Flora Cantábrica

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MARIAM BAOUARDY

 

María de Jesús Crucificado, is a Catholic saint who was a nun of the Order of Discalced Carmelites

 

On the death of their parents, according to the Eastern custom, the children were distributed among their relatives: Pablo was adopted by a maternal aunt who lived in a neighboring town and Mariam was adopted by a paternal uncle, from a well-off situation, who after some years will move to Alexandria in Egypt. The two little brothers will never see each other again.

 

We know almost nothing about Mariam’s childhood, only a few memories that she herself will tell us later, of which she always reveals a particular heavenly protection.

 

The most delicate and intimate episode was certainly the one that happens once, it is a small domestic incident. The little girl had been given some birds in a cage, she wanted to take care of them but she was not able to do so and pretending to bathe them as babies are bathed, all the birds died.

……….

As she buried them, she felt her heart stir with regret for her, but an inner voice tells her: “Look, everything happens! But if you want to give me your heart, I will always remain with you «

She was still very small, but she will never forget that voice.

 

On another occasion, a venerable pilgrim arrived and, as usual, stayed at the house, and lo and behold, when he meets the girl, looking at her full of a strange emotion, he implores: “Take care of this Girl, I beg you, take care to this Girl! «

…………

Many years later, when Mariam will tell this story, in his infinite humility he will explain: “Perhaps this holy man, sensing my sins, would feel concern for the salvation of my soul!

 

 

Actually, she grew up like an angel, her greatest wish being to make her First Communion. She managed to do it a few years earlier than planned because, by dint of insisting with the priest, she had managed to extract a distracted yes, to which the little girl, almost eight years old, readily obeys. When Mariam reached puberty – as usual she was already engaged to a distant relative, without even knowing it – she was told that the time to marry had come: the groom arrived bringing precious jewels and the family had prepared sumptuous embroidered dresses. But Mariam could not be at peace because that Voice that she had felt when she was a child («If you want to give me your heart, I will stay with you forever»), reminded her that she had already given her yes and now that she was thirteen she could not pronounce another yes.

 

The family could not understand it, they thought it was a temporary whim of which the girls are often victims, they called the priest and even the Bishop of the Community to explain the obedience he owed to his adoptive parents when dealing with a matter so important.

 

The day her husband showed up for the ceremony, and everyone was waiting for Mariam to come out of her room decked out in precious dresses and jewels, she showed up with her long hair cut off and placed on a tray along with her jewels. gold.

 

The anger of her uncle was so great that the young woman was sent to the kitchen along with the slaves of the house, subjecting her to her own humiliation. And the confessor – who did not understand anything about her – went so far as to deny her absolution and to forbid her communion

 

After three months of suffering, Mariam remembered her brother Pablo who was in Palestine and tried to contact him. She had a letter written and in the afternoon, secretly, took it to a Muslim servant whom she had met at the house of her uncle and who was to leave for Nazareth.

 

 

The servant knew the adventures and sufferings of the young woman. When she arrived, all busy, the family was about to start dinner, the Muslim’s wife and mother insisted that she stay for dinner, they treated her with courtesy, they asked her to tell them the latest events. The man became more and more angry, he said that Christians had no heart, he exhorted the girl to abandon her co-religionists, and even she offered him her own house ..

 

Back then, religious hatred was so violent and soon to ignite for nothing. Mariam reacts: “Muslim me? Never! I am a daughter of the Catholic Church and I hope to remain so throughout my life. «

 

 

Her response was a kick from the man that made her fall to the ground; then, blinded with rage, he drew his sword from her and slit her throat. To get rid of the corpse, they wrapped it in a sheet and dumped it on a dark path on the outskirts of town.

 

It was September 7, 1858

 

What happened later, we only know from the account made by Mariam many years later, when she was already a cloistered Carmelite holy nun: she said that it seemed to her that she entered Paradise where she had seen the Virgin and the saints and also her parents, and to the Glorious Trinity.

 

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Then, a voice had told him: «Your book has not been finished writing» so he found himself in a cave where he spent several days a victim of fever, assisted by a young woman, who seemed to be a nun and who was wearing a light blue veil. . She took care of her, fed her and made her sleep for a long time. About four weeks later, this nun had taken her to the Franciscan Church, leaving her there.

 

In general, Mariam did not claim to have been assisted by the Virgin Mary, she only showed the scar of a length of four inches and one centimeter wide that crossed her neck.

 

Sixteen years after the fact, a famous atheist doctor who will visit her in France, in Marseille, noting that she was missing some trachea rings, will say: “A God must exist, because no one in the world, without a miracle, could survive after a wound like this ”.

