Born in the mountains of Val d’Aosta, Sister Nemesia Valle spent her life as a Sister of Charity in Piedmont: first in Tortona, a populous town not far from the borders of Lombardy, and finally in Borgaro Torinese.
If the societies of the Old Regime were built on stability and tradition, the second half of the 19th century was characterised by the possibility of finally changing one’s social condition for the better. Sister Nemesia, together with her community of Sisters, provided a human and Christian formation in keeping with the times, to the girls of the orphanage in Tortona. They were especially concerned about educating the girls at the boarding school in that city. They provided a solid, lively, positive spirituality, enabling them to face life’s challenges, nourished by a warm, spontaneous, tender and benevolent piety.
In those times of great change, a mature, personalised and passionate spirituality was needed, even for the formation of novices in Borgaro Torinese. Full adhesion to the vocation of the Sister of Charity had to be accepted in complete freedom by the novice. The demands of consecration flourished best within a personalised relationship with the novitiate headmistress. Sr. Nemesia was remembered by her many novices for the attention she paid to each one and for constantly maintaining a benevolent and loving temperament.
Both at school and in the Novitiate, Sister Nemesia was aware of the limitations of a traditional religious formation, centred mostly on essential catechetical instruction and the exercise of pious practices. Hence, all her commitment went to fostering in young people’s consciences an authentic openness to faith and a vigorous spirit of charity and Christian apostolate.
Among her writings, we come to see the importance of the practice of the presence of God, the source of the underlying serenity of her heart:
“If the night, the desert and the silence are deaf,
He who created you will always listen to you”.
“Be merry, be merry!
Sing, sing always! Do not be anxious: attend to the present moment!”
Blessed Nemesia Valle: Her Life
1847-1862: A Remarkable Infancy
Giulia Valle was born at Aosta on the 26 June 1847, bringing great happiness to a young and wealthy couple from the town of Donnas who had already lost their two previous children prematurely. Anselm Valle and Maria Cristina Dalbard, her parents, took her to the baptismal font of the old collegiate of St. Orso on 26 June 1847, and gave her the name of Maddalena, Teresa, Giulia. Her birth was followed by that of her brother Vincenzo. Her infancy was a serene one, between her mother’s work as a milliner and her father’s travels and commercial work. Animated with a profound religious sense, Maria Cristina Dalbard inspired in her two children a serene vision of life, along with an authentic openness towards others and a generous nature that would guide the particularly lively and bright temperament and natural curiosity of little Giulia.
During the year 1850, due to the need for work, Anselm Valle was obliged to transfer himself to France, at Besançon and so he decided to take the whole family with him. Their stay in France, however, would be traumatically interrupted with the premature death of his wife Maria Cristina (Giulia was only five years old). Together with her brother Vincenzo, she was entrusted to her paternal grandfather and to an unmarried aunt, in a very austere environment, where the two children experienced all the sadness of being orphans.
When Giulia was 11 years old, she was once again sent to Besançon as a boarder, in a boarding school run by the Sisters of Charity, to continue her studies. Here, she learned French very well , became very skilled at playing the piano, embroidery, and drawing, (gifts which enriched her learning). She was also introduced to the texts of the great masters of catholic spirituality: Vincent de Paul and Francis of Sales.
1862-1866: A Committed Youth
Having completed her studies, Giulia would no longer visit her father at Donnas, but at Pont-Saint-Martin, because he had re-married. Difficulties and uneasiness intersected one another because of the difficult relationship with the second wife of Anselmo Valle. Giulia once again found herself in an environment deprived of understanding, as she had already experienced in her childhood in her grandfather’s home. The voluntary departure of her brother Vincenzo, because of the continual disagreement with the stepmother caused Giulia much pain and in fact, she would never know where her beloved brother had gone.
She faced this difficult moment of her life while seeking comfort outside the domestic walls, above all from her mother’s family, whom she constantly visited at Donnas: with them she could revisit her childhood days, in memory of her mother and the happy years spent in her company.
