75th Anniversary of Venerable Maria Teresa Quevedo

Venerable Maria Teresa Quevedo: The “Princess” who was “a Slave to the Queen” (d. April 8, 1950)
Venerable Maria Teresa Quevedo was born on April 14, 1930 (not April 12, as is sometimes said), in Madrid, Spain. She was a strong-willed little girl. She knew what she liked and what she didn’t. If a certain dish, for example, did not meet her standards, a passionate “No me gusta!” could be heard from the dinner table.

“What does ‘disobedient’ mean?”
What was to her liking was a certain toy that she saw a little boy playing with one day. She asked, but did not obtain. A wee slap to the face followed. The “disobedient” little Maria Teresa was reprimanded. “What does disobedient mean?” she asked Daria (who was minding her). “It means that you have hurt our Blessed Mother!”

Little did Daria know the measure of grace that God would attach to this off-hand comment of hers. Maria Teresa was distraught. She could hardly bear the thought of having wounded a Mother so good. Thereafter, she was often founding praying in earnest before Her statue in the family home. The beginning of what would become a passionate love for Our Lady had begun.

The Key to Her Sanctity
Although one could say much about Maria Teresa’s character, her virtues, and her religious life, we feel compelled – time limitations aside – to draw attention to the key to her sanctity: a filial love of the Mother of Fair Love.

When Maria Teresa entered the Carmelites, this love was evident to all who lived with her, as it was to her friends and family. Prior to her entrance to religious life, for instance, her cousin, Angelines (Nines), had once asked her about her love of Our Lord. “I love Our Lord,” she replied, “with all my heart. But He wants me to love Our Lady in a special way and to go to Him with my hand in Mary’s. My affection for Her is like that of a tiny child for its mother. You know, Nines, how a baby clings to his mother’s skirt when he is learning to walk? Well, that is the way Our Lord wants me to cling to Our Lady’s blue mantle.” (emphasis added)

To cling to Mary, the Mediatrix of all Graces: this was the formula for her sanctity, at least in practice. The same can be said for Bl. Edward Poppe, for whom this intention was explicit: “The constant application of Mary’s mediation dominates my entire spiritual life. I remain united to Mary, I call upon Her to help me in my difficulties, and I contemplate Jesus in the Sacred Host with Her eyes and Her Heart.” (Quoted in The Arduous Ascent) Similarly, Venerable Maria Teresa Quevedo could say: “My life must be with Christ, in Christ, for Christ – with Our Lady at my side.”

“I must keep my hand in that of Our Lady,” she once said, “in order to be able to please Her Son. Only with my hand in Hers can I be confident that I shall reach Heaven.” (emphasis added) Such confidence, such simplicity – which her uncle, Fr Jesús Quevedo, S.J., called “her outstanding characteristic” – was evidently not the fruit of headwork, so much as it was of union with Our Lady. (St. Gemma Galgani, too, was praised for her admirable simplicity, which, according to Fr Germanus, her spiritual director, was her dominant spiritual trait.)

The Feast of the Assumption in Heaven
During Community recreation one evening in 1949 – the year before the proclamation of the Dogma of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Assumption – Sr Maria Teresa blurted something out that probably surprised her as much as it did her Sisters. She said that Mary was preparing a special favour for her. What was it? The Sisters were desperate to know. After much begging, she relented: “Sisters, I believe I am going to celebrate the new Dogma in Heaven.”

Laughter followed, as did more questioning. The time would come when this prophecy would be fulfilled, for Sr Maria Teresa was to die the following year on April 8, 1950 (75 years ago today). Her lasts words are a fitting end to a life spent in the service of the Queen of Heaven, whose ravishing countenance filled the dying nun with unspeakable joy. We will not spoil the ending, however, for those who do not already know it. In any case, her life is well worth reading in full (her only English biography is entitled Mary Was Her Life).

“Fig Monday”
Next Monday, the Monday of Holy Week (Monday, April 14, 2025) will be “fig Monday,” on which Our Lord is believed to have cursed the barren fig tree. Next time you hear this Gospel, remember this consoling word of Venerable Maria Teresa Quevedo (born April 14, 1930), which is taken from a letter to the Blessed Virgin that she composed during her postulancy: “Dearest Mother Mary: Today one of the Sisters asked me how I could say I hoped to become a saint. I answered her: ‘I do not say it boastfully as you seem to infer, Sister. I say it because I am confident that my Holy Mother wants to make a saint of her poor, weak child who, of herself, will never be worth a fig.”

Reflection:
St Gemma Galgani’s adopted mother once made the following remark: “With Gemma at my side, I rest, I find myself refreshed, and no longer feel the weight of my work, nor the bitterness of disagreeables.” If such is the case when St Gemma is present, what abundance of grace will be given to the soul who, like Venerable Maria Teresa Quevedo, walks with Mary at her side!

Source:
Sister Mary Pierre, R.S.M., Mary Was Her Life: The Story of a Nun, Sister Maria Teresa Quevedo, 1930-1950 (Benziger Brothers, Inc., New York, 1960)