 

 

Only during an ecstasy that occurred on September 7, 1874, did she hear her exclaim: “Today my Mother was with me. Today I have consecrated my whole life to her … At night they had cut her neck and the next day Maria had me with her «

Mariam’s adoptive family was convinced of the escape of this strange and disobedient daughter and Mariam never looked for her again.

 

Thus, with barely thirteen years old, she becomes a poor servant, first in Alexandria, then in Jerusalem and then in Beirut. She preferred to choose poor families, and ended up taking care of a sick and destitute family for which she herself had to beg.

 

She did not lack adventures, dangers, humiliations, but she seemed that someone always protected her.

 

In 1863 she accepted the invitation to enter the novitiate of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, although she had nothing else to offer than her love for God and her availability to perform the humblest works.

 

It was cheerfully offered for all heavy work. «I do this, because I have time,» she said in her poor French, while she struggled to precede her companions in fatigue.

 

If she was corrected, she would say: “Sorry, I’m very bad. You pray for me ”. She supervised everyone: the sisters, the superior, the bishops and cardinals. And this will be her personal characteristic forever.

 

Most of the time she spent it in the kitchen or in the laundry room.

 

But between the stoves and the bleach, ecstasies and visions often followed one another. Between Thursday and Friday, on her hands and on her feet, bloody stigmata appeared that she considered a disease and she hid her wounds with great care, being ashamed of them.

 

As in Palestine, she had met the lepers, she believed she had contracted leprosy and she said to her superior: «Mother, do not come near me, otherwise you will contract my disease.» Be calm, my daughter, it is not probable that I will contract it! ”.

 

.. On Wednesday she asked to be able to extend her work, because she had to make up the time that she would lose «in the two days of illness». «Mother,» she said to the superior, «would you like to lend me a sister to help me finish the washing, because on Thursday and Friday I will be ill, and would I like to finish now?»

But, in 1867 – in the absence of the Mother General who understood and protected her – she was resigned by the Council of the Institute, since everything that happened to her upset the community a lot.

 

She was advised to enter a Carmel, thinking that closing her might better protect her from the curiosity of the world.

 

Thus she arrives at Carmel de Pau, in the Low Pyrenees, being presented by the former novitiate mistress with the forceful statement: «this Arabite is a miracle of obedience.» She takes the name of Sister María de Jesús Crucificado.

 

Hadn’t the Apostle Paul already written, in fact, «that he did not want to know anything other than Jesus and him crucified»? (1 Cor 2,2), and well for Sister Mariam this was a truth that was fulfilled to the letter: “I didn’t know anything else

 

he was twenty-one years old and showed only twelve, because she was so petite. She only knew how to do material work: cooking, washing and caring for the garden were her usual tasks.

 

Yet the rest was a fabric of wondrous things.

 

The ecstasies continued, but it was enough for the novitiate mistress to call her «for obedience» and all extraordinary phenomena were immediately interrupted.

 

On the other hand, she was ashamed of herself and was convinced that she was being overcome by her dream and she was distressed by the fact that she could not resist.

 

She sometimes confessed that she did not know how to pray.

 

She said to the Superior: “In prayer I have no distractions, but I cannot even finish the shortest prayer. I begin the Our Father and I remain in these words without being able to continue. I think: “Oh! My God, You so great, so powerful, You are our Father! You who are in heaven, while we are little worms, dust and ash … and we still have the courage to offend you! Oh my God, have mercy on us … and then I lose myself and fall asleep. «

 

… And she continued: “If afterwards I recite the Hail Mary, and I begin to say to the Virgin:“ You are so good, so good, oh my Mother! You the Mother of God and the mother of men! And we poor sinners! … ”and then I lose myself and fall asleep: impossible to continue … How should I confess this fact that I cannot continue?

The stigmata always began to bleed again on the day in which the Lord’s passion was commemorated, a sore had also opened on his side, like that of Christ wounded on the Cross. White cloths were placed over the wound to dry the blood, and on the cloth the blood stain took the shape of a heart on which a Cross appeared and sometimes the initials of «Jesus the Savior» could also be read. They are relics that are still preserved.

 

 

He felt an extraordinary affection for Pope Pius IX whom he called: «My Father», and seemed to know, it is not known how, all the sufferings that afflicted the Church in the various parts of the world, and even sensed some physical dangers that threatened to the people who were around the Pope.

n 1868, after the prayer, he made the Holy Father warn three times that the farmhouse closest to the Vatican had been mined. Nobody wanted to listen to her and on October 23 of that same year, the Serristori farmhouse in Borgo Vecchio exploded in broad daylight.