Perhaps, for this very same reason, it was easy for Giulia to rediscover happiness with the Sisters of Charity, who had settled down at Pont-Saint-Martin and who became her teachers: they encouraged and supported her. Certainly, she observed their charitable style with greater understanding and attraction. Giulia became a regular visitor of the small community of Sisters who were dedicated to teaching and to the education of children. She soon began to help the Sisters teach catechism, frame embroidery and supervise the little ones during recreation time.
When the time had come for Giulia to think about her future, her studies at Besançon and her collaboration with the Sisters at Pont-Saint-Martin contributed to helping mature in her an authentic preference for the teaching profession. But for Giulia, being a teacher was inextricably linked to the religious life, which unites itself to the total gift of self to God, with an educational commitment, charitable works and a life lived in community.
1866-1903: A New Name, a New Life
Her father Anselm was surprised at his daughter’s decision to choose religious life, and tried to dissuade her, but ended up giving his consent to his daughter’s choice. On the 8th of September 1866, he accompanied her to Vercelli, to the Monastery Santa Margherita, where the Sisters of Charity had a novitiate: for Giulia it was the birth to a new life, in peace and in joy, even in the midst of tears because of their new separation.
At the end of the novitiate, Giulia received the religious habit and with the habit as a sign of the beginning of a new life, a new name: Sister Nemesia. Nemesio is the name of a martyr of the first centuries of Christianity. She was happy with it. This name would be the plan for her life: “To give witness of my love for Jesus and to do this, regardless of the cost, to the end of my days ”
Her mission began at Tortona, in the province of Alessandria , in the Institute of San Vincenzo, an Elementary and a Secondary School, a boarding school, and an orphanage. Sister Nemesia very soon became a point of reference for every initiative, apostolic undertaking and missionary formation. She was present with teaching, with participation in person in various initiatives, with an open heart and open arms, even there where the work was not very inviting, where suffering needed to be consoled, where discomfort prevented serene relationships, where fatigue, suffering, and poverty limited the quality of living, where there were new paths to follow for scholastic and catechetical reform.
A unanimous voice spread in and outside the house: “Oh, Sister Nemesia’s heart! Pupils, families, orphans, the poor, seminarians, the neighbouring conscripted soldiers approached her for a letter, to ask her to darn their clothes, to help them overcome their home sickness. All of them were convinced that they had a particular place in her heart, even more so after having been named Superior, which she accepted only to be able to render better service.
Her commitments were many; she also had to keep the accounts of the Institute, always in the red, but if someone needed to speak to her, she listened attentively, as if that was the only thing on her mind. Frictions with the sisters were not lacking, but she was surprisingly calm. She was always knitting to provide clothes for the orphans, for the Seminarians for whom she had a soft spot and also for the soldiers stationed in the nearby military district. One generation after the other: all of them wanted to remain in touch with Sr Nemesia, they would come back to the college to present their fiancé or to present their new-born child.
Even though there was never enough money, she devoted herself to the missions. When the spiritual Director for the Institute, Fr Giuseppe Carbone, became a Capuchin, he left for Eritrea. She supported him with many initiatives, collecting money to help him with his mission. This was how the first missionary circle started in the city. She also helped the young Fr Luigi Orione , founder of the Sons of the Divine Providence, as best she could, and several times gave shelter to Blessed Teresa Grillo Michel, foundress of the Little Sisters of Divine Providence in Alessandria. With them she also established an intensive and fruitful collaboration, sharing their religious ideals and charitable concern.
1903-1919: The Last Stages in the Desert
On the 10th May 1903 Sr Nemesia had to leave Tortona: she was expected at Borgaro Torinese, a small country town, a few kilometres from Turin, where the generalate of the Sisters of Charity was starting a novitiate in the new province of Turin. Here the novices were waiting for a headmistress to accompany them along their new journey: long and austere, but filled with joy because they were giving themselves to God and to the poor, according to Saint Jeanne Antide Thouret’s spirit.
Sister Nemesia was an active presence in Borgaro, together with her collaborators, with those who worked in the interior of the house, in the park, in the orchard and above all with youth. Her method of formation was always characterized by kindness, renunciation for love, patience that knows how to wait and knows how to find the right path that suits each individual. Her novices tell us: “She knew each one of us individually, understood our needs, and treated each one of us according to our character, and she used to ask us what she could do to make us love one another.”
