Saint Who?
Saints Who Founded Communities
Saint María Maravillas
Relgious († 1974)Feast: December 11
María de las Maravillas was born in Madrid. The lively little girl was also deeply spiritual and later recalled: “I received the grace of vocation at the same time as the use of reason…; I have never known the slightest shadow of a doubt about it during my entire life.” However, family needs forced her to postpone her entrance into religious life until she was almost thirty.
She joined the Carmelites, and while still a novice heard a call to found a new monastery. She founded the Cerro de los Ángeles (Hill of the Angels) convent two years after her final profession. In the years that followed, she started many more convents, which were always bursting with vocations.
She was wholeheartedly a Carmelite and loved the teachings of Teresa of Ávila, whose rule she followed strictly as prioress of her various foundations. When some suggested that the hardness of the life might discourage vocations, she responded that even if their convents fell down, the Carmelites would go on. She began the Association of Saint Teresa, a union of convents committed to faithful observation of the saint’s rule. She died in 1968. It is said her last words were, “What happiness to die a Carmelite!” Paul VI approved the statutes of the Association of Saint Teresa in 1972, and in 1990 John Paul II made it into a formal Discalced Carmelite Constitution.
Eternal Father, through the intercession of
Saint María Maravillas, grant us a firm and lasting appreciation for our vocations.
