Mariana de Paredes, who was born into an aristocratic family in Quito, Ecuador on October 31, 1618, on the Vigil of All Saints Day. I remember that when I was a missionary in Ecuador back in the summer of 1996, spending several months in the city of Quito to study Spanish before being sent to the jungle to serve as a lay missionary for three years, there was a trolley stop that I used to pass by named Mariana de Jesus in her honor. I also remember that one of the first masses we attended in Ecuador in May 1996 was on the feast day of St Mariana de Jesus. What I love about the saints is how their witness to speak so strongly to us many centuries later in our own modern era and still have so much to teach us. Mariana was not accepted as a religious sister, so she lived out her life as a Third Order Franciscan, serving the poor through a school and a clinic that she found to help the poor African Americans and the indigenous people who lived in Quito. When a terrible plague affected the city, she nursed the sick, did penance, and offered her life up to God in hopes that the plague be lifted. She died shortly afterwards at the age of 31. Mariana de Jesus, who was denied entrance into a religious community as a nun, is now a beloved saint in Latin America. She was canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1950. She is one of the patron saints of the country of Ecuador. May we lift up our sufferings and use them for the glory of God just as Mariana de Jesus did so long ago.
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