Description

Oil Dedicated to Ven Mary of Agreda

Prayer:

 Heavenly Father,

We come before you with reverence and thanksgiving for the life and legacy of Ven Mary of Agreda, which continues to inspire us to deepen our devotion to you. May her example of purity, humility, and obedience lead us closer to your divine will, as we strive to live lives of holiness and virtue. Grant us the grace to follow her footsteps in proclaiming your truth and spreading the Gospel message with unwavering zeal.

Scripture:

“For with God nothing shall be impossible.”

Luke 1:37

The Ven Mary of Agreda is dedicated to the 17th century Spanish nun.  She was born at Agreda in Spain in 1602, of noble parents, whose virtues surpassed the nobility of their birth. Very early the child showed special signs of grace. At the age of six she had attained a high degree of prayer, which was noticeable in her devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to the sufferings of our Lord. Her confessor recognized the great graces with which she was favored, and permitted her at a tender age to receive Holy Communion. Also, to practice extraordinary works of penance. Painful illness which afflicter her, she bore with the greatest patience, strengthened by the remembrance of Christ’s sufferings.

In her seventeenth year Mary entered the convent of Poor Clares of the Immaculate Conception at Agreda. As a novice she excelled in the exercises of convent life. She made her profession on the feast of the Purification in 1620 as Sister Mary of Jesus. After she had consecrated herself to God through the holy vows, the young religious strove for perfection with holy earnestness and cheerful surrender to God. At the same time her unassuming humility and kindness of heart made her so beloved by her fellow sisters, that at the age of twenty-five she elected abbess. The pope confirmed her election to office; and she obliged to accept it repeatedly for thirty-eight years until her death. Only once, at her most earnest request, she released for a period of three years.

Mary as Abbess

As the superior, Mary was always the first among her associates to engage in lowly work. She swept the halls, nursed the sick, washed their linens, and appeared to have a special preference for the most menial services. Her way of life was so austere that one wonders how she could do her work. She not only abstained from meat, but never partook of eggs, milk, or cheese; she slept on a board for only two or three hours; the remaining time of the night she spent in exercises of devotion.

Every night, laden with a heavy cross, she made the Way of the Cross. Even as the superior she strove to practice obedience, following the suggestions of her higher superiors. In spiritual matters she submitted wholly to the guidance of her confessor. For a time she had a confessor who dealt harshly with her and never granted her any request she made; but Mary obeyed him cheerfully, and often said later: “He acted well; I always thought that he was right, and because of obedience I felt great peace of soul.”

Mary governed her subjects with as much wisdom as love. She endowed with great wisdom, so that persons of the highest rank, also prelates and bishops, and even the king of Spain, asked her for advice. When she spoke of God, all who heard her inflamed with the love of God. She received special revelations concerning the life of the Virgin Mother of God, which she recorded in a book called The Mystical City of God.

Bi location of Mary

Mention should made about Mary of Agreda’s work among the Indians of Texas and New Mexico. Her ardent desire, prayers, and sacrifices for their conversion apparently rewarded with the gift of bilocation. Between 1621 and 1631, when Mary of Agreda was between nineteen and twenty-nine years of age, she made some five hundred visits to the

Texas Indians, coming, as it seemed to them, from the hills on their horizon and returning that way after her instructions were over. When these Indians presented themselves to the Franciscan missionaries in New Mexico and asked that fathers sent among them, it learned that a Lady in Blue had often come among them, instructed them, and ordered them to seek out missionaries to baptize them.