At Toledo in Spain, Blessed María de Jesús López de Rivas, virgin of the Order of Discalced Carmelites, who shared in the sufferings of the Lord’s Passion both in soul and in body, ever humble and bearing all things.
Lifespan: 1560–1640
Beatified: 14 November 1976 by Pope Paul VI
Memoria liturgica: 13 September
“Only one who is fortunate enough to make Christ the master of their entire being truly comes to know God—both divine and human—and walks upon a sure path.”
María de Jesús López de Rivas
María de Jesús López de Rivas was born into a noble family at Tartanedo (Guadalajara) on 18 August 1560. Her father died when she was only four years old, and as the sole heir she inherited a considerable estate. Her mother, widowed at nineteen, remarried, and the young girl remained in the care of her paternal grandparents and uncles at Molina de Aragón, where she received a Christian upbringing.
Described as of “rare beauty,” between the ages of fourteen and seventeen she struggled inwardly and contended with her family over her desire to consecrate herself to the Lord in the recently reformed Carmelite Order. Leaving comfort and wealth behind, she was received into it by the Jesuit Father Castro on 12 August 1577. She entered the monastery of Toledo, welcomed by Teresa herself, who had founded it nine years earlier.
Teresa called for a total self-giving to the Lord, which accorded entirely with María’s own longing, even though her shyness sometimes expressed itself in a manner described as “sanguine and choleric.” She made her profession on 8 September 1578. Her early years were devoted chiefly to prayer, and mystical gifts began to appear in her: stigmata on her hands, feet, side, and head.
At twenty-four she was appointed mistress of novices, a charge she would hold eight times in all, alternating with duties as sacristan, infirmarian, and sub-prioress. She was absent from Toledo for five months in 1585 for the foundation and establishment of a new monastery at Cuerva. At the age of thirty-one she was appointed prioress for the first time.
In 1600, with a year remaining of her second three-year term as prioress, a superior conducting a canonical visitation gave credence—without due investigation—to the unfounded accusations of one of the sisters and removed her from office. Sister María accepted the trial without resentment, her serenity of spirit entirely undisturbed.
For twenty years she bore humbly the slanders, several illnesses, and spiritual desolations with which the Lord tested her holiness—it was the interior night of the spirit. One year after the death of her accuser—for whom María had prayed earnestly that she might be granted a peaceful passing—she was publicly rehabilitated by the very superior who had deposed her, and who asked her forgiveness before the whole community. She was unanimously re-elected prioress on 25 June 1624.
Thereafter, owing to failing health, she obtained leave to serve only as councillor and mistress of novices, a charge she held until her death on 13 September 1640.