Blessed Mariana de Jesús

Her mother did not delay in descending to the grave, leaving her twice orphaned. While dying, she entrusted this child, whom she cherished tenderly, to her eldest daughter, Dona Jeronima, married to Captain Cosme de Casso. Dona Jeronima spared no effort in the education of her little sister. Gifted with great intelligence, young Marianne easily learned everything she was taught; she excelled above all in music, and far from abusing her voice, which was very pleasant, she used it only to sing the praises of the Lord. What charmed her most was organizing small processions, performing the Stations of the Cross, and reciting the Rosary with her three nieces, who were about the same age as she. Having once seen the penitents of Quito carrying heavy crosse s dur Quito City of birth and ministry of the saint in Ecuador. ing Holy Week, the holy children immediately set about making similar ones. Having retreated to the corner of a courtyard where there was wood, Marianne suddenly pulled her nieces away from that place; they resisted, but Marianne insisted: no sooner had the young girls left than a section of the wall collapsed. Her good angel had warned her of the danger.

It was not long before new proofs of her love for penance and mortification were encountered. Once, she had slipped away from the eyes of her companions and ventured into a thick forest: she was found kneeling at the foot of a tree, flagellating herself with a thorn bush. Another time, her sister, while undressing her, found her covered in a hairshirt made of leaves armed with long barbs. On Fridays, she would lie down on a cross surrounded by thorns and nettles, so as to be awakened by the pricks whenever she moved during sleep.

From that time on, God was pleased to manifest through wonders His love for this heroine of penance. Having inflicted a serious wound on her finger, she hid it carefully in order to suffer more; but as gangrene threatened to invade the wound, one of her companions wanted to force her to consult a doctor. "Wait a little," said the child, "you will see how I heal myself." She threw herself on her knees at the feet of an image of the Blessed Virgin: when she rose, every trace of the ailment had disappeared.

Her sister, struck by so many signs of holiness, and especially astonished by the spiritual insights she discovered in a child, believed she should procure for her the happiness of receiving Communion, even though she was only seven years old. She th erefore had Père jésuite Religious order to which Peter Canisius belonged. her examined by a Jesuit Father: he was touched by her innocence, amazed by her understanding of the mysteries of the faith and her progress in the interior ways; he permitted her to approach the Holy Table. That was a beautiful day! Marianne felt this favor deeply, and the joy that overflowed from her soul shone even upon her face. Shortly after, she made a vow of perpetual chastity: this was undoubtedly by a special inspiration of God, for such an action, at such a tender age, deserves more to be admired than to be imitated.

Love desires to communicate itself: thus the young servant of God wished to win all hearts for God. With this thought, she formed with her companions the plan to go and evangelize the infidels; their flight was prepared, but their fine plans were discovered and they had to renounce them. Later, when Marianne was twelve years old, it was decided to go and lead an eremitic life on a mountain near Quito, in the shadow of a chapel of Mary, erected in other times to obtain from this good Mother that she might preserve the city from the scourge of volcanoes. This chapel was abandoned: what happiness they would have felt to form a small court for the Queen of Heaven, and to employ their hands and their hours of work to adorn the sanctuary! But Our Lord made it known to his servant that he did not approve of this project.

Her brother-in-law and sister, worried by this somewhat wandering spirit, resolved to place her in a convent to test her vocation. But Our Lord, who was calling her to serve as a model for virgins living in the world, revealed to her that he was not calling her to community life. Twice the preparations were made, and invitations were given to lead her, according to the custom of the country, in great pomp to the convent; twice, unforeseen circumstances prevented the Blessed one from entering. Marianne's confessor was consulted: he approved that she should lead a solitary life in her home. Everything that had been purchased to celebrate the entry into the convent was given to the poor.

An isolated apartment was prepared. Marianne said goodbye to the world and went to lock herself in, not without having removed the furniture with which it had been adorned, and having brought in others that were more to her taste: a coffin, in which lay a wooden skeleton surmounted by a skull, disciplines, hair shirts, crosses, and, in an adjoining cell, a small altar where statues of the Child Jesus and the divine Mary were placed.

It was at this time that she renewed her vow of chastity and pronounced particular vows of poverty and obedience. She no longer left her retreat except to go to church. She allowed herself only three hours of sleep on triangular pieces of wood; on Fridays, her bed was a cross strewn with thorns, or else she would take the place of the skeleton in her coffin. Rising every day at four o'clock in the morning, she devoted the first fruits of her day to the discipline; she then spent an hour in meditation, recited the canonical hours, then went to church at six-thirty to confess, hear Mass, and receive Holy Communion. From eight to nine o'clock, she strove to gain indulgences for the poor souls in purgatory. She then recited the rosary. Around eleven o'clock, she returned to her apartment. At two o'clock she recited Vespers, and made her examination, whether general or particular; she then worked in the presence of God until five o'clock. From five to six, spiritual reading and Compline. From six in the evening to one in the morning, various occupations and most often mental prayer, reading the lives of the saints.

