humiliation, inclement weather, dangers of bandits, scrupulous accountability, the separation of the Brotherhood founded by him, to arrests and kidnapping of the collected handouts.
No one can guess the HEROISM contained in these endless lists of villages and places visited, in which only is recorded punctually and by obligation to the last real or maravedi charged or spent, while silencing the quota of fatigue, pain and contempt that it implied such a heavy ministry, and the spiritual irradiation implied by the preaching and especially the long hours spent in the gloom of the confessionals.
There is a flamboyant and spectacular HEROISM, and another silent and dull. Of both, one can speak in the life of Father Bonal, and perhaps more than the second than the first; at least it was more continuous and did not have the compensation of human glory.” (Fr. Jose Ignacio Tellechea)