Designation as a saint is by no means the only measure of a person's virtue and ability to inspire spiritual seekers on the path to union with God. Yet, in a world populated with 1.1 billion Catholics, it is surely a powerful way for the Catholic Church to officially multiply the effect of saintly persons on others, through increased awareness of their exemplary lives and contributions.
Marilyn H. Fedewa
Mariá of Ágreda : Mystical Lady in Blue
I just finished reading Marilyn Fedewa's biography of Mariá of Ágreda , the mystical lady in blue. Mariá of Ágreda was a seventeenth century mystic who spent her entire adult life as a cloistered nun in a convent founded by her mother in her home town of Ágreda in northeastern Spain.
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| Maria of Agreda: The Mystical Lady in Blue |
Mariá has been named one of the nine most influential women in Spanish history, but she was also an important figure in the American Southwest. Through bilocation, she visited Native Americans in what later became Texas and New Mexico, evangelizing them before they were reached by Spanish missionaries. That a woman who could be in two places at once--places separated by an ocean--seems fantastic to the modern mind; but these incidents of bilocation were thoroughly investigated by ecclesiastical authorities in the New World and were accepted as bona fide by the religious figures of her day.
Mariá of Ágreda was a prodigious writer, but her crowning achievement was Mystical City of God, her multi-volumed biography of Mary. This work has been translated into many languages and remains today as one of the great contributions to Catholic mystical literature.
When Mariá died in 1665 at the age of 63, a great clamor arose to canonize her. The Vatican designated her as venerable in 1673, the first step to canonization. Unfortunately, although the cause for her canonization has waxed and waned over the centuries, Mariá of Ágreda has yet to be canonized.
Why it takes so long for some worthy people to be canonized I cannot say. Even St. Thomas More, who was beheaded for the Catholic faith by Henry VIII in 1535, was not canonized for 400 years.
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Dorothy Day, Servant of God
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And this brings me to Dorothy Day. I am one of thousands of people who pray for the day Dorothy Day will be canonized, and we have powerful allies among the clergy. The American Bishops have endorsed her canonization, and Pope Benedict spoke of her holiness in a public address he made shortly before stepping down from the papacy.
So far, although she has been named a Servant of God--the first step toward canonization--and her cause has been enthusiastically taken up by the Archdiocese of New York and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Dorothy has not moved up the ladder to canonization. So far, she has not even be beatified.
What does she need to become a Saint? Two miracles. Miracles have been attributed to her. The eminent psychologist and author Robert Coles attributed his wife's recovery from cancer to Dorothy's prayers while she was still alive. These are Dr. Coles' words, which are taken from his biography of Dorothy:
[S]he often wrote to me, and when my wife became seriously ill in 1973, she prayed long and hard for her. My wife miraculously--the doctor's words--survived the illness, and she and I have never really been the same since then with respect to our feelings for Dorothy Day, who wrote to us every single morning for a while: a testimony of concern we scarcely know how to acknowledge, even now. God bless her soul. (Coles, 1987, p. xx).I myself have reported on the miraculous recovery of Sarah Dorothy Maple, whose brain tumor disappeared after I sought Dorothy Day's intercession, in spite of the fact that Sarah's doctors gave her no hope for recovery. My intercession was documented in the Houston Catholic Worker, which also printed Sarah's own testimony of her miraculous recovery. I sent a copy of Sarah's medical records to the New York Archdiocese.
Perhaps Sarah Maple's recovery from brain cancer is not the miracle Dorothy Day needs. If not, let us keep praying for other miracles. Let us have faith in Dorothy's power to intercede on our behalf.
As the old Christmas hymn attests, long our world has lain "in sin and error pining." We live in a culture that has lost its way--drugged by materialism and selfishness and the insatiable lust for power and recognition. Dorothy--through her humility, through the clarity of her beautiful writing, through her saintly lifelong witness--can show us the way home.
Even now, she waits with other saints of the ages--Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross--to aid us. Let us pray for Dorothy Day's official recognition as a saint--sometime within our lifetimes.
References
Robert Coles. Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1987.
Marilyn H. Fedewa. Maria of Agreda: Mystical Lady in Blue. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2009.
Sarah Maple. Dorothy Day Miracle Visits Casa Juan Diego. Houston Catholic Worker, November-December, 2011. Accessible at:
http://cjd.org/2012/02/05/answer-to-prayers-miracle-visits-casa-juan-diego-2/
Sarah Maple. Miracle After Prayers to Dorothy Inspires New Convert: My Long, Circuitous Journey into Catholicism. Houston Catholic Worker, June-August, 2013. Accessible at: http://cjd.org/2013/07/05/miracle-after-prayers-to-dorothy-inspires-new-convert-my-long-circuitous-journey-into-catholicism/
