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MARIAM BAOUARDY

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

 

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Upon the death of their parents, according to 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-to-do situation who after a few years will move to Alexandria in Egypt. The two little brothers will never see each other again.

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

The most delicate and intimate episode of hers was certainly the one that happens to her on one occasion, it is a small domestic incident. The little girl had been given some little 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 little birds died.

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While she was burying them, she felt her heart flutter in spite of her, but an interior voice tells her: “Look, everything happens! But if you want to give me your heart, I will always stay with you.

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

On another occasion, a venerable pilgrim arrived and, as usual, stayed at the house, 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 of her.» to this girl!”

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

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In reality, she grew up as an angel, her greatest wish being to make her First Communion. She managed to do it a few years ahead of schedule because, by insisting with the priest, she had managed to elicit a distracted yes from him, to which the little girl, almost eight years old, promptly obeyed.

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When Mariam reaches puberty – as usual she was already engaged to a distant relative, without even knowing it – she was told that the time for marriage had come: The groom arrives 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 years old she could not pronounce another yes

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

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The day her husband showed up for the ceremony, and everyone expected Mariam to come out of her room adorned with precious dresses and jewels, she showed up with her long hair cut and placed on a tray along with her jewels. Prayed.

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Her uncle’s anger was so great that the young Ella was sent to the kitchen along with the household slaves subjecting her to her own vexation. And the confessor – who did not understand anything about her – went as far as denying her absolution and forbidding her communion.

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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 evening, secretly, she took it to a Muslim servant she had met at her uncle’s house and that she was to leave for Nazareth.

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The servant knew the adventures and the sufferings of the young woman. When she arrived all busily, 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 about the latest events. The man was getting more and more angry, he said that Christians had no heart, he exhorted the girl to abandon her co-religionist, and she even offered him her own house…

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

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

It was September 7, 1858.

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

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Later, a voice had told him: «Your book has not been finished writing» so he found himself in a grotto where he spent several days suffering from fever, assisted by a young woman, who seemed to be a nun and who wore a light blue veil . She cared for 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.

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Usually, she Mariam did not claim to have been assisted by the Virgin Mary, she showed only the scar of a length of ten centimeters and a centimeter wide that crossed her neck.

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

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

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Mariam’s adoptive family was convinced that this strange and disobedient daughter had escaped and Mariam never came back to look for her.

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Thus, 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 she ended up caring for a sick and destitute family for which she herself had to beg.

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She was not without adventures, dangers, humiliations, but she always seemed to be protected by someone.

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In 1863 she accepted the invitation to enter the novitiate of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, even if she had nothing to offer but her love for God and her willingness to perform the most humble tasks.

She gladly offered herself for all the heavy work. «Do this, because I have time» she said in her poor French, while she made an effort to precede her companions in fatigue.

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

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Most of her time was spent in the kitchen or in the laundry room.

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

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

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

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

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They advised her to enter a Carmel, thinking that her closure could better protect her from the world’s curiosity.

She thus arrives at the Carmel of Pau, in the Basses-Pyrenees, being introduced by the former novitiate mistress with the resounding affirmation: “this Arabita is a miracle of obedience”. She takes the name Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified.

Hadn’t the Apostle Paul already written, in effect, «that he wanted to know no 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 did not know anything else”.

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

But nevertheless, the rest was a fabric of prodigious things.

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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 and convinced that she would be defeated by her dream and was distressed by the fact that she could not resist.

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She sometimes she confessed to not knowing

She told the Superior: “In prayer I have no distractions, but I can’t 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 ashes… and we still have the courage to offend you! Oh my God, have mercy on us… and then I lose myself and fall asleep.”

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And she continued: “If later 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 get lost and fall asleep: impossible to continue… How should I confess this fact that I cannot continue?”

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The stigmata always began to bleed again on the day in which the passion of the Lord was commemorated, a wound had also opened on his side, just like that of Christ wounded on the Cross. White cloths were placed on 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 Salvador» 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 he seemed to know, it is not known how, all the sufferings that afflicted the Church in the various parts of the world, and he even sensed some physical dangers that threatened to the people who were around the Pope.

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

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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.

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

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What impressed her was the candor typical of a girl who knows no malice, to which was added boundless generosity, she did not know how to mince herself when someone needed her, and her mortification seemed natural to her.

