While I wait and wish, like everyone else, for the end of isolation and the Covid19 pandemic, aware that the “normality” in which we will live will surely be very different from what we have known in the last decades… while I try to find an answer… while the Easter Season encourages me to share hopes and not fears… as I babble before the Crucifix and the Tabernacle trying to find the path that, as a Religious of Mary Immaculate, leads me today to Golgotha, to the road to Emmaus, to the Cenacle and to the world… I cannot erase from my memory scenes, names and faces that I have not known personally or that I have known personally and that have moved me to tears inviting me to greater fidelity… When I think of how our Sisters lived events such as the loss of the capital inherited from Don Manuel María (1884), the Tragic Week of Barcelona (July 1909), the consequences of the I World War I (1914-1918), the Tragic Week of Buenos Aires (January 1919), the “Semana Trágica de Buenos Aires Mexican Revolution (1910-1917), the Cristero War in Mexico (1926-1929), the Proclamation of the II Republic in Spain (1931), the Civil War (1936-1939), the Second World War (1939-1945), the terrorist scourge of the Shining Path in Peru ( 1980-1991)… I refuse to go on thinking that “those were other times” because I am convinced that those who overcame the setback with such firmness in their faith were not other times but rather I am reminded of “other people” and the reflections of St. Ignatius of Loyola resonate in my heart: “If they can, why can’t I?”
I lack sources, I lack data, I lack study to be able to make a serene and documented reflection of what our Sisters lived, suffered and overcame in the mentioned situations and in many others that were also adverse to them. What I know today continues to surprise and admire me: the firmness with which the Mother Foundress defended before everything and everyone the main purpose of the Institute, instilled confidence in the Sisters and continued to receive young people when for any human calculation it was reckless to have the houses gratuitously full of poor young people, with no other income than the work of the religious.
I am overwhelmed by a community like the one in Barcelona resisting to leave the house while the fire was destroying churches and convents in the city and, when the situation became unbearable, going through the terrace to the house next door, four of them staying in the house because it was impossible to find lodging for the girls. I admire their joy and gratitude to the Lord for the benefit of having bread, codfish and some milk for the delicate ones when food was no longer available in the markets and the stores were closed. How far away were the communication possibilities we now have! The community of Barcelona in 1909 took eight days to be able to send any news to Mother General, because from July 26 to August 2 Barcelona was isolated and there was no means of communication with Madrid.
At the beginning of World War I, the Congregation had no houses in the combatant countries, but the poverty caused by the conflict was felt in most of the houses, where prayers for peace in Europe were intensified. The Congregation faced the new situation by intensifying its work to maintain the apostolic work, opening a new novitiate in Barcelona, which was transferred to Logroño in the same year of 1915; founding houses in Havana, Pamplona and Ciudad Real; establishing an infirmary to care for the sick religious in Carabanchel….
On January 7, 1919, the outbreak of the Revolution known as the “Tragic Week” in Buenos Aires surprised H. María Manuela in the street and she was able to take refuge in the Colegio de El Salvador, until she was able to take a streetcar that brought her closer to the house. The Sisters were loved by the neighbors and many friendly families, so when the revolutionaries began to burn and desecrate churches and convents, they sent lay dresses and hats in case the community wanted to leave in case of danger. On the advice of the confessor, they were distributed among some families, but some were left to try to avoid looting. As soon as normality was restored, M. María del Consuelo Maciá told them that she was leaving for three weeks to Chile as Visitatrix of the house in Santiago, where M. María de los Desamparados Molina had already died, and I admire the relief and contentment of the Sisters of Buenos Aires just knowing that this was God’s will and that the trip of M. María del Consuelo would truly be a consolation for the community in the Andean region.
Maria Teresa Orti delayed the foundation in Mexico until 1913, because of the Revolution, and accelerated the opening in Havana in 1915, because things got ugly again and she thought it better to have a house nearby where she could take in those who were in Mexico (several juniors among them), without the need to bring them to Europe if the time came when they had to be taken out of the country. During the years of relative calm, at least twenty new vocations knocked on the doors of the Institute, with a perseverance rate of just over 50%. But the worst in Mexico came, as one of the first pearls of the government service of M. María de la Concepción Marqués, with the religious persecution starting in 1926. On February 13, the exodus of the Sisters in secular clothing to family homes where they were welcomed began in Mexico City. The battered heart of M. Maria de Santa Victoria Lobera did not resist and she died on February 26, when she had been welcomed for twelve days by a family that defied persecution so that the Sister could be shrouded in her religious habit and have a dignified funeral and burial. M. María del Buen Pastor Doménech, as Visitatrix sent by M. María de la Concepción Marqués, lived with the Sisters for seven years, the extremely painful events of the persecution and left Mexico in 1933 with the certainty that God would have other Sisters destined to “turn the still smoldering ashes” of the foundation in Mexicointo a great bonfire. But as every sunrise is preceded by a sunset, for the Congregation the sun set in Mexico two years later, when, having exhausted all resources, Mother General decided to remove the remaining Sisters. It would be twelve years before M. Maria de San Luis de Caso sent nine Sisters of Mary Immaculate to rekindle the fire of the first bonfire.
