Mariam Baouardy

Mariam Baouardy was born on 5 January 1846 among the hills of Upper Galilee, at Abellin near Nazareth in Palestine, to poor and upright Greek-Catholic Arab parents of Lebanese origin, George Baouardy, a craftsman, and Mariam Chahine. After twelve sons who had all died in infancy, her parents named her Mary in fulfillment of a vow made to the Virgin during a pilgrimage on foot to Bethlehem. She was baptized ten days later and, according to Melkite custom, confirmed the same day. Two years later a brother, Boulos (Paul), was born. Soon both parents died; Boulos was taken by a maternal aunt at Tarshiha, while Mariam was entrusted to a paternal uncle who in 1854 moved with her to Alexandria in Egypt. She received almost no schooling and only much later learned to read and write with difficulty.

About the age of thirteen, according to Eastern custom, she was promised in marriage to a young man of Cairo. She refused firmly, cutting her hair to make herself unacceptable. Her uncle's fury made her life unbearable. Between 7 and 8 September 1858, in a fit of rage, a young Muslim servant who had tried to draw her to Islam cut her throat and left her for dead in a dark street. She awoke in a grotto, where a mysterious nurse dressed in blue cared for her for several weeks. She recovered with a permanently hoarse voice; that same figure foretold her future life and led her to the church of Saint Catherine to confess. Fearing to meet her uncle again, she never returned to Galilee. She worked as a servant for various families in Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Beirut. The Attala family, whom she served in Beirut, took her with them to Marseille in 1863.

There she was hired as a cook and guided spiritually by the rector of the Greek-Melkite church. After two years of apparitions and ecstatic raptures that culminated in the gift of the stigmata, she entered the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Apparition, remaining only two months; the community of active life could not discern her extraordinary graces and did not keep her.

On 15 June 1867 she entered the Carmel of Pau with another religious and began the novitiate as a choir sister. When efforts to teach her to read the Divine Office proved useless, she was numbered among the lay sisters. At Pau she experienced phenomena she herself misunderstood with shame as illnesses—ecstasies, levitations, stigmata, apparitions, and both demonic and angelic possession—while the nuns watched with discretion, supported by the prudent Bishop of Bayonne, Monsignor Lacroix.

In 1870 she was sent with other Carmelites to India for the foundation of the first Carmel at Mangalore, where on 21 November 1871 she made religious profession—the first profession of a Carmelite in India. In November of the following year she was sent back to the Carmel of Pau. In August 1875 she went with sisters to Bethlehem, where the first Carmelite monastery was founded on the hill of David according to a plan she herself conceived.

In the new Carmel of Bethlehem she died, as she had foretold, before the end of three years' residence, on 26 August 1878, not yet thirty-three years old. She was buried in the monastery cemetery. Her whole life was marked by extraordinary events. Wherever she passed she gave examples of rare virtue and left a great reputation for holiness among Christians and Muslims alike. Her fame spread among both Greek-Catholic and Latin Catholics. She desired to be called and to be a "little nothing," a sweet flower of the Holy Land—the first of that blessed region in modern times, the first of the Melkite Greek-Catholic rite, the first of the Arab people, and a daughter of Carmel from the land of Carmel itself.

Pope John Paul II declared her virtues heroic and beatified her in Saint Peter's Basilica on 13 November 1983. Pope Francis canonized her on 17 May 2015 in Saint Peter's Square.

May Saint Mariam of Jesus Crucified obtain for us a share in her humble love of the Crucified and teach us today to remain little before God.

HOLY MASS AND CANONIZATION OF THE BLESSED: - JEANNE ÉMILIE DE VILLENEUVE - MARIA CRISTINA OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION BRANDO - MARIA ALPHONSINE DANIL GHATTAS - MARY OF JESUS CRUCIFIED BAOUARDY

HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS

St. Peter's Square Seventh Sunday of Easter, 17 May 2015

The Acts of the Apostles presented the nascent Church at the moment when it chose the one whom God called to take the place of Judas in the college of the Apostles. This is not a matter of assuming a position, but a service. Indeed, Matthias, upon whom the choice falls, receives a mission that Peter defines thus: "One of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection" - the resurrection of Christ (Acts 1:21-22). With these words he summarizes what it means to be part of the Twelve: it means being a witness to the resurrection of Jesus. The fact that he says "with us" makes it clear that the mission of proclaiming the risen Christ is not an individual task: it is to be lived in a community way, with the apostolic college and with the community. The Apostles had the direct and wondrous experience of the Resurrection; they are eyewitnesses of this event. Thanks to their authoritative testimony, many have believed; and from faith in the risen Christ, Christian communities have been born and continually continue to be born. We too, today, base our faith in the risen Lord on the testimony of the Apostles that has reached us through the mission of the Church. Our faith is firmly bound to their testimony as to an unbroken chain unfurled over the centuries not only by the successors of the Apostles, but by generations and generations of Christians. In imitation of the Apostles, in fact, every disciple of Christ is called to become a witness to his resurrection, especially in those human environments where the forgetfulness of God and human disorientation are strongest.

For this to happen, one must remain in the risen Christ and in his love, as the First Letter of John reminded us: "Whoever remains in love remains in God and God remains in him" (1 Jn 4:16). Jesus had insistedently repeated this to his disciples: "Remain in me... Remain in my love" (Jn 15:4, 9). This is the secret of the saints: to abide in Christ, united to him like branches to the vine, to bear much fruit (cf. Jn 15:1-8). And this fruit is none other than love. This love shines in the testimony of Sister Jeanne Émilie de Villeneuve, who consecrated her life to God and to the poor, the sick, prisoners, and the exploited, becoming for them and for all a concrete sign of the Lord's merciful love.

The relationship with the risen Jesus is - so to speak - the "atmosphere" in which the Christian lives and in which they find the strength to remain faithful to the Gospel, even in the midst of obstacles and misunderstandings. "Remain in love": this is also what Sister Maria Cristina Brando did. She was completely conquered by ardent love for the Lord; and from prayer, from the heart-to-heart encounter with the risen Jesus, present in the Eucharist, she received the strength to endure sufferings and give herself as broken bread to so many people far from God and hungry for authentic love.

An essential aspect of the testimony to be given to the Risen Lord is unity among us, His disciples, in the image of that which exists between Him and the Father. Today's Gospel also resounded with Jesus' prayer on the eve of His Passion: "That they may be one, even as we are one" (Jn 17:11). From this eternal love between the Father and the Son, which is poured into us through the Holy Spirit (cf. Rom 5:5), our mission and our fraternal communion draw their strength; from it springs ever anew the joy of following the Lord along the path of His poverty, His virginity, and His obedience; and that same love calls us to cultivate contemplative prayer. Sister Mary Baouardy experienced this in an eminent way; humble and unlettered, she was able to give advice and theological explanations with extreme clarity, the fruit of continuous dialogue with the Holy Spirit. Docility to the Holy Spirit also made her an instrument of encounter and communion with the Muslim world. Likewise, Sister Mary Alphonsine Danil Ghattas well understood what it means to radiate God's love in the apostolate, becoming a witness of meekness and unity. She offers us a clear example of how important it is to make ourselves responsible for one another, to live in service to one another.

Abiding in God and in His love, to proclaim the resurrection of Jesus by word and by life, testifying to unity among us and charity toward all. This is what the four Saints proclaimed today did. Their luminous example also challenges our Christian life: how am I a witness of the Risen Christ? This is a question we must ask ourselves. How do I remain in Him, how do I abide in His love? Am I capable of "sowing" in the family, in the workplace, in my community, the seed of that unity which He has given us by sharing it with us from the Trinitarian life?

Returning home today, let us carry with us the joy of this encounter with the Risen Lord; let us cultivate in our hearts the commitment to abide in the love of God, remaining united to Him and to one another, and following in the footsteps of these four women, models of holiness, whom the Church invites us to imitate.

APOSTOLIC LETTERS

on the completed beatification

JOHN PAUL II

for an everlasting memory

"I praise you, Father, ... because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children" (Mt 11:25).