Her fasts were so extraordinary that one would be tempted to find little discretion in them, if one did not know that there are elite souls whom the Holy Spirit visibly directs, and whom God wishes to give as an example to cowardly and sensual Christians who have such an aversion to penance. From a young age, Marianne had renounced meat, fish, and dairy products. She contented herself with bread, vegetables, and fruit; later, she restricted herself to a little bread, which she took around eleven o'clock, and finally it happened that the Eucharist was her only food for several days. This fact is not rare in the lives of the Saints. A glass of water that she took around nine o'clock was for a long time her evening meal; eventually, she even deprived herself of that. In the last years of her life, she submitted herself to the horrible torment of thirst, in order to participate more closely in the suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross. The Blessed one added to this torment by having water brought to her, which she would bring to her burning lips, and which she then had the courage to reject. For the same reason, she wanted to serve her relatives every day at mealtime, to see the dishes, to carry them, and not to touch them!

In the beginning, this abstinence, the mere thought of which makes one shudder, reduced the Blessed one to a state of frightening thinness and pallor. But when she noticed that her mortifications, written upon her features, attracted the veneration of the world, she prayed to the heavenly Spouse to restore the appearance of health to her. Jesus granted her prayer; her face was clothed with an angelic beauty, and no one could suspect the martyrdom she was inflicting upon her body.

This life, so mortified, was protected by the deepest humility and adorned with the rarest virtues. The inhabitants of Quito called her nothing but the Saint: she remained unaware of this for a long time. One day, as she was going to church, she heard a voice that said of her: "Here is the Saint"; a blush rose to her forehead and confusion entered her soul; she shed torrents of tears over the error of her fellow citizens regarding her. She increased her austerities to punish herself for the good opinion they had of her, and from then on changed streets to go to church; but the path was longer: it took all the authority of her confessor to force her to take the old one back.

The poor were her special friends, as they are of Jesus Christ and of all the Saints. When she served at the table, she was given her portion, which she immediately distributed to them. For them, she stripped herself of the little she had; when she had nothing left, she asked her brother-in-law for permission to take from his house; she obtained it and took full advantage of it.

But God, who never allows Himself to be outdone in generosity, increased the provisions as the Blessed one drew from them. She particularly nourished a widow, and kneaded with her own hands the bread that was necessary for her; for this, she took two ounces of dough: upon coming out of the oven, these two ounces became a two-pound loaf.

The Lord, to increase the merits of His faithful servant, visited her with bodily infirmities: she was afflicted with dropsy, which made her suffer cruelly, and thus gave her the opportunity to practice in an even more painful way the abstinence from drink that she had imposed upon herself. She took advantage of her illnesses to have blood drawn: this operation filled her with joy, because she was then uniting herself to Jesus Christ, shedding His divine blood for the salvation of the world. It is said that she was bled one hundred and fifty times in two years. One could not admire enough that a body as emaciated as hers could provide such an abundance of blood. A miracle undoubtedly restored to her what she gave up with intentions inspired by love for her suffering Savior. The servants threw this blood into a pit in the garden: it remained pure and vermilion there. After the death of the Blessed one, a lily of admirable beauty was seen growing near the pit, whose roots plunged into this very blood. This prodigy, which thus manifested the innocence of the servant of God, caused her to be called by her cont emporaries *the le lis de Quito City of birth and ministry of the saint in Ecuador. lily of Quito*.

It is well understood that the holy penitent must have been favored during her life with a great number of extraordinary graces. Unfortunately, the memory of them has not been preserved: she had begun to write down her visions, but on the order of her confessor, she burned what she had written. We only know that Our Lord appeared to her often, that in her ecstasies her soul flew to paradise, and that Sai nt Gertrude ann sainte Gertrude Saint to whom Odelard bequeathed his property in Nivelles. ounced her eternal happiness to her.

She also made several remarkable predictions and performed numerous miracles. We shall report a few examples of both.

