St. Mary of Jesus Crucified (Mariam Baouardy)

St. Mary of Jesus Crucified was born Mariam Baouardy on 5 January 1846 at I’billin in Galilee, into a Melkite Greek Catholic family. Orphaned as a young child, she was raised by relatives and knew instability, poverty, and danger from early life. As a young woman she refused an arranged marriage and desired to belong wholly to Christ.

One of the dramatic episodes in her life occurred when a man, angered by her refusal to abandon the Christian faith, attacked her and cut her throat. She survived in a manner that she later attributed to the care of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Afterward she lived as a servant in several places and eventually came to France. She tried religious life with the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition, where the beginnings of the stigmata appeared, but she was not admitted to profession.

Mariam entered the Carmel of Pau in 1867 and received the name Mary of Jesus Crucified. She was humble, largely uneducated, and often assigned simple work, yet her mystical life was extraordinary. She experienced ecstasies, prophetic insights, attacks of the devil, bilocation, and the stigmata. Her spirituality was deeply marked by humility, love for the Holy Spirit, and devotion to the Church.

She helped found a Carmel in Mangalore, India, and later the Carmel in Bethlehem, the first Carmelite monastery in the Holy Land. She also had a role, through a private revelation, in identifying the site of Emmaus according to one tradition. In 1878 she was injured while helping with construction at Bethlehem; gangrene followed, and she died on 26 August at only thirty-two.

Canonized by Pope Francis in 2015, she is loved as “the Little Arab,” a saint of Galilee, Carmel, the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Land. Her life unites suffering, simplicity, mystical gifts, and a burning desire that God be loved.