Meanwhile, in Spain, where the Congregation has the largest number of houses and sisters, “the situation is bad”. The Second Republic did not take long to show its true identity card and M. María de la Concepción Marqués put into action her best governing skills as of April 13, 1931. She tried by all means to save the greatest relic: the mortal remains of the Mother Foundress and the greatest patrimony: the life of the Sisters. Foundations inside and outside Spain, transfers of the houses of formation and establishment of the General Curia in the south of France, trying by all means not to lose contact with the religious…; he tried everything and achieved much, but the price was high: the Sisters were dispersed; some suffered all the horrors of martyrdom except death; several houses were saved thanks to the boundless heroism of the religious: Almeria, Toledo, Valencia, Barcelona, Madrid…..
Maria de la Concepcion died without knowing the end of the conflict and the reunion of the Sisters with their communities, but she blessed from heaven the sometimes superhuman effort of her religious to return to a “new normality” in which miracles had to be performed every day to welcome, feed, heal, educate and train for work hundreds of young girls who were knocking on the doors of the schools, with no other assets than their hands to work.
And I continue to be questioned by the courage and constancy of the Sisters during the armed conflict, and their capacity for work, sacrifice and dedication in the long years of the hard post-war period when, in extreme poverty, they brought the houses back to life with a flourishing apostolate; when sickness and overwork sapped their health and strength but they continued to smile, pray and work because the harvest is always plentiful and the workers are always few.
M. Maria de San Luis de Caso did not have enough of the desolate post-war panorama for her years of government; World War II put the houses in France, England and Italy in check… how many shocks, how many shortages and how much sacrificed work sealed the decade of the 40’s in the whole Congregation, until she was able to crown her service of government seeing one of her greatest desires fulfilled: to embrace the Sisters who were in America, even if she did not get to see them all and the trip took its toll on her own life.
When it seemed that everything was going more or less well, the Sisters in Peru lived very closely the terrorist threat of the Shining Path, which sowed so much death and horror in that country.
And when it seemed to us that we could sail with sails unfurled without any great problems, when the shortage of personnel was being covered by the work of the laity, almost as a new promise of the continuity of the charism…. suddenly, it was as if we were returning to a time of the past, suddenly the plagues of Egypt and the legend that Tiber Island was formed with wheat that had to be thrown into the river to end a terrible epidemic that was mercilessly decimating the population became more credible; suddenly we do not know what the “new normal” will be like…
Perhaps that is why today I find it difficult to define my feelings before the memory and heroic sanctity of religious like: María del Buen Pastor Doménech, María del Niño Jesus Fontela, María de Santa Victoria Lobera, María de los Desposorios Landa, María del Romero Zabaleta, María Teresa Romero Yagüe, María Alicia Ruiz Pascual, María del Consuelo Maciá, María Bernarda de Hoyos Rojo, María Manuela Roca, María de los Reyes Barrasa, María de San Alfonso Alemany, Amadora Pascual, María Miguelina Ferrer, María del Santo Cristo Gutiérrez, María Paz Berroa, María Tarsicia Górriz, María de San Juan Bertoli… and so many others, whose only great secret to “to turn the still smoldering ashes into a great bonfire” was faith, the certainty that “the work is God’s and in Him alone we must put our trust” (CarSVM n. 329.5) and the difficulties, a source of consolation because they give our things the seal of being God’s (Cf. CarSVM n. 1510.2).
When all this has passed, and we feel that the time has come to take up the baton, I want to believe that the work, suffering, dedication, apostolic zeal, joy, trust, hope and blind abandonment of our sisters for the sake of the fulfillment of God’s will has not been in vain; I want to believe that the life of charity that has been increasing the flow of holiness in the Institute throughout its history will be as solid as the Mother Foundress wanted it to be; I want to believe that the love of Christ overflowing through the wound of his wounded Side and made nourishment in the Eucharist will guide our being and our doing until, united to those who have gone before us, to those who will follow us and to the souls entrusted to us, we are united to those who have gone before us, to those who will follow us and to the souls who have been entrusted to us, overflowing in sweet beatitude let us render the best gift of eternal gratitude.
Rome, April 25, 2020
St. Mark the Evangelist and St. Herminius of Lobbes
María Digna Díaz RMI