CROSTAROSA, MARIA CELESTE, Venerable.
Mystic, born in Naples on 31 Oct. 1696, died in Foggia on 14 Sept. 1755. At the age of twenty she entered the Carmelite monastery of Marigliano, then in 1724 passed to the Visitation convent at Scala near Amalfi, where she received a revelation concerning the institute of the Most Holy Saviour. Through the efforts of C., supported by St Alphonsus and Bishop Falcoia, the conservatory of St Francis de Sales later adopted the new rule of the Most Holy Saviour. A victim of misunderstanding, she left in 1733 and went to Pareti di Nocera to reform a decayed women’s conservatory; after a failed attempt at claustral life at Roccapiemonte she reached Foggia in 1738, where she founded the monastery of the Most Holy Saviour and died there. The cause of beatification was introduced in 1901.
She possessed charisms comparable to those of St Gertrude; although illiterate she composed some ten works, the fruit of her contemplation: principal among them are the Autobiography, Treatises of the Soul with Jesus the Spouse, Daily Exercises of Love of God, Distinctions of Many Degrees of Prayer, numerous spiritual and moral songs, among which notable for boldness of subject and freshness of feeling are the Tarantella to the Sweetest Name of Jesus and the Dialogue between Jesus and a Gypsy Soul.
At the heart of her spirituality C. placed the mystery of the Incarnate Word, affirming that contemplation of the humanity of Christ leads to knowledge of the Divinity. The form may seem poor, yet the theological language is exact.