MOTHER MARGARITA
Blessed Margarita Maria Lopez de Maturana
(1884 - 1934)
a woman with open heart and great ideals.
She was beatified in the Cathedral of Bilbao, Spain at 5:00pm on October 22, 2006.
Margarita entered the convent boarding school in 1901. Her mother wanted to take her away from a marine boyfriend and a relationship she did not accept.
After a year and a half in the boarding school of Berriz, Margarita returned home, and the boyfriend came back to visit her... but now things had changed.
In Berriz, Margarita discovered that God was calling her to live radically for Him, to give her life to Jesus and to others. At home this was interpreted as no more than another youthful dream. They tol d her to wait, to think more about it. But she was firm, decided and the following year (1903) she entered the convent of Berriz.
Margarita Maria Lopez de Maturana
A cloistered nun with a missionary heart
Her life then was focused on the great ideal of living the Gospel radically: to follow Jesus and through a life of prayer and community, to give herself to all human beings. The meeting with Jesus was her greatest joy. To meet with Him, her friend, to lis ten to Him and discover what He wanted from her each day.
She was a woman with a joyful character, open and with great sincerity. Always attentive to the needs of others, she organized with the girls of the school an active correspondence via letters with the lepers of the Fontilles sanatoria.
About 1920 a great missionary movement started in Spain. Missionaries from China and the Pacific Islands came to Berriz; they brought news about those lands and people who are also loved by God. And Margarita was mov ed by all of it. She felt that God was calling them, the Sisters, to also do something from their cloistered convent. She organized with the students raffles and they sent letters to the missions. The needs of all these people and their sufferings were al ways present in her prayers.
This movement of the school spread to the nuns in the convent, they began to question themselves, and Margarita discovered, with the support of all of them, a new call:
"Go out to all the world and proclaim the Good News to all creation." (Mk. 15)
"There are moments in life of great importance, it is when God point out a way to follow and then leaves it up to us to respond." - Mother Margarita Maria
For more information on Mother Margarita Maria Lopez de Maturana,
contact:
Causa de la M. Margarita
Convento de la Vera-Cruz
48240 Berriz, (Vizcaya)
causabez@infonegocio.com