María de Jesús de Ágreda, abbess and friend of the King of Spain

The Venerable Maria of Jesus was Mother Abbess of a Conceptionist convent in Agreda, Spain. Her remarkable management skills enabled the convent to prosper. She is also the author of a masterly 3,000-page work: The Mystical City of God, which is an account of the life of the Virgin Mary, written from the visions she received. It is known to contain no theological errors.

Maria d'Agreda, XVIIIe siècle, Museo Nacional del Virreinato© D.R. Institut National d'Anthropologíe et d'Histore, México

Reasons to believe:

Maria was graced with many impressive charisms: visions, bilocations, and levitations. Since she lived at the time of the Inquisition, she could easily have been harassed and accused. Instead, during the tribunal's examination, the delegates of the Holy Office and the Inquisitor General approved Mary's answers and her work.
Several missionaries in New Mexico confirmed a phenomenon of bilocation by Maria, who came to speak with them while at the same time remaining in her convent in Spain. They recognized her thanks to images of her that had reached them during their mission in America.
Maria was very discreet and did not seek the spotlight. She prayed for an end to the external mystical phenomena that drew too much attention to her. Her main book, The Mystical City of God, was not written on her own initiative, but at the behest of her confessor.
Maria of Agreda's life and writings are well documented. The 614 letters she exchanged with King Philip IV of Spain form part of the historical, political and spiritual study of the Spanish Golden Age.
Her body lies in state, in a shrine in the Concepcionist convent in Agreda. It is incorruptible and unusually well preserved.

Several popes (Innocent XI, Innocent XII, Benedict XIV, etc.) and numerous theologians have ratified her life and writings since the 17th century.

Summary:

María Fernandez Coronel was born in 1602 in the province of Soria (Castilla y León, Spain), into a very modest, pious and loving family. Many of her relatives also became religious.

On January 13, 1619, she was admitted to the Order of the Immaculate Conception in the convent of her native town, along with her mother and sister. Founded by Saint Beatrice da Silva in 1484, this contemplative order borrowed its spiritual ideal from the Franciscans. Maria quickly became the talk of the town: the convent's sisters witnessed inexplicable events, such as ecstasies, levitations and bilocations.

Among these phenomena, bilocations (the simultaneous presence of a person in two different places) occupy a special place. Maria describes how she felt transported to a hot, foreign country, where an Indian dialect was spoken that she didn't know at all, but which she nevertheless understood, without having to learn or translate it. She conversed with religious people she didn't know, dressed like Franciscans. On her "return" to Agreda, she described these men in detail. They were then identified as Franciscan missionaries in New Mexico! After her death, several of these missionaries recognized her in turn, thanks to devotional images of Maria of Agreda, after she was declared venerable, that had reached their mission, even though they never saw her again after the bilocation.

Maria was uncomfortable with these supernatural phenomena and asked Jesus to deliver her from them. She was elected abbess in 1627 and was re-elected until her death, except for a hiatus of three years (1652 to 1655), at her own request. She thus remained at the head of the convent for 35 years. She enjoyed the complete confidence of her nuns and the clergy. She demonstrated impeccable management: the monastery's accounts were masterfully kept, the number of nuns tripled in just five years, and the upkeep of the buildings was remarkable. A new convent was built in 1633.

On hearing of her fame, Philip IV of Spain paid her a personal visit. A friendship was born. They exchanged 614 letters on a wide variety of subjects ("The king [...] passed through this place and entered our convent on July 10, 1643, and gave me orders to write to him; I obeyed"). All these documents are well known to researchers.

ll this never disrupted her spiritual life; on the contrary, it intensified it! Maria's successive spiritual directors - two Franciscans, both eminent theologians - agreed that her natural disposition in no way explained the incomprehensible quality and depth of her faith and intuitions. Maria of Jesus never undertook anything without first informing her confessors, to whom she confided totally. When the Virgin Mary asked her to write down her life as it would be revealed to her in a vision, she was initially beset by doubt. She said that it was "a continual fear which I cannot express, and which is caused by the uncertainty in which I found myself, not knowing if I was on the right path, if I was losing His friendship or if I was enjoying His grace." It was only after obtaining her confessor's permission that she embarked on an adventure for which nothing had prepared her. And when her first confessor ordered her to destroy her manuscript, she immediately obeyed! So it's impossible to imagine that Maria of Jesus was either proud or narcissistic!

The Mystical City of God, which she patiently reconstructed at the behest of a new confessor, brings together her visions of the Virgin's life. Some think that this 3,000-page text is a work of literature, fiction, or a pensum. But it is more than that. The manuscript followed a long and edifying path among scholars of the 17th and 18th centuries, before being recognized as free of theological errors. The prerogatives and roles of the Mother of God discussed in Maria of Agreda's work are perfectly in line with Scripture, in particular the Revelation of John. Her teachings on the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, the Co-redemption and universal mediation were later dogmatically confirmed.

On the day of Maria de Jesus' funeral, the civil governor of Agreda had to use public force to disperse the crowd of faithful who came to pay their last respects. The speed with which the Church opened her beatification process - as early as November 21, 1671 - and above all that with which she proclaimed her venerable (decree of Innocent XI, August 2, 1679), after an incredibly rigorous investigation, speak volumes. Her body has remained incorrupt since 1665.

As early as 1667, the text of her visions was examined by members of the diocesan commission set up as part of the beatification process begun a few months earlier, and it received a positive appraisal. An editio princeps, published in 1670, was reread by eight Franciscan theologians and received the same approval. In July 1686, the Spanish Inquisition, although highly wary of illuminists and charlatans, approved it in its turn, after 14 years of scrutiny! Innocent XII appointed three cardinals to re-read the book, while the universities of Salamanca and Alcalá also gave a very favorable opinion in the final years of the 17th century. In the following century, Pope Benedict XIV gave his wholehearted approval.

Patrick Sbalchiero

Beyond reasons to believe:

Private revelations are not a substitute to the Gospel. The position of the Catholic Church on this subject is stated in articles 66, 67 and 514 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992):

"Throughout the ages, there have been so-called "private" revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. [...] Christ’s whole life is a mystery. Many things about Jesus of interest to human curiosity do not figure in the Gospels." (See Jn 20, 30 and Jn 21, 25).