Our devotion to Mary Bambina can be traced to a crucial event in Taormina. Fr. Teodoro Tusino recalls:

A hive of about 600 bees donated by Father Anthony Catanese was in the courtyard. On the morning of July 26, 1906, people went to open the beehive but found it empty. Mother Carmela D’AmoreD’Amore informed the Father, who smiled at the news.

The same morning, the sister sacristan was putting things in order when she found a little statue in such an unrecognizable state that she mistook it for Saint Anthony. She brought the statue to the Father when Mother D’AmoreD’Amore informed him about the empty hive. When the Father saw the statue, he exclaimed, ““Oh, this is not Saint Anthony, but Mary Bambina! Addressing the mother superior, he added, “She is the queen bee, and our souls are the bees.”

The Father brought the statue to Messina, made the painter Salvatore Ferro restore it, and the sisters of the Holy Spirit dressed it as a queen. Then the statue was brought back to Taormina. On the night between September 7 and 8, “he sounded the reveille at 11:15 p.m. The community entered the sacristy to pray before the divine Bambinella. Then the statue was brought in procession with candles and songs through the house and was placed in its niche. With the joy of the orphans and accompanied by the harmonium music, we prayed to Immaculate Bambina” in the open loggia. The sky was serene. The candles lit before the sacred statue burned in the still of the night”” (Vol. 35, page 16, see S.C. Vol. 5, page 237).

The color of the statue grew pale at the exposure to sunlight. The Father had it restored again in August 1908. After announcing the statue’s return to Taormina, the Father brought it a few days before November 21, the feast of the Presentation of the most holy Virgin in the temple, to excite his children’s enthusiasm. But, the Bambinella was not the same any longer; she had grown up, wearing a pretty dress with the attitude of blessing with her little hand. The Father expounded his plan to the community. The Bambinella was already three years old; he wanted to commemorate her presentation in the temple, where she lived for twelve years, according to an ancient tradition. Therefore, he made the sisters prepare a room for the Divine Superior. The room was called Conservatorio. The community members were given a Jewish name, and all of them should be at the service of the divine owner to counterbalance her hidden life in Jerusalem’sJerusalem’s conservatory.

On the evening of November 20, the Bambinella was brought to Saint Catherine’sCatherine’s church. The following morning she was accompanied to the institute by two persons who symbolized Madonna’s parents. The Bambinella was warmly welcomed and brought to the altar as soon as they entered the church. Everyone can imagine how the Father fervently greeted her, inviting her to dwell in that house amid her daughters and slaves of love… We quote two strophes the Father wrote on that occasion.

Hail, loving Bambina,
Mystic tuberose
The empyreal fields
Make gloze.
Your fragrances breath
The virtues divine
Which the souls refine
To the heavenly wreath.

O tender child, are you coming
In your celestial coat?
O longed for, talk to us
With your holy note!
Make us share a gleam
Of your pretty face;
With your divine grace
Your daughters will be supreme.