The Eucharist
was the center of the whole life of Saint Maria Cristina Brando in fact she exhorted
the nuns "With our adorations we should go out in ecstasy of love". Her
life offered to God from an early age was a hymn of praise to the Lord in every
gesture and every thought. Her soul, filled with God, conversed with her Lord
even when she was immersed in the activities of her office of Foundress and
Mother. Everything about her spoke of God and she searched for God in
everything, for his will, if she was far from the tabernacle with her body she
never was far with her mind.
Mother
Maria Cristina well knew that Jesus the Eucharist was continually offended by
humanity: this is the extraordinary intuition to offer herself as expiatory
victims so that the evil done to the Eucharist would correspond to an offer of
love, in Eucharistic adoration. "Expiate and repair" was the reason for living; all her actions and her life
aimed at this sublime ideal of being at the foot of Jesus’s cross, as victims
of expiation and reparation. Here is how she spoke to her sisters: "We
must repair the insults that Jesus receives from all over the world. We must
guard against the smallest flaw in order not to displease Jesus. We must be
victims in fact, up to the point that we want to give our life for Jesus".
At the
beginning of the Institute there was not enough nuns for the perpetual adoration,
she spent the nights at the foot of the altar and there she would take a little
rest. During Thursday and Friday nights she kept vigil and she wanted to be the
one to call every sister for their hour of nocturnal adoration. A nun said:
"It was painful to see her sleepless, during the long winter nights, wrapped
in a miserable woolen blanket, going from bed to bed to call her sisters and
saying 'Sister, Jesus is calling you".