Giving My Life and Getting it Back―With Interest!

Sr. Marie Jeanne, P.C.C.
Los Altos Hills, CA

I attribute to Our Blessed Mother’s maternal protection the fact that I never fell away from my Catholic faith, despite many a temptation to both worldliness and despair. My upbringing was marked by great suffering. However, a firm taproot of trust in the providence of God and in the succor of Our Lady kept me from hurling my faith or my person over a cliff.

My Mom was primarily responsible for this. Despite her inner anguish, she remained a pillar of faith, and displayed for me what persevering hope looks like in the midst of hopelessness. Whenever she gave us medicine or anything unsavory, she would say, “All for Jesus through Mary,” and I recall her telling me on one occasion: “Our Lady is more your real mother than I am.”

When I was fifteen, I joined an older friend on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje. My faith was re-kindled there and I came back eager to return. So, at sixteen, I took a job at a grocery store to earn money for another trip. However, while working there, I met a twenty-four-year-old man who expressed interest in me. Being so broken and insecure, I was easy prey. He was pagan to the core, and though my belief in Catholic doctrine was unbending, he began to lure me away from Catholic principles. But again, Our Lady did not let me drift too far.

At some point during this relationship, my Mom learned of the Fatima pilgrimages led by Fr. Robert Fox, and introduced the idea to me and my sister. My sister did not want to go, and being rather timid, I was not going alone. In the end, she capitulated and we were set to travel first-class (using my Dad’s frequent flyer mileage) in August of 1990. When I told my friends at work, they chided me saying,“Are you going to become a nun or something?” I just laughed. I imagine Our Lady did, too.

It was on this trip that I met Mother Assumpta Long, O.P., for the first time. She accompanied Father as a spiritual director for us young pilgrims. I have to admit that, from all the talks she gave to us teenage girls, more interested in the winks and whistles of the local Portuguese boys than in Marian devotions, the only thing I can remember her saying is this one comical line: “Now, about kissing, remember the three s’s―short, sweet and scram!” Nevertheless, she was to be the instrument though which the whole course of my life would change.

After landing on Portuguese soil, our first stop was the Church of the Holy Miracle of Santarem, where the famous miraculously bleeding Host is reserved. The event of the miracle dates to the 13th century when a desperate woman seeking relief from her troubles agreed to obtain a Sacred Host for a witch to desecrate in return for her services. The tradition has it that as she hurried away from the church with the concealed Eucharist, it began to bleed profusely. Frightened, she hid the sacred species in a trunk in her home, and that night a brilliant light shone out from it. The woman returned to the church and confessed all that had occurred. 

At this point, I must interject briefly an incident from my childhood because it mirrors what I experienced that day in the Santarem chapel. I was about three years old and we were travelling as a family in Arizona. We spent the day at a sort of beach. We still have photos of me and my siblings playing on the shore of a body of water in the middle of a desert. It was a lovely day and, as I recall, I wandered a short distance from where my family was reclining on the sand. My mother did not call after me, to my surprise, which gave me a delicious sense of freedom. I came upon a rather dry little bush. The afternoon sun was shining on it, casting a shadow on the sand beneath it. As I stood before so unimpressive a sight, no one could guess that I stood face to face with uncreated beauty. To attempt to describe what I beheld would be, as Mother Veronica Namayo, P.C.C., once put it, “to reconstruct a cloud with bricks.” All I can say is that at three years old, I felt passionately in love.

After our group of pilgrims filed into the dark, cool church in Santarem and took our seats, Father Fox proceeded to tell us at length the story of the miraculous Host. When he concluded, he explained that he would bring out the miraculous Host for us to venerate. Mother Assumpta would hold a candle behind the ostensorium for better visibility, and if we wished, he said, “You may come up, genuflect reverently, and take a photo.” I had a camera but for some reason, did not feel inclined to take a picture. Most of the girls did, including my sister. I chose to remain seated in my place. When I came on this pilgrimage, I really had no personal agenda, either temporal or spiritual, but even if I had, I never could have planned what occurred that first day on Portuguese soil.

The calm of the church was pleasing and I felt at peace. One by one the girls took their turn snapping a photo. I watched Mother Asumpta holding the lighted candle. She was gazing upon the centuries-old blood-stained Body of the Lord. What love shone on her face. I felt a strange sense of having been admitted into a sacred converse too intimate for a spectator. But in a moment, I realized that I was no longer a spectator, but one taken up in this sacred conversation, and I recognized that long ago encounter with beauty. He was shining on her face. I burned for what she had, and with alarming certainty, knew I had to have it. These words are as bricks, but there are none suitable to explain it.

It is a great misfortune that many Christians are wary of Our Lady’s role in the Church, often believing her to be worshipped by Catholics as a demi-god, vying with Jesus for glory. Poor Blessed Mother. She has but one mission, and that is to lead all to Jesus though her maternal sweetness. A convincing sign of this was in the fact that I was scarcely out of the Lisbon airport when she engaged me to her Son. I had not even reached her shrine! Our Lady made a brief outing from the Cova to bring me the glad tidings of my religious vocations, and throughout those days of pilgrimage I walked, carefully clasping this glowing ember in my heart.

It seems that most religious women have thought, at least fleetingly, of becoming a nun when they were but a child. I must admit that neither the thought nor the desire ever entered my consciousness until that momentous day in the cool, dark Church of the Holy Miracle. It simply fell upon me like a loose tile from the ceiling, or better, like a passionate fire that consumed me with desire for Christ the Bridegroom.

It would still be another three years before God led me to my present monastic home. Our Lady was preparing me for that day. Interestingly, as I learned later, our founding abbess, Mother Agnes, after spending hours looking for a site to make a new foundation, made the promise to now St. Jacinta Marto, that if she would find them a suitable, low price house for sale, she would name it after Mary’s Immaculate Heart. The next turn they made brought them to the Gibson residence. That was 67 years ago and it is now called Immaculate Heart Monastery.

To end, I would like to say that a vocation to the religious life is never a mere personal gift. It is an open treasure chest for the whole Church, beginning with the members of one’s own family. And I have witnessed my own family pull grace after grace out of this chest of God’s treasures.

Yes, “All for Jesus through Mary.” I strongly recommend making this little prayer a way of life. If you do, be sure to leave your own agenda behind, be prepared for anything, and watch out for loose ceiling tiles. They may change the whole course of your life.