Venerable Sister Grace of Valencia

Nevertheless, seeing that the uncertainty and variety of her lodgings engaged her too much in distraction, she resolved to settle in a permanent dwelling to attend more freely to her holy exercises. This is why she asked a noble lady, named Hieronyma Monsarrad a, wife of Don Anton Hiéronyme Monsarrada Valencian noblewoman who hosted the saint in her home. io Matheo, who had often offered her a room, to be so kind as to let her lodge under the stairs of her house. This lady, delighted to house her, had a small room hung with tapestries, furnished it very neatly, and had a chest placed there filled with napkins, tablecloths, and sheets. She did not, however, dare to put in any chemises, because she knew very well that since the age of thirteen she had not used them. When Grace saw this preparation, she began to weep, and had no rest until she had had the tapestries, the mattress, the pillows, and the other bed furnishings removed, along with the table, the chairs, and all the other furniture that had been prepared for her, keeping for herself only a straw mattress that she had spread on the floor, a simple blanket, and a large stone that she had had brought in, which served her at once as a pillow, a table, and a chair. Finally, for all decoration, she asked only for three paper images: one of the Blessed Virgin, another of Saint Joseph, and the third of the great Saint Anthony, to w hom she had a very grand saint Antoine Saint to whom Grace had a particular devotion and whose temptations she also endured. particular devotion. She was not content to be so poorly accommodated in a house where she could have had all things in abundance; she still wished to live poor and beg every day for the needs of her life: for she rarely ate bread from the house where she made her dwelling. When she had received alms, reserving only a very little for herself, she carried almost everything to the bashful poor and the sick whom she knew to be in need. On the eve of great feasts, she ate only raw roots or vegetables, without any seasoning. During Advent and Lent, she took only one meal a day, which consisted only of a piece of the coarsest and driest bread she had begged. She never drank anything but water; and even then, it was only in small sips, for fear of satisfying sensuality: for she was very careful not to grant herself anything that might flatter her senses. Hence it is that, having imagined that sometimes, in the greatest heat of summer, she had taken pleasure in swallowing a few drops of fresh water, she felt such regret for having granted this innocent satisfaction to nature that, to expiate her fault, she imposed upon herself as a penance to go seven years without drinking either water or any other liquid: which she observed very faithfully, but not without a miracle.

Such was the life of the virtuous Grace, when the religious of the Order of Friars Minor began to spread, in the kingdom of Val encia, the good od royaume de Valence Place of Ismidon's early studies. or of their virtues. The new kind of austerity of the quadragesimal life that these religious profess by a solemn vow, and which removes from sensual Christians any pretext for not observing Lent and the other abstinences ordered by the Church, placing before their eyes men made of flesh and bone like them, who faithfully keep all their lives what they say they cannot keep for even a month; the poverty of their habits, which preached of itself penance and contempt for the vanities of the world, the recollection, the modesty, and the mortification that shone in them, made them looked upon not as common people, but as men entirely celestial. Grace had no sooner heard of it than she addressed herself to them and asked for the habit of the Third Rule that their holy patriarch had instituted. The reli gious, having l troisième Règle Religious order welcomed by Engelbert in Cologne. earned what her merit and virtue were, received her with great joy and rendered great thanks to divine Providence that, at the time their Order was being founded in the kingdom of Valencia, it sent them one of the holiest and most innocent souls that was then in the Church, to be its glory and ornament. The year of her probation having expired, she made her profession, to which she added the four vows that the religious of the Order make, namely: poverty, chastity, obedience, and the quadragesimal life. From that time, which was the year of Our Lord 1540, she believed herself obliged to imitate her Father perfectly, mainly in his mortification and in his abstinence; that is why she slept only on the pavement or on the floor of her room, and spent twenty-five whole years living only on flour mixed with a little water; and, from the age of ninety-one until her last illness, which is another twenty-one years, she abstained entirely from drinking. She was even sometimes four or five days without taking any other food than the bread of angels: we mean the holy Eucharist. A life so penitent and so austere should hardly have had charms to wish for its duration; the desire, nevertheless, to suffer more made Grace pray to God to leave her on earth at least as long as Saint Francis of Paola had lived, so that she could imitate him not only in the rigor, but also in the duration of her penance; this favor was granted to her beyond what she could hope for: for she lived one hundred and t welve years without any saint François de Paule A saint whose longevity and rigor of penance Grâce wished to imitate. serious illness, and always preserving, among her continual austerities, the same vigor of spirit that she had had in her youth, which is also remarked of that great Saint.

