The Impatience of a Saint

From here.

"In Heaven, nothing will separate me from Jesus and Mary.  Besides, I am of very little use here, but from Heaven, you will see how busy I shall be."1

I have struggled with impatience all of my life.  Surely, yes, we all do to some extent.  But ever since I was a child, if I set my sights on something, then anything that was an obstacle to it would drive me nuts.  I am very much a "do it, or don't do it" kind of guy I suppose.

So you can imagine the joy that I felt inside when I found out about a recently declared Venerable by the name of Maria Teresa Quevedo, sometimes known as "Teresita".  In reading about her life, one can see that one thing is especially clear - when Teresita decided upon something, nothing would stop her from obtaining it.  My impression of her is that she simply decided upon her goal and threw herself into obtaining that goal 100%.  Nothing stood in the way of this very young potential saint.

It is interesting to read her life (one can find it in Ann Ball's wonderful Modern Saints: Their Lives and Faces Vol. 1) progress from that of a temperamental and spoiled child to that of a young lady who offered herself entirely to the will of God through the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Her spirituality has something of St. Therese of Lisieux in her - the same kind of holy impatience, if you will, where nothing will stop her from serving God.

From here.

Her spiritual life was deeply influenced by her love of the Holy Family, especially the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom she offered herself to as a slave in the manner prescribed by St. Louis de Montfort in his work True Devotion to Mary.  But she also sought to imitate St. Therese in her own way - "I will try to imitate her, so that Jesus may find in me all the consolations this little saint gave Him. I really like St.Therese's 'little way'; only, in my opinion, this little way has to pass through Our Lady"2.

Like St. Therese, Ven. Maria Teresa Quevedo died extremely young, at 19, as a nun in the Carmelites of Charity.  Her life was one of speed, as though it were lived in fast-forward - perhaps, when she passed,she was more like one who had lived a full life and was dying in their 90's, I have no idea.  But to read that she went from the popular party girl, beautiful and beloved by everyone in her school, to a Carmelite nun burning with love behind the enclosures of a convent is quite a story to read.

May she remember us all in her prayers.

1 - qtd. in Ann Ball, Modern Saints: Their Lives and Faces, Vol. 1, pg. 400
2 - From here.