Miriam Teresa Demjanovich (1901-1927)

Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, a Sister of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, was born 26 March 1901 in Bayonne, New Jersey USA. She was baptized and confirmed in the Byzantine-Ruthenian rite of the Church on 31 March 1901. The youngest of seven children, five of whom survived infancy, she was the daughter of Alexander and Johanna (Suchy) Demjanovich, immigrants to the United States from the area now known as Eastern Slovakia. After high school she wanted to join the Carmelites, but she had to take hcare of her sick mother. After her mother’s death, she attended the College of St. Elizabeth in Convent Station, New Jersey, graduating in 1923, For a year she taught at the Academy of Saint Aloysius in Jersey City.

In 1925 she joined the Sisters of Charity. As a postulant and novice, Teresa taught at the Academy of Saint Elizabeth, Convent Station. In June, 1926 her spiritual director, Father Benedict Bradley, OSB, asked her to write the conferences for the novitiate. She wrote 26 conferences which, after her death, were published in a book, Greater Perfection. In the final section she wrote:

Union with God, then, is the spiritual height God calls everyone to achieve – any one, not only religious but any one, who chooses, who wills to seek this pearl of great price, who specializes in the traffic of eternal good, who says ‘yes’ constantly to God…The imitation of Christ in the lives of saints is always possible and compatible with every state of life. The saints did but one thing – the will of God. But they did it with all their might. We have only to do the same thing; and according to the degree of intensity with which we labor shall our sanctification progress.

On 20 December 1926 Teresa had tonsils removed at Saint Joseph Hospital in Paterson, New Jersey. In January, 1927 Teresa was admitted to Saint Elizabeth Hospital in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Sister Miriam Teresa’s religious profession was made in articulo mortis (danger of death) on 2 April 1927; she was operated on for appendicitis on 6 May 1927 and died on 8 May 1927. Her funeral was held 11 May 1927 at Holy Family Chapel in Convent Station, New Jersey and she was buried at Holy Family Cemetery on the grounds of the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth.

The League of Prayer was founded in 1946 to honor the Blessed Trinity through the Immaculate Heart of Mary by spreading knowledge of Sister Miriam Teresa’s life and mission and by working for her Cause. The Ordinary Processes of the Cause for the Sainthood of Sister Teresa (the process which takes place with the diocese)were completed in the 1970s. Testimonies of the Apostolic Process were held from 18 May 1981 to 18 December 1981. The final portion of the Positio super virtutibus (report about virtues) was brought to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. A miracle, restoration of perfect vision to a boy who was legally blind because of macular degeneration, was investigated by the Newark Archdiocesan Tribunal. Subsequently, on 8 July 2005 a ceremony at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, New Jersey marked the end of the investigative process for Sister Teresa’s beatification. Documents were sent to the office of the Apostolic Nuncio in Washington, D.C. and sent from there to Rome.

(Adapted from the Vincentian Wiki website)