After her profession, her confessor, who was a religious of Saint Dominic, having advised her to follow the direction of the Fathers of the Order she had embraced, she chose as director the Reverend Father Ambrose of Jesus. This change obliging her to also change her dwelling, in order to approach the convent of the Friars Minor, from which she was too far away, she accepted the offer of Doctor Guardiola, who had a small cell built for her in his house. As it Ambroise de Jésus Franciscan religious and spiritual director of the saint. was opposite the door of the convent, she made advantageous use of this convenience, not only to confer with her director on the means of going to God with more perfection, but also to render her duties and respects more often to the holy Eucharist in the church of the Friars Minor. She usually attended all the divine offices there and heard the conventual mass every day, at which she never failed to communicate spiritually. As for sacramental communion, she made it on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday, in addition to the feast days that occurred during the week. The eve of her communion, she occupied herself only with the grace she was to receive the next day, and, to make herself less unworthy of it, she expiated her faults, although very slight, by disciplines that she took until she bled. When she received the holy host, it was with such violent transports of love that she sometimes remained for the space of several hours without movement or sign of life. She spent the rest of the day in an admirable recollection, in order to make the grace she had received bear fruit.

We have already seen that while still young she distinguished herself by her zeal for the sanctification of souls; the older she grew, the more she applied herself to this work, the holiest of all. She was mainly employed in preparing the sick to appear before God; which she did with such strength and unction that the most hardened would yield to her exhortations and give sensible testimonies of regret for their past lives, and it was so firmly believed in the city that she had this gift from God that, when nothing could be gained over the minds of the dying, one had recourse to her to try to lead them to a true contrition. She was usually very silent; but when the salvation of a soul was at stake, she then became eloquent, pathetic, affective, and all ablaze with the fire of divine love. God gave her, on these occasions, lights by which, probing the depths of hearts and penetrating the inner disposition of the persons she wished to convert, she knew how to go about it; so that she said nothing that did not strike home and imprint feelings of true penance. Her zeal also led her to comfort dejected and desolate spirits, to console the afflicted, to pacify disputes, in a word, to assist her neighbor in everything that could contribute to their happiness on earth and their eternal bliss in the other life. Her charity also extended to the dead: for she had extreme compassion for the pains endured by the souls in purgatory. She said many prayers and performed great austerities to obtain from the mercy of God their deliverance or some diminution of their sufferings.

The demon, unable to suffer the progress she was making in virtue, resolved not to leave her in peace, but to employ all his artifices to win some victory over her. Indeed, he delivered such furious combats against her that the historian of her life compares her temptations to those with which the great Saint Anthony was assailed by all the powers of hell. Sometimes he disturbed her rest with howls and horrible cries and with terrifying visio ns. Sometimes he ma grand saint Antoine Saint to whom Grace had a particular devotion and whose temptations she also endured. de monsters, wild beasts, serpents, and other animals appear before her eyes which, by their shuddering and furious postures, seemed to be about to swallow her up. Sometimes he appeared to her in the guise of young men who, by their lascivious and dishonest manners, solicited her to evil. At other times, to make her break her abstinence, he presented her with well-prepared meats and delicious wines. Finally, when he saw that all his stratagems were useless, he employed violence, and, presenting himself to her with an army of demons, he mistreated her horribly. But, far from Grace losing courage in the midst of these persecutions, she only became stronger; for, trusting entirely in God, she mocked the weak inventions of her enemies. "Go, cursed ones," she sometimes said to them, "I do not fear all your efforts, you will not separate Sister Grace from the grace of her God. I will always be, despite your persecutions, united with my dear Spouse Jesus Christ, your formidable judge. Grace is more powerful and stronger than all the infernal troops joined together; I defy them to combat, and I do not fear at all that they will do me harm, provided that I do not bear my name in vain, and that Grace the miserable one is not without divine grace. Go, traitors, return to the hells from which you came." At other times one heard her say: "What do you want, O traitors and infamous creatures, what do you want with a poor old woman who can do no more? You show your weakness well by attacking a fragile sex and a person burdened with so many years in this way. Out of here, cursed that you are! I command you, in the name of God, to withdraw to hell." She sometimes drove them away with these two or three words: "Jesus, Mary, Joseph; O holy Cross of my God!" However, although the demon always remained defeated, he did not cease to torment her until death; and one can judge from this the number of victories she won over him, since she lived one hundred and twelve years.