 

       Since then, in Rome they began to listen carefully to the messages that came from the Novice of Pau. Thus, thanks to her, three disasters were avoided, when the following year, during the celebration of the First Vatican Council, he warned that three sacred buildings had been mined.

 

This is how the Pope and the Cardinal Secretary of State were interested in her, Mariam will know how to take advantage of this situation to obtain directly from the Holy Father the permission to found two monasteries in Palestine, permits that the Roman Curia had continuously denied.

 

What impressed her was the candor typical of a girl who ignores malice, which was joined by boundless generosity, she did not know how to be squeamish when someone needed her and mortification seemed natural to her.

 

Instead, internally, she was tested by disintegrating forces. She said of feeling «a little nothing», but God allowed an inner struggle that was constantly sustained in her.

 

The devil tried by all means to convince her of her sin, of her unworthiness, of her infidelity, of her lack of vocation, he drove her towards despair and sometimes forced her to behave so strangely. which she was not used to; in those moments she was reduced to nothingness in the most humiliating sense of the term.

Very hard battles that lasted for months were unleashed in her, struggles during which the devil, causing her atrocious suffering, tried to extract some complaint against God from her mouth, and Mariam stubbornly refuted saying: «Oh Jesus, I am sorry that I do not suffer enough for You.»

 

They were forced to subject her to exorcisms, during which the arabite seemed to be left in the hands of the devil, however he could never overcome it.

 

Once, Satan was heard crying out sarcastically, «Now inform the white body to come canonize her.»

During the last and decisive battle, those present could only see Mariam, but they listened to this dialogue, since the demon spoke inside her with a horrible voice and she responded suffering, but with joy and certainty :.

 

Satan screamed:

 

– God does not exist!

 

And Mariam countered:

 

«But I see it in creation, I see it in growing trees …»

 

-No church exists

 

ut I contemplate his image in each fruit. If I open the fruit, I find the seed. If I open the tabernacle, Jesus is in the Eucharist «

 

Love does not exist!

 

«But I contemplate the law of love in all animals … I see it in the hen that protects her chicks under her wings.»

 

It was not a game, it was the ancient struggle between God and Satan, which agitated this daughter from the East (as in former times the old Job) and she, without culture, simple as a child, responded with her easiest catechism: that of the nature and the sacraments.

 

Then after the fight, God cradled her like a baby.

 

Then Mariam said: “The thought that I am nothing makes me jump for joy. It is so beautiful to be nothing … Humility is happy to be nothing, it is not tied to anything, it never gets angry, and it is content, happy, it goes everywhere content, satisfied with everything … Blessed are the little ones ”.

 

They called her spontaneously: «La arabita»

 

Repeatedly I had this vision: I saw a little three-year-old comfortably in the arms of Jesus, a girl similar to her, but at the same time completely different, and Mariam said to Jesus: “How happy this little girl is, you love her so much! » And Jesus answered: «Yes, I love her, look how I have her in my arms, but she doesn’t know it» «She doesn’t know it» – Mariam rebuked – «Oh if it were me, I assure you that I would know it and be happy.» Later she told Master with a certain envious tone: “That baby didn’t even look at me. She was not looking at anyone outside of Jesus. And Jesus always looked at her

 

.. Among others she had an intense devotion to the Holy Spirit – something that was very rare in those days. She used a prayer of her own, very beautiful that had flowed from her heart during meditation:

 

«Holy Spirit inspire me

 

Love of God consummate me

 

On the right path lead me

 

Mary Mother of God look at me

 

With Jesus bless me

From all evil, from all illusion, from all danger preserve me. Amen».

 

And he said the world was going wrong because Christians had long forgotten to pray to the Holy Spirit. Even the priests seem to have forgotten.

 

On August 21, 1870, she along with a small group of eight Mariam sisters was sent to India to found the first Carmelite Monastery in Mangalore.

 

Two nuns died during this long journey. Later, in Calcutta, the sister who was appointed to assume the post of Prioress will also die.

 

Of the three that remained, Mariam was still a novice and obtained permission to once again be a “sister convert”, that is to say, destined for the toughest and heaviest trades, since she was still unable to follow the choral reading of the breviary.

His extraordinary mystical experiences continued with the same rhythm and with the same intensity, but they did not prevent him from facing all the tasks consequent to a new foundation. Especially being in such a poor region.

 

 

In her kitchen, when she was seen with a radiant face, everyone understood that she was, as she used to say, «in the company of the One who had created heaven and earth.»

 

During the ecstasies she often participated in spirit in everything that happened in the Church: Mariam moved spiritually to the places where persecutions began, where some missionaries were killed (in China for example) and she described them as if she had truly been present; the most painful events found perfect correspondence in the news published by the newspapers later.

