Saint Who?
Saints Who Were Poets
Saint Mariam of Jesus Crucified
Religious († 1878)Feast: August 26
Mariam Baouardy, the “Little Arab,” was a miracle child for her parents, who had lost twelve children before her birth. A Greek-Melkite Catholic, Mariam wanted from an early age to give her life to God, whom she encountered in the beauty of creation.
Mariam’s parents died when she was two, and the girl was so mistreated by her relatives that she sought help from a family servant. He proposed she convert to Islam. Her refusal infuriated him, and he tried to kill her. In fact, she recalled a sensation of leaving the earth and traveling to paradise. But she was brought back to health, personally tended by a mysterious woman dressed as a nun, whom Mariam believed to be the Virgin Mary.
Mariam became a lay sister with the Carmelites. Though almost illiterate, she was able to compose beautiful poems that are full of love and praise: “Everyone is sleeping. And God, so full of goodness, so great, so worthy of praises, is forgotten!… no one thinks of him! See, nature praises him; the sky, the stars, the trees, the grass, everything praises him; and man, who knows his kindness, who should be praising him, is sleeping! Let us go and wake the universe up!” Sister Mariam died at thirty-two in Bethlehem, and was canonized in 2015.
O God, sustained by your power, may we see you
in your creation and persevere in your service.
