30 March – Venerable Mirror and the Feast of the Lost Child
The Venerable Mother Isabel de San Esteban, daughter of Esteban Sanchez and
Maria de la Vanda; a native of Mexico, where she professed in the Convent of
Our Mother Santa Clara in the year 1616.
She showed herself to be the mirror of virtue in which all the other nuns
arranged themselves.
She celebrated the feastday of the lost Child, and with what little alms she
gathered from the nuns, she gave on that day a gift to the sick. The time
came when, due to poverty, she could celebrate no more; and to avoid being a
nuisance, she left off gathering alms.
She was called to the gate for an urgent matter, and there she found a
well-disposed gentleman who begged her take under her care a twelve year old
Boy, and keep him among the Sisters. Not understanding the mystery, she
replied, “Were he a Girl, it were possible to admit her, but it is
impossible to care for a male in a Convent of Nuns.” She left confused, and
upon entering a Chapel to commend the matter to God, she saw, next to the
Virgin, the Glorious Lord St. Joseph, with face and form like that of the
gentleman she had just seen at the gate. She took this to be a sign, that
celebration of the feastday of the Child was a pleasure to God.
She celebrated it for many more years, and passed on to celebrate it in
Heaven, as her pious virtues would indicate, on March 30, 1660.
- from "Menologio Franciscano"
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