Lucilian Piety

One of Lucilia’s favourite places to practise her piety toward the Mother of God was the Luz Convent in São Paulo. She had visited this wellspring of blessings since earliest childhood, on journeys from Pirassununga, her birthplace. It was there that her soul felt most in contact with the supernatural.

Friar Galvão’s “pills”

If we follow Lucilia’s route by carriage – which she always undertook accompanied by Dona Gabriela, her mother – heading out from Campos Elíseos toward the convent, in less than ten minutes, just beyond the Luz Garden, we come upon the white edifice belonging to the Conceptionist nuns.

The Convent’s founder, Friar Galvão, was a man of eminent virtue. The chronicles record that for a youth who was suffering excruciating pain from gall bladder stones, they came one day to ask the servant of God for prayers.

Suddenly illuminated by inspiration, the friar seized a quill and wrote three times on a little slip of paper this verse from the Office of the Blessed Virgin: Post partum Virgo inviolata permansisti, Dei Genitrix intercede pro nobis (After childbirth, O Virgin, thou didst remain inviolate. Pray for us, O Mother of God). He formed the strip into a tiny ball and said it should be given to the patient to swallow.

Having done so, the youth was cured almost instantly, and from then on, Friar Galvão’s “pills” or “paper pellets” became famous, and continued to be distributed by the nuns after the death of the wonderworker, obtaining cures and conversions until today.

Confident in the powerful intercession of Friar Galvão to cure the liver and gallbladder ailments that were besetting her daughter, Dona Gabriela would always return home with a stock of these “paper pellets.”

Lucilia took them daily after praying a novena asking Friar Galvão to cure or at least alleviate her illness. For the rest of her life, she would have recourse to the servant of God – today, the first Brazilian Saint to be canonized – to obtain various favours.

The little shrine of the Immaculate Conception

To illustrate Dona Lucilia’s devotion to Our Lady, we will narrate here another detail about a statue of the Immaculate Conception that she kept with her until the end of her life.

Ever since her blissful days in Pirassununga, Dona Lucilia showed special preference for praying before a statue of the Immaculate Conception that belonged to the family. She always kept this statue in her bedroom, in her successive homes after the death of Dona Gabriela, whose devotion to the image was another reason for Dona Lucilia’s attachment to it.

Carved from wood, the image had been brought from Portugal in the mid-nineteenth century, and evinced both the genuine piety and talent of its sculptor. To expose it most fittingly for general veneration, Dr. Antônio, Dona Lucilia’s father, had it placed in a little oratory, which he ordered from a cabinetmaker in Pirassununga who worked with his sister.

An interesting detail is that both of these artists were deaf-mutes, but, in compensation, were gifted by God with such extraordinary woodworking skill that they produced furniture worthy of the finest salons.

While neither was of broad culture or familiar with the big cities, they had delicate artistic sense.

The simple oratory serves as a fine example of this. Years later, an antique dealer offered Dona Lucilia a considerable sum for it. But for her, this object, ordered by her father and linked to so many memories, was priceless.

“Protect me with Thine inexhaustible goodness”

Deeply Catholic, young Lucilia’s parents sought to transmit the precious gift of Faith to their children, received in Baptism and inherited from their forefathers.

Evidence of this is a prayer to the Holy Spirit found many years later among the papers left by Dona Lucilia. Since it is evidently not in her own artistic hand, whose writing could it be? Something in its decided yet delicate lines leads us to recognize it as the script of Dona Gabriela.

The prayer was composed by Dr. Antônio, and Dona Lucilia kept it for her entire life as a precious memento of his paternal solicitude.

Transcribed by Dona Gabriela’s hand to be recited diligently by her daughter, the prayer provides a luminous reflection of the innocence and piety that reigned in the Ribeiro dos Santos family environment:

“Divine Spirit, Creator of the Universe, present in the Son of the Virgin Mary to save humanity by guiding it along the way of virtue and perfection to perpetual peace in the bosom of God; Thou Who art everywhere manifesting Thine infinite power, I humbly beseech Thee to forgive my faults, and enlighten and fortify my spirit in all of life’s activities, so that my actions may always be in accord with the eternal precepts of Jesus, and so that I may – through the practice of virtue and the sincere repentance of my sins – purify my soul and make it deserving of Thy Reign.

“Protect me with Thine inexhaustible goodness in Jesus so that no evil impulse may overcome or obscure my reason and so that I may enjoy, in the mansion of the just, the eternal life promised by Jesus to His children. Amen.”

The Sacred Heart of Jesus; a lifelong devotion

But Divine Providence has a path for each person. While Dona Lucilia would always nurture a profound devotion to the Holy Spirit throughout her long life – certainly as the fruit of her parents’ zeal –, it was from an early age that she became particularly absorbed with the sweet appeals of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, taking Him as her model.

His Heart was the source of the deep affection with which her relationships with others overflowed – an affection made up of joy and hope, and carrying within it such a deep-rooted and generous degree of friendship, pardon, and kindness, that it is hard to imagine anything equal to it.

Thus, with her soul turned to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to Our Lady of Penha, her Godmother, Lucilia’s youth unfolded in the shelter of her aristocratic and blessed home. ◊

Taken, with minor adaptations, from:
Dona Lucilia. Città del Vaticano-Nobleton: LEV;
Heralds of the Gospel, 2013, p.91-95