People who love life are al- ways a joy to be around. Mother Margarita’s joy was one of her most endearing qualities. She was a woman who was open, simple and transparent in her life and options. She was gifted with a joyful and communicative character, even though her health was always very fragile. She knew how to discern and communicate what she believed were the desires of God and then carried that message to other people. She wrote to her sister Leonor:
“I live in peace with a young heart, working as always, to be optimistic and trying to have others be the same. To give the happiness that God has given me so abundantly and that everyone does not enjoy.”
She liked Psalm 103, which runs, “Bless the Lord ,O my soul; and all my being bless his holy name . . .the kindness of the Lord is from eternity to eternity.” She found this joy because she sought to find God’s loving kindness in everything around her. And because she sought God in every- thing, she found Him in the most surprising places. She said, “With God there is always dancing.”
She loved the immense solitude of the Pacific. She saw God dancing through it. She described it: “The roaring waves praise the greatness of the Creator…The gorgeous landscape is no longer mute; the flowers sing, the waves sing, the gigantic coconut trees… everything sings a grandiose hymn to Christ Our Redeemer.” For Mother Margarita, God gave meaning and beauty to the things of the earth, because through them He reveals himself to us.
She used her time well. She knew that life and death are intimately connected, and she appreciated the moments she was given, as so few of us can. Yet, Mother Margarita was real. At times she felt ashamed for having wasted time and graces that God had given her. She exclaimed in her journal: “I want to live joyfully inside and out, eagerly taking advantage of the time God gives me, and being ready when He calls me definitively, to throw myself forever in His arms…What bliss!”
“The roaring waves praise the greatness of the Creator…The gorgeous landscape is no longer mute; the flowers sing, the waves sing, the gigantic coconut trees…everything sings a grandiose hymn to Christ Our Redeemer.”
What made Mother Margarita a true servant of joy was the fact that she suffered a great deal. Her writings show us that setting up Missions was not an easy task. There were barriers that at times seemed insurmountable, but it was God’s work and not hers. One day she wrote: “Monarchical insurrection. Bad political atmosphere. We can only place our trust in God. He takes care of us. I’ve had this joyous sentiment all day.” To speak of Mission in the life of Mother Margarita is something very deep, but outstanding in the richness of her writings. It touches one, be- cause you are able to see how God was transforming her through His Redemptive plan. This is why she could say: “Sanctity is sweet, very gentle, if understood in the light of Christ our Redeemer.” She always saw the difficulties before her as a challenge for God’s glory.
Mother Margarita exuded joy because she made her life a prayer. Prayer; there lay the secret of the explosive cargo formed in the con- vent of Berriz. It was an interior life which could seem unimportant to our modern mentality, really trite, but which would make possible wonders which defied human efforts. Many years later Vatican II would insist that there cannot be a true evangelization without a life of prayer. “The first and most important obligation toward the spread of faith is to lead a profoundly Christian life,” and this is basically nourished by prayer and love for one’s brothers and sisters. Mother Margarita’s prayer life was the wave of hidden love that crossed time and space and made the Victory of Jesus Christ, alive in her heart.
There were many hard years; voyages, foundations, paperwork, illness, listening and more listening to difficulties, and trying to put optimism where there were only problems. The financial hard- ships of the Missions that fell upon Berriz would have been enough to worry any businessman. On her second trip around the world, she learned that several of her sisters had fallen ill, and she learned of the political conditions plaguing Spain at the time; convents were being burned to the ground. But by far, the heaviest blow was to learn of her twin sister, Leonor’s death in Argentina on January 28, 1931, while she was in China. This was heart-rending. Half of her died that day.
Mother Margarita also suffered the continued storms of physical pain. She underwent several risky operations. Despite the fact that she knew her days were numbered, she worked tirelessly to collaborate in Christ’s Redemption. She continued to say, “I want to bring joy to all those around me.” Later, as cancer invaded
Mother Margarita’s body, she got up with difficulty in the dark of night to check another sister who had a high fever. And in order not to disappoint another group of sisters, who had lit a bonfire on the hill, she danced around it with them. That suffering transformed into love, may have seemed useless, hidden; unable to solve the problems of the missions or the socio-political problems of Spain at the time. But, what it did was to send out a wave of hope, of liberation that comes from Christ, who liberated us.
In one of her last letters to Leonor, Mother Margarita speaks about suffering that had become so much a part of her existence.
“I am not afraid of suffering as long as the Lord does not leave me to myself. Alone, I am a disaster! … Let us acquire the greatest amount of supernatural spirit … As our bodies grow weaker, let us be more united to God; let us use the many occasions to suffer, physically and morally, that come our way, and take advantage of the prestige afforded by our age to form Christ in the souls of all we meet.”
What she said about the surgery was this:
“I got on the stretcher and they gave me the anesthetic right there. I felt true joy placing myself in the hands of God my Father, with full awareness, telling Him with all my heart to do with me what He pleased, that I wanted nothing but His Will. And I said this with great fervor and joy be- cause I was in such good hands…I was talking out loud, the same as Jesus did when He died, and I tried to make His dispositions mine. “Into your hands I com- mend my spirit.” And in such good hands I went to sleep…”
Mother Margarita died in the hands of God a few days after that last surgery, just two days before her fiftieth birthday. Just before she died, with her typical joy and optimistic spirit, she told Mother nieves: “Mother, you have many things to think about…but I will help you from heaven; Yes.”
With that “Yes,” she closed her eyes to this world, and left us with the legacy she lived–the freedom, joy and love of Jesus Christ, with whom she danced into Heaven.
(Committee for the Canonization of Mother Margarita Maturana)
