Exhausted and feverish, Mary Mazzarello arrived at Mornese in early April. After a few days rest in her invigorating native air, enjoying the new burst of life that made Mornese with its vineyards and hillsides a veritable garden, she felt much stronger and got up from bed maintaining that she was no exception in the house and had to do her work along with the other Sisters. For several days she stubbornly followed the routine of the community, rigorous in its demands for a sickly convalescent till, finally, her resistance broke down and she collapsed. The doctor analyzed it as a relapse into pleurisy and recommended absolute rest.

But Mother Mazzarello knew her days were numbered: Death was knocking at the door of the Superior. There was little time to lose now, and she used every moment in prayers or in the care of Sisters, the needs of the houses, and the individual problems of those who daily came to her with their troubles. To all, she was ever the considerate sympathetic mother, hiding her own pain in solicitous regard for her daughters giving her undivided attention to every detail.

Toward the end of April, she steadily grew worse. No remedies brought her relief. Her only comfort in the long days and nights of pain was the thought of our Blessed Lady, to whom she would pray aloud or even sing hymns in a soft undertone. She asked for the Last Sacraments and followed the ceremony and prayers attentively. At the end she looked at the priest and asked cheerfully, "Now that all my papers are in order, I suppose I may leave at any time at all?"

But for three more weeks she lingered on often in pain, always in prayer. One particular evening she became so weak that she thought it was the end and called the superiors of the Congregation to her. Gasping for a few painful breaths of air she whispered her last counsels:

"I am afraid jealousies will crop up among you after my death, envy of a younger Sister who may be placed as Superior. Remember that Our Lady is Superior of this Congregation. Always obey the one who receives the task of leading. And, secondly, always help each other, but let your spiritual guidance be in the hands of the one appointed for that purpose."

The strain was too much for her feeble frame. She drew a deep breath and muttered, "Oh if I could only explain myself! But I cannot."

Finally, in a soft undertone, she sighed. "The Sisters must not leave the world only to build up a new one of their own in the Congregation! And then they say they desire Christ! Dear Lord, if they only knew You as I know You now!"

The few days remaining of her earthly life Mother Mazzarello passed in prayer and final words of counsel. As she lay on her deathbed, resolving to make use of every second left to her, her resoluteness was so reminiscent of the hardy peasant girl of Mornese who persisted in her stubborn determination never to yield to anyone or to anything! Not even illness or death!

But, if her sickness was marked by an enviable calm, the last hour of her life was tortured. It was three o'clock on the morning of May 14, as the mountain ridges outside her window were scarcely outlined against the first haze of a spring sky, that Mother Mazzarello entered her purgatory of spiritual agony. She moaned and tossed about, uttering prayers to Our Lady, trying to boost her trust in God.

"Don't give in, Mary," she pleaded with herself. "Where is your courage? Tomorrow you are going to begin the Novena to Mary Help of Christians. You must not give in! Take heart! Come, sing Mary's praises!"

Then straining every nerve and muscle, in a feeble and broken voice she painfully sang a hymn to Our Lady. With that, the struggle was over. As the hymn died away on her lips, she sank back in restful sleep.

The priests and sisters about her began the Church's prayers for the dying. As they neared the end, she feebly raised her hand and whispered, "Good-bye. I am going now. I will see you in heaven." With the names of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph on her lips, she paid her last tribute of obedience to the Divine Will, in utter confidence of his limitless mercy.

Sunset and rest came early for Mother Mazzarello, just in the midst of her day. But at the age of forty-four, she had lived a complete life, had carried out all the work God had assigned to her, and was ready to return her Divine Master.

The peasant girl of Mornese became the Mother of a congregation of Sisters that today covers the globe and numbers thousands. On that religious body of self-sacrificing souls is stamped the indelible character of Mother Mazzarello's humility and in each one of the Sisters she lives again and continues her apostolate for the souls of girls. Thus, St. Mary Mazzarello walks today in the broad streets of European and American cities, in the jungle paths of the Amazon, on the sun-drenched deserts of Africa, in the mudflats of India, in the mountain recesses of the Andes. She lives a Citizen of the World, for there is no death for God's Saints!

In 1936, Pope Pius XI, proclaiming the heroic nature of Mother Mazzarello's virtues, aptly summarized her remarkable life thusly: "Here is a woman of simplicity, extreme simplicity - a simplicity as pure as that of the simple elements, as simple and unmixed as gold without alloy!

"The characteristic mark of Mary Mazzarello is her humility, a profound consciousness and continual remembrance of a lowly birth, a plain way of life, and her work. She was but a peasant girl, a village seamstress, endowed with the most elementary education, one that lacked all the refinements we generally associate with the term. There was in her only that simplicity which God had predisposed in such an elect soul."