In the span of thirteen years, five hundred novices learned trust in God, a love for prayer, dedication to serve the poor, and the evangelical meaning of the community. They appreciated her witness of fortitude in the face of tribulation; they wanted to imitate a sanctity which was expressed and lived day by day: “Sanctity does not consist in doing many things or in doing great things but in doing whatever God asks us to do, and to do it with patience, love and above all in fidelity as is our duty, fruit of a great love.” “Holy is the person who consumes herself in her place every day, for the Lord. The love you give is the only thing that remains: see that you love intensively before you reach your life’s end.”
But the Provincial Superior had a character that clearly showed she did not approve of the feeling and behaviour of the first Novice Headmistress. She believed that a more rigid method would better form the future religious in a stricter and more reliable way. This difference of opinion generated significant quarrels which led to scolding and humiliations even in public. Sister Nemesia accepted everything in silence and quietly continued without failing in her responsibilities: “From station to station we travel our way through the desert… and if the desert is deaf, He who created us is always listening….”
The years at Borgaro Torinese were for Sr Nemesia an authentic season of trial, because of the difficulties and misunderstandings. Although extremely balanced and serene in her interior life and in the way she formed the novices, she was tortured with a certain anguish. It seemed to her that she no longer understood and that she has gone astray: it was so clear to the Provincial Superior and she did not approve of it; the Sisters of her community accused her of weakness… The persisting difficulties and misunderstandings continued to deteriorate her health, and in the autumn of 1916 her health suddenly broke down. Struck with a sudden attack of pneumonia, she died after six days in agony, on the 18th December of that same year.
The prayer she recited from very early times, “Jesus strip me of myself, and dress me with Yourself,” accompanied her throughout her life. Now she could say: “I do not exist anymore for anyone.” The detachment of self was total. It was the ultimate offering of an existence entirely given to Love.
Blessed Nemesia Valle: Spiritual Profile
To trace Sister Nemesia’s spiritual profile is not that easy: her face expressed calm, peace, serenity, even when her heart was troubled. Her whole life was none other than the summing up of so many normal things, ordinary occupations, the usual housework, unexciting tasks, everything so normal. A person would be greatly mistaken if he tried to seek extraordinary events, facts, and moments in this humble person from Val d’Aosta, that attest to a an exceptional religious journey. The spiritual witnessing of Sister Nemesia developed itself, on the contrary, in the ordinary life, and is discovered in the dimension of her daily life. Her life is a strong message of humility and of charity: her fidelity to the charism, to her commitment to the novices and to her Sisters are to be intimately linked to her love for the Church, manifested in her ardent missionary spirit and in her generous and joyful availability to serve all in the Church.
Multiple factors influenced her spiritual itinerary: the solid religious education she received in the family, her studies at the Institute of Besançon and the strong ties established with the Sisters of Charity of Pont Saint-Martin, the formation acquired at the novitiate in Vercelli; and meeting with great masters of the spirit, from the texts of Ignatius of Loyola, Francis de Sales and Vincent de Paul.
Everything contributed to develop in Sister Nemesia a living sensus ecclesiae, an authentic missionary passion, and an educational behaviour whose characteristics were really incisive and fully relevant to the concerns and needs of her time.
It is the Paschal Mystery that Renews Us
Since Sister Nemesia’s life was extremely simple– only two places, Tortona and Borgaro and only two activities, that of teaching and a religious profession– even so, sister Nemesia drew her spiritual nourishment from a unique and fundamental theological theme: love for Jesus crucified. And it was in the imitation of the suffering Christ that her concept of educational and apostolic charitable commitment took root.
The evangelical announcement, the human and Christian education of the new generations, serving the poor, the missionary concern, religious formation of the novices was configured to the imitation and the following of Jesus Christ as a commitment to continue His work of Redemption among mankind, as a participation in the Mystery of Christ the Saviour and Redeemer: “Desirous that God may be known, loved and served in all creatures and highly inflamed with the ardour for the salvation of souls,” remembers one of her pupils, who later became a Sister of Charity, “she instilled prayer in us, so that the Catholic faith would be widely diffused, and God would receive the greatest glory”.