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Inwardly, on the other hand, 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.

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The devil tried in every way to convince her of her sin, of her unworthiness, of her infidelity, of her lack of vocation, he drove her to despair and sometimes forced her to behave so strangely which she was not used to; in those moments she was reduced to nothing in the most humiliating sense of the term.

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Very hard battles lasting months were unleashed in her, struggles during which the devil, causing her atrocious suffering, tried to wrest some complaint against God from her mouth, and Mariam stubbornly refuted saying: «Oh Jesus, I’m sorry I don’t suffer enough for You».

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They were forced to subject her to exorcisms, during which the arabita seemed to be abandoned in the hands of the devil, however he never managed to overcome her.

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Once, Satan was heard sarcastically yelling, «Now tell the white body to come and canonize her.»

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

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Satan shouted:

– God does not exist!

And Mariam refuted:

«But I see it in creation, I see it in the trees that grow…»

-No church exists!

“But 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 fight between God and Satan, which agitated this daughter of the East (as old Job once did) and she, without culture, simple as a girl, responded with her easiest catechism: that of the nature and the sacraments.

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

Then Mariam would say: “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 attached to anything, it never gets angry, and it is happy, happy, it goes everywhere happy, satisfied with everything… Blessed are the little ones”.

They called her spontaneously: “La arabita”

 

Repeatedly she had this vision: she saw a three-year-old girl 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 hold her in my arms, but she doesn’t know» «She doesn’t know» – reprimanded Mariam – «Ah if it were me, I assure you I would know and I would be happy». Later she told Master with a certain tone of envy: “That baby didn’t even look at me. She did not look at anyone other than Jesus. And Jesus always looked at her!”

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It was the way in which Jesus explained these words of the Gospel to him: “If you do not become as little children”.

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

 

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“Holy Spirit inspire me

Love of God consume me

lead me on the right path

Mary Mother of God look at me

With Jesus bless me

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

And she said that the world was in a bad way because Christians had long forgotten to pray to the Holy Spirit. Even the priests seem to have forgotten it.

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On August 21, 1870, together with a small group of eight Mariam sisters, she 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 position of Prioress will also die.

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

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

 

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

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During the ecstasies she often participated in spirit in everything that happened in the Church: Mariam spiritually moved 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.

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But the 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 intermittency that God allowed to completely purify her and to keep her fully aware of her nothingness.

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They accused her of being a visionary, of procuring her stigmata herself, injuring herself with a knife, of having a very exalted oriental imagination, of not being sufficiently transparent with her Superior. The Bishop came to convince her that she really was not a saint. And that maybe she was just a demon.

 

 

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 her daughter’s love.

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Satan even managed to make her commit her faults, although if it is true only externally. They were serious offenses against her Rule, because she was a prodigy of obedience.

Jesus warned Mariam in advance: “I see you and enough is enough. Don’t say anything, keep quiet»

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She seemed to him to be submerged in a lake surrounded by serpents.
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She loved nature and intensely felt its charm and despite being illiterate, sometimes in ecstasy, she composed beautiful poems in the oriental manner, also inventing strange and sweet melodies to sing them.

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One very early morning, on June 28, 1873, the Prioress found her in ecstasy, sitting on a small bench in front of an open window: «Mother – Sister Mariam tells her – everyone sleeps and no one thinks of God who 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!

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Let’s wake up the Universe!

Jesus is not known, Jesus is not loved!…”

When she felt the sadness of distance from God, they heard her pronounce prayers similar to biblical psalms, with the same rhythm and similar beauty, but they were composed by her, she who could neither read nor write.

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Here are some verses from a long “penitential psalm” composed by her in a single stroke:

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«Lord, my land is dry and burned,

Shower me with your frost.

My flesh goes in corruption

And my feet can’t hold me

And my hands can no longer move.

my paralyzed nerves

my dissected bones

And the marrow of my bones is like polluted smoke.”

And here is a psalm of contemplation:

What can I compare myself to, Lord?

with the little featherless birds in their nest,

if the father and mother do not give them their food

they starve

So my soul, Lord

without you

I have no support

I can not live.

What will I compare myself to, Lord?

With a small grain of wheat, buried in the ground.

if the dew does not design it

and the sun does not heat it

the grain withers and dies.

