Giulia Marcella Santa Crostarosa was born in Naples on 31 October 1696, the tenth of the twelve children of Giuseppe Crostarosa, a magistrate descended from a noble Abruzzese family, and of Paola Battistini Caldari. Hers was a household where God was taken seriously: one of her brothers would become a Jesuit, and two of her sisters would one day follow her into the cloister. Formed from childhood in prayer and guided for a time by Father Bartolomeo Cacace, she felt the call to consecrated life while still an adolescent, and at seventeen she bound herself to Christ by a vow of chastity.
In 1718 she entered the Carmelite house of Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori at Marigliano, near Naples, accompanying her sister Ursula; there she was known as Sister Candida. When the conservatory was suppressed in 1723 she returned briefly to her family, and then accepted the invitation of the Pious Worker Father Tommaso Falcoia — who had become her spiritual director after Cacace's death — to enter the Visitandine conservatory of the Most Holy Conception at Scala, high above the Bay of Amalfi. There she took the name Sister Maria Celeste of the Holy Desert.
On 25 April 1725, at the end of Mass, the young religious was seized by a light in which the Lord himself made known to her the work he wanted. She saw Christ, as she later wrote, in a wonderfully pure light and with an inexpressible jubilation of love, writing with his finger in her heart with his own blood; and she was shown the new institute of nuns she was to found, together with the rule of life they were to follow. In the days that followed, encouraged by her confessor and by the novice mistress, she wrote the rule down. Its heart was simple and burning: the community itself was to be a "living memory" of the love of the Redeemer, each sister a faithful imitation of the life of Jesus.
The way to the fulfilment of that grace was long and painful. Falcoia submitted the new Rule to theologians, who judged it sound, but the superior of the house objected; Falcoia's own superior general forbade any change and cut him off from the convent. Some sisters believed Maria Celeste; others took her for a deluded visionary. She was punished — exiled to the attic, made to eat on the floor with a cord about her neck, and for a time forbidden Holy Communion. She lived these tribulations, as the Church's own account of her says, with patience and great spiritual maturity, knowing that she had to share the paschal road of the Lord Jesus.
Deliverance came through friendship and providence. In October 1730 Falcoia was consecrated bishop of Castellammare; and Bishop Nicola Guerriero of Scala invited a young Neapolitan priest, Alphonsus Liguori, to preach a retreat to the nuns. Alphonsus had heard the rumours about the "visionary nun," but after speaking with her at length he came away convinced. With his enlightened and decisive support, and with the unanimous consent of the community, the nuns of Scala embraced the Rule given to Maria Celeste on Pentecost, 13 May 1731, taking a habit of red and blue, the colours of Our Lord's own garments. Thus was born the Order of the Most Holy Saviour, which by papal approval in 1750 would take the title of the Most Holy Redeemer.
Her mission was not for her own daughters only. On the eve of the feast of St Francis of Assisi, 3 October 1731, she saw in vision Jesus with St Francis and with Alphonsus Liguori in an aura of glory, and was told that Alphonsus would be the founder of a new congregation of men; the next day a further vision showed her that congregation preaching the Gospel to the whole world. She told Falcoia, and she pressed Alphonsus himself, meeting all his scruples and exhaustion with insistence, certain that this was God's will. By March 1732 he was persuaded, and on 9 November 1732 the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer — the Redemptorists — was begun.
New crosses followed. Bishop Falcoia, though a supporter, governed with a heavy hand and began to insert his own ideas into the Rule, insisting that his version was substantially the same as the one she had received. Once he took away every copy of the Rule she had written; when the sisters asked for one he told them she could simply draw up another. Distressed at the thought of asking God again, she was comforted that night by a vision of Jesus, and in the morning wrote the Rule out afresh. When she continued to resist, ultimatums were laid down; Alphonsus, defending canonical obedience, was sent to bring her into line — "he was a little heavy-handed," she remarked — and their friendship was strained. She described this season in her Autobiography as a shipwreck. On 25 May 1733 she left Scala with her two blood sisters, Maria Illuminata and Maria Evangelista.
She went first to Nocera Inferiore, joining a conservatory of Dominican nuns, where Bishop Nicola de Dominicis esteemed her greatly and soon made her superior. Then, in 1738, she accepted an invitation to settle in Foggia, and on 19 March 1739 founded there the Conservatory of the Most Holy Saviour, living at last the project that had been revealed to her and taking up also the formation of the town's girls. For nearly two decades she guided her sisters and her pupils to bear daily witness to the memory of Christ the Redeemer. Alphonsus Liguori's regard for her returned, their friendship healed; she was also a friend of St Gerard Majella.
From her youth she had felt strongly the call to holiness and to mystical marriage with Christ, a demanding Bridegroom, and she never ceased to seek radicality in consecration, conceiving the life of nuns as a perfect imitation of the life of Christ and the community as a living memory of his redeeming love for all. The Eucharist, the pierced Heart of the Saviour and devotion to the Virgin Mary were the permanent centre of her spirituality. God granted her supernatural gifts and mystical experiences which brought her, by her own testimony, a "happy beatitude" and great "sweetness," yet she fought daily, with firmness, the ordinary spiritual battle for perfection amid obstacles and misunderstandings. She stands as a luminous and consistent witness to consecrated life, an imitator of Jesus crucified, a "valiant woman" of biblical memory.
Maria Celeste Crostarosa died at Foggia on 14 September 1755, mourned by her sisters and by many who already venerated her holiness, a fame that endured through the centuries. Her spiritual writings were approved by theologians on 11 December 1895, and the beatification process was opened at Foggia on 11 August 1901. Pope Francis declared her Venerable for heroic virtue on 3 June 2013 and approved a miracle worked through her intercession on 14 December 2015. She was beatified at Foggia on 18 June 2016, Cardinal Angelo Amato presiding in the pope's name.
May Blessed Maria Celeste Crostarosa obtain for us the grace to bear misunderstanding with her patience, and so to contemplate the Redeemer today that our lives become living portraits of his love.
