St. Maria of the Holy Wonders of Jesus Pidal’s goal of her life was to give Our Lord Jesus Christ the worship that was denied Him.

Newsroom (17/12/2022 6:14 PM, Gaudium Press ) At the close of 1919, a young twenty-eight year old woman from Madrid entered the silent cloister of the Discalced Carmelites of San Lorenzo del Escorial.

Her name, St. Maria Maravillas De Jesus, or ‘St. Mary of The Holy Wonders of Jesus’, usually arouses curiosity in those who hear it for the first time. But that was how the Superiors had arranged for her to be called when she was received into the novitiate, although she had expressed the desire to change her baptismal name for a simpler one, in keeping with her purpose in embracing the religious state: “All that is sought in Carmel is to disappear so that the Lord may reign”.

The fourth daughter of the Marquises of Pidal, she completely detached from her illustrious origin and notable fortune, for she had aspired since childhood to a complete surrender of herself on the contemplative way. Her father tried to persuade her that in the world she could also work for the Church. Her mother, for her part, did not give up keeping her close to her for a long time, especially during the period of her widowhood. Finally, the noble lady recognized that her daughter would never adapt to the life of Spanish high society, as in fact she did confess after several years of enclosure: “As for me, I am happier every day in the convent and thanking God Who gave me the Carmelite vocation, the best thing that exists in this world”.

A vocation to repair the outraged glory of God

Having obtained her mother’s permission, she chose to enter the Carmel of El Escorial.

Maria de las Maravillas Pidal’s prolonged stay in the world would serve to solidify her vocation, giving her the opportunity to follow closely the moral decadence of the years preceding the Second World War. Her lucid intelligence, assisted by grace, led her to discern a wave of iniquity rising up from the earth, before which there were few who would assume the most important duty of all: to make reparation for the glory of God outraged by the very grave sins being committed.

With firm determination she dedicated herself, from the beginning and without reserve, to the great goal of her life: to give Our Lord Jesus Christ in Carmel the homage of adoration that was everywhere denied Him.

Lamp of Praise at the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Because of the virtues she already possessed to a high degree, the new Carmelite was soon a joy to the convent. Seeing the bars of enclosure closing behind her, she believed she was making a definitive break from the bustle of the outside world. Before she had even taken her solemn vows, a series of unmistakable signs began to indicate that Providence was calling her to found a new convent, even though she had only been a religious for four years.

This bold step was due to the abandonment to which the monument to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, erected by King Alfonso XIII had been reduced, on the small hill that marks the geographical centre of the Iberian Peninsula, the Cerro de los Ángeles, and to which efforts a great number of Spaniards had contributed. However, once the work was inaugurated and the country was consecrated to its King and Lord in 1919, the site returned to its former solitude, however without the symbolic value of the act raising any particular devotional movement.

Nevertheless, the inspirations of various people, and above all of Sr. Maravillas herself, converged in the idea of founding a contemplative convent there, with the principal mission of keeping the Sacred Heart of Jesus company “day and night, in the place chosen by Him to reign, despite His enemies, in our poor Spain”.

The idea was launched and three years later, the result was the magnificent Carmel convent beside the monument, of which St. Maria Maravillas would be prioress.

Miraculous protection during the Civil War

After overcoming many difficulties, community life began at Cerro de los Ángeles on 31 October 1926, the Solemnity of Christ the King. The influx of new vocations soon filled the vacancies in the novitiate, thanks, without doubt, to the intense Carmelite spirit that was being cultivated in the newly founded convent. An intimate consolation comforted the Prioress, because at last the desires of the Heart of Jesus had been fulfilled: “How necessary it is to seek to be Saints on this blessed Hill, where with such love He wished to have His Carmelites, so that in them He might find consolation, and that with loving fidelity they might make Him forget the offences of His creatures!”

Notwithstanding the hopes of these early years, the dark national political horizon of 1931 was to become stormy in 1936. The bloody religious persecution was imminent, with a great risk of a sacrilegious attack on Cerro de los Ángeles.

St. Maria Maravillas wasted no time. By1931 she had already written to the General Official of the Discalced Carmelites, expressing a desire of the whole community for the realization of which she asked his and the Holy Father’s permission: to offer her life in defense of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in the event of the monument being attacked.

But God did not call these Sisters to martyrdom: He wanted them to be willing to suffer without losing their lives, and He saved them from the risk by humanly perplexing means.

