Carmelite tradition records the final words of St. Teresa of Avila: “My daughters and my ladies, for the love of God, I beg that you will take great care with the keeping of the Rule and Constitutions, for if you keep them as faithfully as you ought to, no other miracle will be needed for your canonization.” Faithfulness to the austere beauty of Teresa’s rule was indeed a cause for canonization for a little-known modern saint, Mother Maravillas de Jesus (1891-1974). At Maravillas’ canonization in 2003, Pope John Paul II declared that she was “motivated by a heroic faith that shaped her response to an austere vocation, in which she made God the center of her life.”
St. Maravillas’ vocation helped her face down the guns of Spanish Communists, found almost twenty Carmels, and stand against the winds of religious change and innovation that blew hard in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Maravillas—whose name means “wonders”—is a perfect saint for our own trying times due to her intense faithfulness and trust in God, even when all seemed hopeless. …
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