27 May 2022 - Friday of the 6th week of EASTER - John 16:20-23

      Earlier in the week, we commemorated the feast day of the Venerable Bede, an English historian from the 8th century who is a doctor of the Church.  Also, this week, we celebrate the feast day of a saint from 17th century South America who perhaps is not very well known outside of her native country of Ecuador.   Mariana de Jesus de Paredes was born in the city Quito, Ecuador of a noble Spanish family, but she was orphaned as a child.  She then was raised by her older sister and her sister’s husband.  She was drawn to the Catholic faith as a child.  Under the guidance of a Jesuit priest confessor, she lived a consecrated life as a lay woman, practicing austerity and simplicity of life and devoting her life to prayer and prophecy with little sleep and little food.   A terrible earthquake and epidemic struck the city of Quito in 1645.  Mariana felt herself being called by God to offer herself as a sacrifice for the sins of the people of Quito.  When the epidemic began to subside, Mariana was stricken with illness and died on May 26th. She is known by the faithful as Mariana de Jesus or Mariana of Quito.  Canonized in 1950, she is the patron saint of the Quito of Ecuador.   I remember arriving in Ecuador in May 1996 as a lay missionary with the Comboni Missionary religious order. On the first Sunday we were in the country of Ecuador, we went to Mass in the old town center of Quito on the feast day of St Mariana de Jesus.  I remember seeing many different male and female religious in their habits attending Mass.  It is a beautiful memory I have from my time in Ecuador, as experiences as a lay missionary in South America greatly influenced my vocation to the priesthood here in the Diocese of Jackson.  I love the story of St Mariana de Jesus.  In her faith and in her humility, she brought the mercy of God to the people of her hometown of Quito, Ecuador.  

         In the Gospel today, Jesus declares to his disciples:  “I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.”  We can find joy in our faith in different ways.  Mariana de Jesus found joy in her faith in her simplicity of life, in her austerity, in her uniting her sufferings in atonement for her sins and the sins of the world.  St Mariana de Jesus, we unite our prayers with yours today, asking that you help us in our suffering and the burdens we bear in life.