Having passed the hundredth year of her age, she became very frail; so that, no longer having the strength to go begging through the city, according to the vow she had made, her confessor deemed it appropriate that she should place herself in some house where she would be cared for; it was a great mortification for Sister Grace to relax her extreme poverty: but as no pious person was ever more submissive than she to her director, she obeyed him, and went to live with the lady Anne Carroz, daughter of Hieronymus Monsarrada, her former hostess, of whom we have already spoken, and where she spent the rest of her days in the faithful practice of her exercises. Finally, God, wishing to crown her long life on earth with eternal glory in heaven, she fell ill. As soon as it was known in the city, people crowded around her. They brought her excellent meats, expensive dishes, and all possible remedies to try to prolong such a precious life; but she sent everything to the hospital or to some bashful poor. One could never force her to take any bed other than her own, which was only the floor of her room, nor make her leave off her habit of coarse cloth, which, being stuck to her flesh, served her as a hairshirt rather than a garment. During her illness, she was visited by all the famous preachers and skilled directors in Valencia, each being curious to see the last breath of a person who was held to be a saint. The Rev. Fr. François Boldon, superior of the professed house of the Society o f Jesus, was on François Boldon Jesuit superior who visited the saint on her deathbed. e of those who visited her, and, in the conversation he ha Compagnie de Jésus Teaching order that educated Josaphat. d with her, he asked her this beautiful question: "Tell me, for charity's sake, servant of Jesus Christ, what medium is there between God and the human heart." — "There is no other," replied the sick woman, "than the love by which man approaches God and unites with Him." This answer satisfied the Father so much that he said to those who were present: "I am leaving so content and so edified by the conversation I have just had with this blessed daughter, that this alone would suffice to make me believe that she is truly a saint, even if I had no other knowledge of her merits and the graces that are in her."

Feeling that her last hour was approaching, she said to her hostess: "It is time for you to prepare what you please for my funeral, for the hour of my death has come." After saying these words, she changed her expression in an instant, and said to those present: "Eh! why are you standing? why do you not kneel? do you not see the Queen of heaven and earth entering, accompanied by a multitude of angels and blessed ones?" which she repeated twice. This vision having disappeared, she came to herself, her eyes bathed in tears. Finally, raising her hands to heaven and pronouncing from heart and mouth the most holy names of Jesus and Mary, she rendered her spirit to God at the same instant that the Angelus was ringing in the city, on January 16, 1606, the eve of the feast of Saint Anthony.

Her body was carried the next day, with great solemnity, to the church of the Friars Minor, where, after having remained for ten or twelve days exposed to the devotion of the people in the chapel of Our Lady of Victory, on the right side of the altar, it was placed in a sepulcher due to the liberality of the lord Baptiste Mathéo, who, having housed Sister Grace during her life, wished also to provide her with a tomb after her death.

We have extracted this biography from the General History of the Order of Friars Minor, composed by the Re v. Fr. d'Attieh R. P. d'Attiehy Historian of the Order of Friars Minor and Bishop of Riez and Autun. y, a religious of that Order, later Bishop of Riez and Autun.