5/26/2016 – Thursday of the 8th Week in Ordinary Time – 1 Peter 2:2-5, 9-12

      The author of the first letter of Peter declares to us today:  Once you were no people – now you are God’s people.  Once you lived with no mercy – now you live in the light of God’s mercy.  He states that as aliens and sojourners in this world, we are to separate ourselves from earthly desires. Do we feel like aliens in this world – that is a strong word to use, isn’t it?  Or are see super-attached to the things of this world, so much so that they separate us from God and our journey of faith?

      One of the saints we celebrate today is a woman named Mariana de Jesus, a woman who lived in Quito, the capital city of Ecuador, in the first half of the 17^th century.  As a youth, she felt the call to become a nun, but entry in the convent was turned down for her.   Instead, she became a virtual hermit and recluse in the home of his sister and brother-in-law.  She led a very austere, contemplative, mystical life, devoting herself to pray and self-deprivations.  She had a gift of curing the sick and reading the hearts of those who came to her.  She became a third-order Franciscan, living that lifestyle. In 1645, the city of Ecuador suffering a terrible earthquake in which over 1,400 of its inhabitants were killed, as well the eruption of the nearby volcano and an epidemic of terrible disease. Mariana felt that she needed to offer up her life in reparation for the sins of her beloved city.   She asked the Lord to accept her offering in defense of her country and her compatriots, that she “might be chastised for everything in the city which deserved chastisement.”  She was struck with a mortal illness that day, dying within 2 months.  At her death, the earthquakes and the volcano quieted down and the plagues died out.  Pope Pius XII canonized Mariana de Jesus in 1950.  I remember during the first month that I was in Ecuador as a missionary, back in May 1996, I went to a mass on her feast day, in which there were a large number of nuns from various religious orders all in their traditional habits.  She is the patron saint of Ecuador, very beloved as the first person from that country to be canonized as a saint.