What Jesus once spoke, exulting in the Holy Spirit (cf. Lk 10:21), the Church repeats even now with her Spouse, when indeed she looks upon not a few sons and daughters who are "poor in spirit" (cf. Mt 5:3), whom God Himself comforts (cf. 2 Cor 7:6) and exalts (cf. Lk 1:52), and to whom He grants wisdom (cf. Ps 18 [19]:8). To be numbered among these little ones is Mary of Jesus Crucified, who desired both to be named, and to be thought of, and to be "a little nothing," the sweetest flower of the Holy Land: namely, the first of that same region, blessed above all others, since the ancient times of the Church; the first also from the Greek-Melkite Catholic rite; the first thereafter from the Arab nation; and finally the first daughter of her Order "from the land of Carmel," whom today We, with immense joy of heart, have raised to the honors of the blessed in heaven.

Born in a humble place in Galilee, within the boundaries of the Greek-Catholic Archdiocese of Ptolemais, on the fifth day of the month of January in the year 1846, this Handmaid of God was washed in the sacred font on the fifteenth day of the same month, given the name of Mary by her pious parents George Baouardy and Mary Chahim in fulfillment of a vow; yet in the year 1849 she was orphaned of both while still very tender in age, whence she endured an infancy and adolescence marked by the Cross itself. Following her uncle, by whose roof she had been received, into Egypt, she undertook the role of a servant in Alexandria, then in Jerusalem and Beirut, and finally in Marseilles, whither she had followed her uncle's family and where she first experienced extraordinary graces. In the year 1867 she was received among the nuns of the Order of Discalced Carmelites of the monastery of Pau, whence, before her novitiate was even completed, they sent her to India to found the monastery of Mangalore, where also on the twenty-first day of the month of November in the year 1871 she pronounced her religious vows. She returned to Pau in the following year and in 1875 proceeded to the Holy Land, where she founded a monastery from the foundations up in the city of Bethlehem, in which on the twenty-sixth day of the month of August in the year 1878 she flew most holily from this world to that kingdom prepared by God for the poor (cf. Mt 25:34).

Distinguished by miraculous gifts of a heavenly nature, praised and cast down by men in turn, and also vexed by the assaults of the devil himself, she excelled constantly in equanimity of spirit because of her faith and a certain holy amiability, holding lowliness of mind to be the true fountain of patience and the secret of all holiness. Since she thought thus humbly of herself and desired, according to the sentiment of the book The Imitation of Christ, "to be unknown and to be reputed as nothing" (I, 2, 15), she strove unceasingly to turn away from herself marvels wrought beyond the usual order of things, while she remained subject to all others and served them, inasmuch as she contemplated Christ most lovingly in them; she would then earnestly demand more obscure and harder tasks for herself as if by a privilege, and vehemently desired that all her sisters and brothers freely dispose of her. One sole right did she demand for herself: that she be granted the plain faculty of loving all men with all her heart and with all her strength; which duty she fulfilled unto death, with any care for herself cast aside. Most of all, however, did she rejoice when, afflicted with infirmities and bitter sorrows of soul, she could offer herself like a gift upon the cross with Christ. "Holy in body and in spirit" (1 Cor 7:34), she ever immolated her virginity no less than a sweetest flower to the Spouse, while she preserved the profession of the Catholic faith even with her own blood, as well as the lily of undefiled purity. She loved Mother Church with an intense zeal and embraced patriarchs and bishops, but especially the Supreme Pontiff, as angels of God and sustaining the person of the Lord.

Pius Pope IX she so loved and venerated that she was joined in a wondrous mystical communion with him, who was a sharer in her joys and sorrows. As she hastened toward the perfection of charity through the path of evangelical poverty, she suffered great and small things with one and the same affection of a simple soul, cherishing that simplicity indeed as the goal of holiness which, as she herself testified, "does not consist in prayer, in visions, in revelations, or in the art of speaking well, or in hairshirts and penances, but in humility." Finally, as regards her Cause of Beatification, it began in the year 1919, when in the Patriarchal Curia of Jerusalem the inquiry into her life and reputation for holiness was initiated.

Once this inquiry was completed, the Apostolic Processes concerning the virtues were carried out in the years 1927-1929. These virtues having in turn been approved by Us in the year 1981, a formal discussion was held in order concerning the miraculous healing of the young girl Khazneh Jubran Abboud from Shefamar, a place in Galilee, which was to be attributed to the intercession of the Venerable Servant of God. That same healing having then been examined and sanctioned by Our Decree on the 9th day of the month of July in the year 1983, We decreed that the solemn Beatification of Mary of Jesus Crucified should be undertaken on the 13th day of the month of November of this very year, and it has been undertaken.