But if you give it away

with the sweetness of the dew

and the warmth of your sun

of the little seed

full of lymph and vigor

roots will sprout

and a stalk will germinate

strong in abundant fruit.

What will I compare myself to, Lord?

With a cut rose

that instantly withers in the hand

and lose its scent.

But attached to its stem

stays fresh and bright

intact in its aroma.

Keep me in You, Lord,

and communicate your life to me!

What shall I compare you with, Lord?

With the dove that provides food for her little ones,

with a tender mother

that feeds the creature from it.”

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Legal experts have affirmed that Mariam seems to become in her poetry “a dazzling juggler of images”.

She had a life that everywhere overflowed with extraordinary phenomena, and yet she recommended to everyone: “God free us from such extraordinary states, faith is enough for us; in faith there is no pride. I value so much the grace of being poor and ignorant, because it makes me understand the goodness, the mercy of God, Who, being great, wants to take care of me. It seems to me that if I were in an extraordinary state I would not want to stay even three months in the same city, I would travel all over the world so as not to be known”.

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To a Bishop who showed his curiosity about extraordinary phenomena, he says:

«Monsignor, Jesus charges me to tell you: do not stay in the extraordinary»

If they come to tell you: The Holy Virgin appears here or there, or in that place there is an extraordinary soul… don’t go… it’s not worth it…

The Lord tells you: Root yourself in the faith, in the Church, in the Gospel, but if you go to consult this and that, relying on the extraordinary, your faith will weaken.

I tell you from the Lord: If you stick to the Faith, to the Gospel, He will always be with you and he will never abandon you… ”

On her part, Mariam never spoke of ecstasy and visions, she spoke of dreams and signs, and accused herself of them as if they were guilt.

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She fought against her ecstasy, and said simply: «Jesus pulls me on one side and I pull on the other so as not to let myself be overcome by sleep.»

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The ecstasies occurred while she was washing the dishes or while she was eating or during recreation, or while she was doing the laundry: “Sometimes it was observed –says a sister- how the lingerie that she washed, before our eyes, turned very white in her hands”

Now we are going to find ourselves before facts so wonderful that they cannot be explained in any way but rather they reveal to us the Will of God that wants to have fun with our incredulity, with the human claim that sometimes tries to tell God what he can do and what he can do. cannot do, this is possible and that is not.

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

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

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They hear her sing a praise of love to God and her voice comes from above. They raise their eyes from her and find her on the top of a gigantic lime 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 her out of obedience to descend, and she descends slowly, without hurting herself, with simplicity and great modesty, simply supporting her feet from branch to branch and continuing her song.

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The ascent is repeated before the eyes of several witnesses, on July 9, 19, 25, 27, 31 and August 3, 1873; These are not fables handed down from ancient times, they are sworn statements by eyewitnesses, in an era in which positivism and scientism prevail.

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When the Prioress questioned her, she replied that Jesus held out his hands to her and she should climb up from it. In fact, the phenomenon happened like this: She touched with one hand the little leaves on the edge of the lime tree, those weak branches that would have yielded to the weight of a little bird, and quickly she rose high, almost sliding on the surface of the tree.

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Only once, it happened that when the prioress ordered her to go down, she lingered a little on a branch, almost disgusted to have to move away – and at that very moment she had to start descending with her own strength and with a lot of fear and caution. , while saying sighing: “It’s gone. She lets me go down alone”

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Sometimes the phenomenon lasted about four hours. When her ecstasy ended she didn’t remember anything. She woke up at the foot of the lime tree. Sometimes, her sandals or the long rosary that she wore around her waist, would hang, tangled in the highest branches (as a visible sign to all of what had happened) and she would later worry about not finding them. . It seemed strange to her that they made her find a new pair of sandals at the foot of the linden tree, but because of her obedience, all her sisters kept silent, she never knew that these ascents happened when Jesus made her dream.

She seemed to live in a world of fable.

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

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The difficulties seemed insurmountable, either because of the doubts of the Patriarch of Jerusalem or because of the determined opposition of the Congregation for Propaganda FIDE, despite the fact that Mariam counted precisely on the friendship of the Pontiff. In such a way that the nuns’ journey to the Holy Land comes directly from them.
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