The mayor of the city of Getafe, where the Cerro is located, was at the time a feared anarchist nicknamed ‘Russo’. Although brutalized by the republican zeal, Russo felt drawn to visit the Carmelite convent and get to know St.  Maria Maravillas up close. He often appeared in the parlour, or meeting room, and engaged in animated conversations with her, without hiding his sincere admiration. They talked about his family, the education of the children, the direction of society and – why not? – also of Carmelite life. In truth, he surrendered before the kindness of this mother, who possessed a kindness such as he had never experienced in the life of his militia companions.

When the war broke out, Russo secretly decided to save the lives of the Carmelites and, at the height of the persecution, sent a lorry, or truck, to Cerro de los Ángeles with a simple order to remove them from the place. St. Maria Maravillas and her community obeyed and, not without running serious risks on the way, arrived safe and sound at the doors of a convent of foreign nuns, where Spanish agents were not allowed to enter. They were thus free from the wrath of the militia thanks to an order from their terrible chief!

But this was only one episode among many others, which eventually convinced St. Maria Maravillas that they were under invincible protection, for the greater the dangers, the more striking was the intervention of Providence.

Once the war was over, they returned to rebuild the ruined monument and the Carmelite convent, taking up with fervour the mission entrusted to them: “Since the Lord did not want us to be martyrs, as we had wished, and brought us back to Himself, let us work as true daughters of the Holy Mother [St. Teresa of Avila] to make Him reign in Spain and in the whole world”.

Interior life marked by sufferings and struggles

To lift the veils of the soul of St. Maria Maravillas arouses veneration for the greatness of spirit and her enormous capacity to face pain, impossibly understood without the heroic virtue of faith. Those who analyze the expression of her countenance realize that it was not only her undeniable human qualities that were the cause of the success of her works, but the tremendous inner struggles that accompanied such achievements. “Her life, like all true lives, was forged in the trial of darkness.”

Those who pause today in the consideration of the ingenious work carried out by “The Saint of Wonders” understand that the physical and moral sufferings accepted with selfless resignation were the price of the greatest cycle of Carmelite foundations after that undertaken by St. Teresa herself.

Foundation of eleven new Carmelite Convents

Attracted by the extraordinary supernatural life which was developing around St. Maria Maravillas, many young women knocked at the convent doors asking to be admitted: “It seems a lie that, the world being as it is, there are so many vocations to this life, because there are very many, and everything must be done to help them”.

Certainly the authors of the Civil War were frustrated in their attempts to destroy the power of attraction that this humble nun exuded, who not only rebuilt and repopulated the destroyed convent, but also erected ten new ones, as well as undertaking the reform of the one she had entered.

Crowning all her labours for the Carmelite cause, she was also able to accomplish an Opus Magnus, a great work: the spiritual and material reform of the Convent of the Incarnation in Avila, where St. Teresa had lived for twenty-seven years. These new Carmelites were born in the best Teresian style, reviving in the middle of the twentieth century the pages of the Foundations in the beautiful Castilian lands.

The enemy of salvation could not bear such a blow and set about disrupting the regular life of the convents. For this reason, it fell to St. Maria Maravillas to confront the fury of the devil with vigorous exorcism, as is recorded in her process of canonization: “She did not have special and outstanding charisms, but she had to confront the terrible manifestations of the devil, even external ones”.

To allow oneself to be led by the Divine Will

Her assiduous contact with souls in her position of prioress, which she held from her youth until her death at the age of eighty-four, gave St. Maria Maravillas a profound knowledge of human nature and of the many obstacles placed in our way to the interior motions of grace:

“I believe that our nothingness and our misery do not matter at all to the Lord; of straightening, cleaning and changing, He takes care of Himself; the point is that we love Him and make His divine will so much our own […], that it alone governs our life, in things great and small, external and internal, and we occupy ourselves only in fulfilling it and, above all, in letting it be fulfilled in us.”

Summing up this invariable orientation given to her religious sisters, she would repeat to them with Spanish verve and much grace, when she perceived in any of them a voluntary opposition to the designs of God: “Si tú le dejas… – If you let Him act…”.

In the Carmel of La Aldehuela, near Cerro de los Ángeles, and one of the last founded by her, she died on 11 December 1974.

Her death was serene and she left her daughters and posterity with this message:

“The truth is that we are happy! If the Lord were to ask us about this and that, at the moment of death, the illness from which we would want to die, how we would like to be, etc., we could only say to him: ‘Lord, when You want it, how You want it, whatever You want! In this way our desires, which are none other than Your will, will be fully fulfilled“.

Compiled by Sandra Chisholm