This very Beatification, during the Eucharistic rite celebrated this morning in the Basilica of Saint Peter, We performed, pronouncing these words: "Fulfilling the desires of Our Brother James Joseph Beltritti, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, as well as of Venerable Brother Maximos V Hakim, Patriarch of Antioch of the Greek-Melkite Catholics, of many other Brothers in the Episcopate from East and West, as well as of the entire Order of Discalced Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, and of many of Christ's faithful, upon the consultation of the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints, by Our Apostolic authority we grant the faculty that the Venerable Servant of God Mary of Jesus Crucified Baouardy may henceforth be called by the name of Blessed, and that her feast may be celebrated annually on her natal day, the twenty-sixth of the month of August, in the places and manner established by law. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen." At the same time we also highlighted to the Gospel the image of the Blessed One who "by her lineage, rite, vocation, and pilgrimages of peoples acts in the regions of the East and in a way represents them... who now especially flee with all confidence of soul to her fraternal intercession in the wretched conditions of struggle and bloodshed in which they find themselves, hoping that even through the prayers of the Servant of God peace and concord may at last be restored to those lands where 'the Word became flesh' (Jn 1, 14), He Himself 'our peace' destroying the hostility in His flesh (cf. Eph 2, 14)."

Moreover, We will these Apostolic Letters to be valid and to exert their force now and henceforth, anything to the contrary notwithstanding.

Given at Rome, at Saint Peter's, under the ring of the Fisherman on the 13th day of the month of November in the year 1983, the sixth year of Our Pontificate.

By mandate of the Supreme Pontiff

Augustinus Card. Casaroli

Secretary of State

Place of the Seal

In the archives of the Secretariat of State, no. 126804

BEATIFICATION OF SISTER MARY OF JESUS CRUCIFIED

HOMILY OF JOHN PAUL II

Sunday, November 13, 1983

\u201cListen, daughter\u201d . . . (Ps 45:11).

1. Today the Church applies these words of the Psalm to Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified, a Discalced Carmelite, born in the land that witnessed the life of Jesus of Nazareth; a land situated in a region which even in these days continues to be at the center of very grave concerns and painful tensions.

\u201cListen, daughter.\u201d Behold, the path of Sister Mary toward the divine Spouse is deeply inscribed in the memory of the People of God. Today the Church crowns her with the act of beatification. This act wishes to bear witness to the special spiritual \u201cbeauty\u201d of this daughter of the Holy Land; a \u201cbeauty\u201d that matured in the radiance of the mystery of the Redemption: in the rays of the birth and teaching, of the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The liturgy says to the new Blessed: \u201cHe is your Lord: bow down before him\u201d (Ps 45:12).

And at the same time, with the words of the same Psalm, the liturgy expresses joy for the elevation to the altars of the humble Servant of God.

\u201cAll glorious is the king\u2019s daughter as she enters; her raiment is threaded with gold . . .\u201d (Ps 45:14): the golden thread of faith, hope, and love; of the theological and moral virtues which she practiced in an heroic degree as a daughter of Carmel.

2. In this Year which the Church is living as an extraordinary Jubilee of the Redemption, many times we have gathered around figures who have reached the glory of the altars. It is a special sign of the inexhaustible power of the Redemption, which works in the souls of the Servants of God, enabling them to press on tenaciously along the path of the vocation to holiness.

This vocation has its eternal beginning in the saving design of the Most Holy Trinity, of which the second reading of the Mass speaks: \u201cFor those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined he also called; and those he called he also justified; and those he justified he also glorified\u201d (Rom 8:29-30).

In this grandiose Pauline perspective we penetrate, so to speak, into the very interior of the divine thought, grasping in some way the \u201clogic\u201d of the plan of salvation, in the chain of mysterious actions that lead to its full realization. Thus, therefore, the vocation to holiness is God\u2019s eternal design regarding man: regarding today, our sister Mary of Jesus Crucified.