 

But misunderstandings came, both the Superior and the Bishop began to doubt this sister who alternated extraordinary manifestations of grace with moments in which it seemed indeed that the devil possessed her. An intermittence that God allowed of her to purify her completely and to keep her in full consciousness of her nothingness.

 

They accused her of being a visionary, of procuring her own stigmata, wounding her with a knife, of having a very exalted oriental imagination, of not being sufficiently transparent with the Superior. The Bishop came to convince her that she was not truly a saint. And that she maybe she just she was a demoniac.

 

And it was true that many times the devil returned to torment her, almost to the point of forcing her to deny God while God felt sure of the love of her daughter.

Satan even managed to make her commit mistakes, although it is true only outwardly. They were serious offenses against the Rule, peculiar to it that it was a prodigy of obedience.

 

To Mariam, Jesus warned him in advance: “I see you and that’s enough. Don’t say anything, keep quiet «

 

She seemed to him to be submerged in a lake surrounded by snakes, now the Virgin said to him: “I am your Mother. I put you in this water. Do not move. You will not see me, but I will watch over you «

 

Always, when they hear about these diabolical possessions, believers feel confused because even in our time, the suspicion has spread that it may only be projections and psychological disturbances of those who believe they are possessed.

But later it is discovered with horror and ever more frequently, that there is no shortage of men in the world who serve the devil with rites of awesome wickedness, and invoke the expansion of his evil and destructive presence.

 

From which we can understand why God sometimes asks his saints to fight against this power that always seeks to sow hatred of God and men. Often these saints must suffer not only the torments caused by the devil, but also the sufferings that come from well-intentioned people who believe they have understood everything beforehand and want to explain everything with their supposed realism.

 

Well, Mariam is sent back to her Carmel of origin, in France.

He rebukes her simple conversational life, made up of so many jobs interrupted by prodigious episodes.

 

She She loved nature and intensely felt the charm of it and despite being illiterate, sometimes in ecstasy, she composed beautiful poetry in the oriental way, also inventing strange and sweet melodies to sing them.

 

One very early morning, June 28, 1873, the Prioress found her in ecstasy, sitting on a small bench in front of an open window: “Mother – says Sister Mariam- everyone sleeps and no one thinks God is so kind and so great … no one remembers Him. Look, nature praises Him, the sky, the stars, the trees, the grass, every creature praises the Lord, but man, who knows his benefits and should praise Him, sleeps! Let’s go!

On June 22, 1873, the sisters miss Mariam’s presence at dinner.

 

They look for her: She is not in the cell, neither in the cloisters nor in the garden.

 

They hear her sing a praise of love to God and her voice comes from on high. They look up from her and find her on the top of a gigantic linden tree, about 15 meters high, on the highest branches, so fragile that they would not have been able to support any weight. The prioress orders him out of obedience to descend from her, and she descends slowly, without hurting herself, with simplicity and great modesty, simply supporting her feet from branch to branch and continuing her son

 

At the same time and little by little the desire to found a Monastery in Bethlehem began to grow in his heart, exactly in the place where Jesus had been born, and where his parents had asked for the grace of his birth.

 

..The difficulties seemed insurmountable, either because of the doubts of the Patriarch of Jerusalem or because of the determined opposition of the FIDE Propaganda Congregation, however Mariam had precisely the friendship of the Pontiff. In such a way that the nuns’ journey to the Holy Land is directly authorized by Pope Pius IX himself.

 

In 1875 she Mariam she left for Bethlehem where she arrived accompanied by 8 sisters. She improvises herself as an architect, and master builder in the construction of the monastery: she chooses the site, buys the land, draws up the plans of the building, directs the workers and deals with the suppliers. On the other hand, she was the only one who knew the local language. But she without a doubt, she had an inner Guide that inspired her.

 

 

It was April 1878. The caravan was advancing towards Nazareth, and had reached the Latroun-Amwas grounds. When the cart stops for the change of horses, the Arabite begins to run quickly, making her way through the herbs and thorns, and reaches a clearing where some debris appears. They hear her exclaim: «Here it is, this is the place where my Lord ate with his disciples!» In short, she affirmed that the Emmaus meeting took place in exactly this place. At that time archaeologists had identified elsewhere the people of which the Gospel speaks.

 

On August 22, he was dragging 2 buckets of water down a steep path in the garden to feed the masons in charge of the maintenance of the monastery. He fell three times in a row, the last on a box of blooming geraniums, breaking his arm in several places between the wrist and the elbow.

 

The next day the gangrene had spread.