Rome (Italy). In line with the Synod on: Young People, Faith, and Vocational Discernment (Cf. Working Document nos. 213-214), in the month of April, we share the seventh study on the journey of accompaniment in the youth of Saints, Blesseds, Venerables, and Servants of God.
Antonietta Böhm¸ woman with a missionary heart
The vocation of Sr. Antonietta certainly matured in the years she lived in her family and then with her contact with the FMA at the oratory, a real forge of Salesian religious vocations. Her mother was an innovative woman in her actions and in her words. She was her model especially for her generous and gracious giving. The entire family environment fostered the maturation of faith and this was strengthened after the loss of her parents, when she was just a pre-adolescent in a mysterious weaving of death and of fruitfulness. The encounters with the first FMA at Essen Borbeck found in Antonietta an open heart and awakened in her the desire to give her whole life to God. The sisters, with their joyful, contagious lifestyle, showed her how to serve the Lord by taking care of the girls to be educated.
Even the question asked during a game, certainly contributed to light in her the ideal of witnessing to the faith in distant lands. The years lived at the FMA oratory were important and decisive for her. In that environment she also found the gift of a friendly relationship with the community superior, as Sr. Antonietta herself wrote, “…we felt like friends”. Yes, she felt herself really accompanied in her discernment journey to know God’s plan for her life.
Sr. Antonietta left as a missionary for Latin America, where she lived for over 68 years and died at over a hundred years old, enriched by the experiences of the first decades of her life. Her characteristic maternal attitude, her predilection for the poor and for the salvation of the world, her ardent love for Jesus, the call to be the transparency of Mary Help of Christians and to be her blessing hand everywhere, all this had laid secure foundations in her adolescence and youth.