3. Furthermore, the vocation to holiness is a fruit of revelation and knowledge. Today\u2019s Gospel speaks of it in penetrating words. Jesus says: \u201cI give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him\u201d (Mt 11:25-27).

True wisdom and intelligence suppose \u201echildlikeness,\u201d understood as docility to the Holy Spirit. With this alone is it possible, in the Son, through the Son and with the Son, to know the mysteries of the Father, which instead remain unknown to the wise and the learned of this world, blinded by folly and

\u201clove, in exchange for which one must give all the riches of one\'s own house\u201d (cf. Ct 8, 6-7).

Thus speaks the author of the Song of Songs. And Saint Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, teaches that \u201call things work together for good for those who love God\u201d (Rom 8, 28). This very cooperation traces the path of holiness, I would say, day by day, throughout one\'s life. Along this path, holiness is realized as the eternal vocation of those \u201nwho have been called according to God\'s purpose\u201d (cf. Rom 8, 28).

5. The readings of today\'s Liturgy are a splendid commentary on the life of Sister Mary, born near Nazareth and who died in the Carmel of Bethlehem at the age of 33. Her love for Christ was as strong as death; the most painful trials did not extinguish it, but on the contrary purified and strengthened it. She gave everything for this love.

The entire life of the little Arab woman, filled with extraordinary mystical gifts, was, in the light of the Holy Spirit, the conscious and irrevocable response to a vocation of holiness, that is to say, to that eternal plan of salvation, of which Saint Paul speaks, which divine mercy has established for each of us.

Her whole life is the fruit of that supreme evangelical \u201cwisdom\u201d with which God is pleased to enrich the humble and the poor, in order to confound the mighty. Endowed with great clarity of soul, a fervent natural intelligence, and that poetic imagination characteristic of Semitic peoples, little Mary did not have the opportunity to pursue higher studies, but this did not prevent her, thanks to her eminent virtue, from being filled with that \u201cknowledge\u201d which has the highest value, and to give us which Christ died on the cross: the knowledge of the Trinitarian Mystery, a perspective so important in that Eastern Christian spirituality in which the little Arab girl had been raised.

6. As we read in the canonical Decree of beatification, \u201cthe humble handmaid of Christ, Mary of Jesus Crucified, belonging by lineage, rite, vocation, and pilgrimages to the peoples of the East and being in some way a representative thereof, is like a gift made to the universal Church by those who, in the wretched conditions of struggle and bloodshed in which they are pouring forth, especially now resort with great trust of soul to her fraternal intercession, in the hope that thanks also to the prayers of the Servant of God, peace and concord may finally be restored in those lands where \u201lsuch Word became flesh\u201d (Jn 1, 14), He Himself being our peace.\u201d

Blessed Mary was born in Galilee. For this reason, our prayerful thought wishes to turn today in a special way to the land where Jesus taught love and died so that humanity might have reconciliation. \u201nThat Land \u2013 as I already recalled on another occasion \u2013 sees, for decades, two peoples opposed in an irreconcilable antagonism thus far. Each of them has its own history, a tradition, a specific background, which seem to make a composition difficult\u201d (John Paul II, Allocutio occasione oblata orationis dominicae Angelus Domini habita, 5, Sunday 4 April 1982: Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, V/1 [1982] 1110).

Today more than ever, the looming threats urge us to make love and brotherhood the fundamental law of social and international relations, in a spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness, taking inspiration from the lifestyle of which Blessed Mary of Jesus Crucified is an example not only for her people, but for the whole world. May this new lifestyle give us a peace founded not on terror, but on mutual trust.

7. Today we rejoice near the altar of the Confession of Saint Peter for the beatification of Sister Mary. We enroll this joy of the Church within the account of the Jubilee Year of the Redemption. Together with Christ, we praise the Father because He has revealed the mystery of truth and love to the eyes of the soul of Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified and has made her a sharer in the glory of His Kingdom.

Let us pray with the Psalmist to the new Blessed that the Lord may grant peace to her land: \u201cPray for the peace of Jerusalem: \u201cMay those who love you be secure! May there be peace within your walls and security within your citadels.\u201d For the sake of my brothers and friends, I will say, \u201cPeace be within you.\u201d For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good\u201d (Ps 122, 6-9).