Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
St. Angela Merici, founder of the Ursulines, was born around 1474 in Desenzano, on the southwest shore of Lake Garda. This is an area in northern Italy. Geographically, it's part of Lombardy, but it was then part of the Republic of Venice. The town was small and clustered around a castle high on a hill.
The saint's family was of modest means and worked in the fields outside of town. In the evenings, families would gather at the fireside or in the stable and do light tasks as they talked. But St. Angela's father knew how to read, and when she was five, she listened to him read to the family about saints and virgins and began to model her own spiritual life on what she heard.
To imitate the hermit saints, she had heard about, one day St. Angela had decided to leave home with a sister to live in the desert, praying and doing penance. The family was worried when they found the girls missing, but they soon found them and brought them home.
St. Angela might have been about 15 when she became an orphan. Her parents and eldest sister all died within a short span of time. She went with a younger brother to live in Salò, with an uncle who was well off. This was a larger town 13 miles north. It too was on the western shore of Lake Garda. This could have been the beginning of a more comfortable life for her, but she wanted nothing of it. She sought penance and contemplation, not marriage and fine food.
One thing she did appreciate was being able to obtain a lot of holy books, which nourished her spiritual life. It's probably also in Salò that she became a Franciscan tertiary. The Friary of St. Bernardine was close to the house where she lived. As a tertiary, she had more access to the Mass, Confession, and Communion. At the time, the laity were not allowed to receive Communion frequently, and even monastic rules only allowed it 12 to 14 times a year. As a tertiary, St. Angela could receive Communion three times a year, at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.
On one occasion, she saw an angel of unimaginable beauty. But God enlightened her to recognize it as the tempter. She threw herself to the ground and said, "Go to hell, enemy of the cross, because I know I am not worthy to see an angel of God." And he promptly disappeared.
When St. Angela was 20, her uncle died. Because she considered the environment at Salò too worldly for her, she returned to the place of her birth. There was a piece of land that would have been her dowry if she had wanted to get married. She took this land for herself and began living on it.
In this period, Heaven revealed her mission to her. It was harvest time and there was a lot of work to do in the fields. After lunch, when the others would take a siesta, St. Angela would find an isolated spot to pray. One day, while elevated in prayer, she saw a heavenly procession. In it, there were young virgins who were singing, and each was accompanied by an angel playing an instrument. She recognized one of the virgins as someone she knew well, someone close to her who had died recently. This virgin turned to her and told her that she would found a community of virgins, which would spread.
She would not found one for many years, but she did begin teaching young girls. In 1516, she was invited to come to Brescia to stay with and console Catherine Patengola, a widow who had recently lost her husband. She also lost her three children. In that city, there were many poor girls who had little knowledge of the faith. So St. Angela began to gather them and teach them Christian doctrine and virtue.
Society was losing its Christian character, and St. Angela was convinced that a good way to restore it was to make good Christians of the wives and mothers of tomorrow. Others wanted to help her in this work, but she hesitated to found a religious order as God was calling her to do. The model of religious life for women in that day was close to life in a monastery. She thought it would be better for those who wanted to help her to remain in the world so that they could visit the sick, instruct the ignorant, and succor the poor.
She was not the only person who had come into the life of that widow with whom she was staying. Catherine's eldest son and a former servant had both died recently in the odor of sanctity. The servant had had the gift of prophesy and had become a nun in the Augustinian monastery of Santa Croce of the Holy Cross.
In that same monastery, when St. Angela arrived, there lived a saintly nun, Laura Mignani, and so St. Angela might well have met her. In 1522, St. Angela made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Blessed Osanna Andreasi, a Dominican tertiary, who was somewhat like St. Catherine of Siena. She was a contemporary of St. Angela, who had had the stigmata. She died in 1505 and was already venerated as a Blessed in Mantua by the time St. Angela made her pilgrimage there.
In 1524, she went on another pilgrimage, this time to the Holy Land, but she didn't see anything there with her eyes because when she got to Crete, she became almost completely blind. She continued her pilgrimage to the Holy Places and saw them with the eyes of her soul, as if she had seen them with the eyes of her body. After a few weeks, she returned to Crete, where her blindness was cured as she prayed before a crucifix.
1525 was a holy year, so she went to Rome for the indulgences. Pope Clement VII had heard of her holiness and of what she was doing to instruct girls, and he invited her to do this work in Rome. She declined and returned to Brescia because she was afraid that by working in Rome she would become too famous and fall victim to pride.
In 1531, She organized a group of twelve girls or twelve young women to help her. In 1535, the group had grown to 28, and she answered the call to found the Company of St. Ursula. St. Ursula was a virgin martyr with many companion martyrs, and had appeared many times to St. Angela. This was the first religious institute specifically for the foundation of girls. Before this, it was possible to put girls in a monastery to be educated by nuns, but not all families could afford that. Indeed, few families could afford that, and education wasn't the primary purpose of these monasteries.
St. Angela only had five years left in her life at this point to lead the Ursulines. As she felt death approaching, she dictated her spiritual testament, Counsels for the Sisters and the Rule. She died on January 27, 1540, leaving 159 sisters to continue her work.
St. Angela Merici's great innovation consisted in creating a monastic regime outside the cloister and with a minimum of communal life to make it possible to serve one's neighbor and be in constant contact with her. 
This foundress of a teaching order can also teach us something about Our Lady. She wanted her sisters to be true mothers for the children they taught. Explaining this in her spiritual testament, she said, "Mothers of children, even if they have a thousand, carry each and every one fixed in their hearts, and because of the strength of their love, they do not forget any of them. In fact, it seems that the more children they have, the more their love and care for each one is increased."
Surely, those who are mothers in spirit can and must act all the more in the same way, because spiritual love is more powerful than the love that comes from a blood relationship. Consider what this says about our Blessed Mother. She carries each and every one of us in her immaculate heart. The more children she has, the more her love and care for each of us are increased. She is the mother of every Christian and even of every human being, insofar as God wishes all to be saved in union with Christ and His Church. So, her love and care are increased by a factor of billions. And, since this is a spiritual love, her burning charity is far greater than natural love, because its strength comes from divine grace rather than human nature. How fortunate we are, then, to have such a mother in heaven.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.