Saint Mariam of Jesus Crucified
Her life
« Blessed are the little ones.»
Mariam Baouardy was born on 5 January 1846 in Ibillin, a small village of Galilee, between Nazareth and Haifa, in a Greek-Melkite Catholic family.
But Mariam was not three years old when her father died, entrusting her to the care of St Joseph, then her mother a few days later. An aunt adopted Boulos and a rich uncle Mariam.
Mariam joined the Carmel of Pau in June 1867 and here she always found the love and understanding to sustain her in her sufferings. As a novice, she received the name of Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified. Her simplicity and generosity won the heart of her sisters. The gift of prophecy, the attacks of the Devil or ecstasies… among all the many divine graces that she received there is, very deeply, the knowledge of her nothingness in front of God: when she called herself “the little nothing” it was really a profound expression of her being.
She died on August 26, 1878. She was 32 years old.
Her Message
« Address yourselves to the Holy Spirit, who inspires all things. »
Mariam opens us to this invisible world which is so near to us, and which is full of mercy.
She teaches us to invest all of our lives in “that which never passes”, the only thing that really matters, God.
The fight against all the powers of evil is still underway. Blessed Mariam, who is known to many as the “Patron of Peace” for the Holy Land, encourages us to let us transform by the Lord: so, we can become ourselves workers in this transfiguration of the world by the grace of God. As a witness of an already transfigured world, she reminds us of the first day of Creation when heavens and earth were not yet separated, but only the light and the dark: that day One, which reflected the divine Unity, where all things are radiant from this unity.
