December 7, 2025 - "Saint Maria del Carmen Rendiles Martinez"

Born without a left arm, she was soon fitted with a prosthesis. Later Carmen became quite talented in both painting and embroidery.  When she was fourteen, she felt a calling to religious life.  She applied to several religious communities who rejected her application because of her limb difference.  She eventually applied to and was accepted by the Servants of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, a French religious community that had established branch houses in Colombia and Venezuela.

 

Carmen was a model religious and was a very happy member of the Servants of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.  In1965 the sisters in France decided to dress in secular clothes and begin living like a secular institute.  The sisters in Colombia and Venezuela did not want to go along with these changes.  They sought autonomy and under the leadership of Mother Carmen established a new community more in line with the original rule of the Servants of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.  She served as superior general of the congregation from 1969 until her death from influenza in 1977.  She was beatified by Pope Francis in 2018.  The miracle recognized for her beatification was the healing of the arm of a physician.

 

When Pope Leo canonized the seven saints (including Saint María del Carmen Rendiles Martínez) in St. Peter’s Square on October 19, 2025, he described that celebration as one that “reminds us that the communion of saints embraces all the faithful, across space and time, in every language and culture, uniting us as the People of God, the Body of Christ, and the living temple of the Holy Spirit.”

 

May Saint María del Carmen Rendiles Martínez pray for us!

 

Until next week,

Fr. John