One day she saw her nurse arrive. Without giving the latter time to open her mouth, the Blessed one said to her: "I know what brings you; my foster brother is at the point of death. Hasten to have him receive the Sacraments, for he will not recover." The young man did indeed die, and the Blessed one consoled the poor mother by assuring her that her son was saved. She predicted that her brother-in-law's house would become a convent, showed the layout, and specified that in the place of her apartment would be the nuns' choir; the thing came to pass when the Reformed Carmelites came to establish themselves in that h Carmélites Réformées Order established in the saint's former residence. ouse. Her niece Jeanne had entrusted her granddaughter to her while leaving for the countryside. One day, as the child was playing near the mules, she received a kick from one that shattered her head. The Blessed one had her carried into her cell: having begun to pray, she healed her so perfectly in an instant that one could only recognize the place where she had been struck by a thin line of blood under the epidermis. An Indian, who was in the service of the family, believed he had cause to complain about his wife's conduct. Blinded by jealousy, the wretch dragged her into a wood, overwhelmed her with blows, strangled her, and threw her into a precipice. The Blessed one had seen everything with the eyes of the spirit: she sent for a merchant she knew and asked him to go to such a place in the wood where he would find the body of an Indian woman and to bring it to her secretly. The body was brought; the Blessed one rubbed it with some rose leaves that were at hand, and soon the Indian woman had recovered her life, health, and strength. When she was asked who had assisted her in this horrible danger, she replied that Marianne had appeared to her as in a dream and had told her not to lose courage.

The end of the Blessed was what her life had been: an expiation for the sins of her brothers. In 1645, a terrible epidemic visited Quito and claimed a great number of victims. Dreadful earthquakes joined this scourge and increased the consternation. On the fourth Sunday of Lent, which fell on March 25, the Saint's confessor, a holy priest of the Society of Jesus, was preaching in a church in Quito: suddenly he felt inspired to offer himself as a holocaust to the wrath of God, announced his sacrifice to the audience, and exhorted them to appease the irritated heavens with worthy works of penance. The Blessed, who was in the church, rose, carried away by a movement of the Holy Spirit, and in a few fiery words offered in her turn her life for this desolate people! The earthquakes ceased that very day and the epidemic began to diminish. In return, Marianne found herself overwhelmed by several illnesses that led her rapidly toward death. Everyone inquired about her health; everyone would have liked to enter her cell to show her the veneration and gratitude of all. Only the bishop of the city was admitted.

They soon thought of administering the last Sacraments to her. At the thought that the divine Spouse was coming to visit her, she regained some strength and wished to receive Him on her knees.

Marianne had lived poor all her life; we have seen this. Not only did she give from her own surplus and that of her parents, but all the work of her hands was for the poor. She had never wanted to wear anything but a wool dress; and once, on the occasion of her first communion, her brother-in-law had given her a silk dress, she was so distressed at having worn it for a single day that it had to be taken back from her. This spirit of poverty and detachment animated her until her last breath. It is therefore believed that it was out of a spirit of detachment that she asked to leave her room, the only thing that belonged to her properly, and had herself carried to her niece's bed, so as to have nothing of her own at the moment she would leave the earth. She lost the power of speech three days before her death, but she retained all her presence of mind and all the ardor of her piety. Finally, exhausted by suffering, this virtuous daughter broke the last bonds of this mortal life and passed to the eternal nuptials, on a Friday, between nine and ten o'clock in the evening (May 26, 1645). She was twenty-six years, six months, and twenty-six days ol d. Saint Catheri Sainte Catherine Saint who predicted the hour of Marianne's death. ne had predicted the hour of her death to her, and she herself had shared it with those who surrounded her with their care during her final illness. The epidemic disease that afflicted Quito disappeared when the holy victim had breathed her last.

Crowds rushed to see her body one last time, and to obtain, as relics, some pieces of her clothing. She was buried on May 28, dressed in the habit of Saint Francis, accompanied by a large crowd that mourned her loss. The Jesuit church had the advantage of receiving the sacred deposit of her body. She had herself chosen her burial place with these religious, because of the trust and veneration they had always inspired in her. Happy is the country that possesses this tomb! Happy are those whom examples of such spontaneous penance will tear away from the seductions of the flesh and the world! The Blessed Marianne of Jesus de Parédès y Florés was beatified by His Holiness Pius IX, on the nineteenth Sun day after Pentecos Sa Sainteté Pie IX Pope who canonized Josaphat in 1867. t in the year 1853. One may rightly give the lily of the virgins as an attribute to our Blessed one. To distinguish her from the saints to whom the same attribute belongs, one could paint near her a garden where this flower grows in a pond. According to the continuators of Godescard (Lefort ed.) and Ribadeneira (Vivès ed.).