It is Our Union with God that Transforms Us
While she tried to cope with her commitments and the daily worries resulting from her service with the boarders, the orphans and the novices, while she was absorbed with the duties of responsibility tied to the role of teacher, while she committed herself in search of every means to help the missioners, while she took advantage of every opportunity to help the poor, the sick, and the prisoners, Sister Nemesia constantly lived an intensive interior participation in God’s mystery, sustained with a warm, spontaneous, tender and benevolent piety.
Her specific spiritual mark was clearly evident especially during moments of recollection and prayer, when understanding the signs of God’s revelation in every moment of her life, and in the constant harbouring of a benevolent and loving temperament, gifted with an everyday ability to penetrate souls.
Her strong desire to live interiorly in the light and in the comfort of God’s presence was expressed during moments of recollection and prayer and became a motive and a support for an attitude towards others and the vicissitudes of life characterized by an exceptional meekness, joy, and happiness. The constant care dedicated to discerning the kind of relationship most suited to the temperament and character of the people with whom she came into contact and her tireless patience, of which she was able to give ample proof, were combined with a resolute fortitude of spirit, which allowed Sister Nemesia to maintain, in different circumstances, a constant balance and a serene interior harmony.
She welcomed the ups and downs of life and all the suffering, for most of which she was unjustly blamed, with an attitude of submissiveness and compliance and with an attitude which allowed her to smile in face of adversity to avoid any external manifestation of her heart’s affliction and anguish.
In Sister Nemesia’s spiritual life, love for her neighbour constituted the highest manifestation of her trust and abandonment to God, in the hands of whom she placed her own will and entrusted her heart, confident that every suffering was an effective instrument of purification and a spiritual elevation. In the afflicted person, in the sick person, in the poor, in the orphan, she contemplated the face of the suffering Christ, who through the sacrifice of the Cross, had restored the possibility of salvation to the whole of humanity.
Guide and Spiritual Director
During the years she was a teacher at the Institute of San Vincenzo of Tortona and above all during the time when she was a novice headmistress at Borgaro Torinese, Sister Nemesia exercised an intensive activity as guide and spiritual director, through personal talks with youth in formation, numerous written interventions addressed to the pupils and novices, and considerable correspondence with her ex-pupils, who continued to ask for her advice and help, even after having left the boarding school or having finished the novitiate.
Above all the number of letters allows us to learn the basic guidelines that fueled the intense work of spiritual direction undertaken by Sister Nemesia. All this helps us to discover her spirit of profound generosity and comprehension, her broad-mindedness, and her always particularly persuasive and incisive counselling.
Her temperament distinguished itself for its love and patient availability and understanding with regard to any kind of circumstances, from the most benevolent to the most hostile, contributing to her particular gift of analysis and the orientation of the conscience.
It seems that I might as well say that Sister Nemesia’s ability to listen and to give meaningful answers to the multiple existential problems and to the complex spiritual research of youth received at the Novitiate, represent not just an innate ability or a natural predisposition for interpersonal relationship, but the result of a demanding spirituality of one’s own gifts of intuition and of the psychological penetration for the constant and vivid concern about the happy result of the human and religious itinerary of the youth entrusted to her care.
An Expert in Humanity
Her witnessing to humanity was marked with different shades of gentleness, sensibility, sweetness, respect and delicacy. Especially, her educational style was also centred on example, gentleness and on an affectionate dialogue; her method chose simplicity, equilibrium, an interior solidarity and aimed at preparing a mature human and religious personality.
In order to realize this aim, Sister Nemesia noted all the limits of traditional religious formation, centred mostly on essential catechetical instruction and on the practice of devotions. Consequently, she was engaged to help mature in the youthful conscience, an authentic openness to faith and a vigorous spirit of charity and Christian apostleship. Also with this aim in view, Sister Nemesia didn’t fail to exhort her ex-pupils to preserve spontaneity and to cultivate the enthusiasm and light-heartedness characteristic to their youth, so that the monotony of daily occupations and the deep responsibility of their adult life would not render their witnessing of faith and the charitable eagerness barren, in relation to their neighbour.
Source: https://www.suoredellacarita.org/
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