Kevino de Guzmán
Sta. Mariana de Jesús de Paredes O.F.S
the first person to be canonized from Ecuador. Church testimony states that, almost from infancy, she gave signs of an extraordinary attraction to prayer and mortification, of love of God and devotion to the Blessed Virgin; and was, on a number of occasions, miraculously preserved from death. At the age of ten, she made private vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. She desired to convey the light of faith to less fortunate people, and to later enter a monastery as a Dominican nun. But when neither of these pious desires came to pass, she made for herself a hermitage in the home of her sister where, apart from all worldly cares and closely united to God, she gave herself up to the practice of unheard of corporal austerities. It is reported that the fast which she kept was so strict that she took scarcely an ounce of dry bread every eight or ten days. The food which miraculously sustained her life, as in the case of Saint Catherine of Siena and Saint Rose of Lima, was, according to the sworn testimony of many witnesses, the Eucharistic Bread alone which she received every morning in Holy Communion. At some point early in her life, Mariana entered the Third Order of St. Francis, and took the religious name of Marianna of Jesus at that time.
Mariana possessed an ecstatic gift of prayer, and is said to have been able to predict the future, see distant events as if they were passing before her, read the secrets of hearts, cure diseases by a mere sign of the Cross or by sprinkling the sufferer with holy water, and at least once restored a dead person to life. During the 1645 earthquakes and subsequent epidemics in Quito, she publicly offered herself as a victim for the city and died shortly thereafter. It is also reported that, on the day she died, her sanctity was revealed in a wonderful manner: immediately after her death, a pure white lily sprang up from her blood, blossomed and bloomed, a prodigy which has given her the title of "The Lily of Quito". The Republic of Ecuador has declared her a national heroine.
Sta. Mariana de Jesús de Paredes O.F.S
the first person to be canonized from Ecuador. Church testimony states that, almost from infancy, she gave signs of an extraordinary attraction to prayer and mortification, of love of God and devotion to the Blessed Virgin; and was, on a number of occasions, miraculously preserved from death. At the age of ten, she made private vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. She desired to convey the light of faith to less fortunate people, and to later enter a monastery as a Dominican nun. But when neither of these pious desires came to pass, she made for herself a hermitage in the home of her sister where, apart from all worldly cares and closely united to God, she gave herself up to the practice of unheard of corporal austerities. It is reported that the fast which she kept was so strict that she took scarcely an ounce of dry bread every eight or ten days. The food which miraculously sustained her life, as in the case of Saint Catherine of Siena and Saint Rose of Lima, was, according to the sworn testimony of many witnesses, the Eucharistic Bread alone which she received every morning in Holy Communion. At some point early in her life, Mariana entered the Third Order of St. Francis, and took the religious name of Marianna of Jesus at that time.
Mariana possessed an ecstatic gift of prayer, and is said to have been able to predict the future, see distant events as if they were passing before her, read the secrets of hearts, cure diseases by a mere sign of the Cross or by sprinkling the sufferer with holy water, and at least once restored a dead person to life. During the 1645 earthquakes and subsequent epidemics in Quito, she publicly offered herself as a victim for the city and died shortly thereafter. It is also reported that, on the day she died, her sanctity was revealed in a wonderful manner: immediately after her death, a pure white lily sprang up from her blood, blossomed and bloomed, a prodigy which has given her the title of "The Lily of Quito". The Republic of Ecuador has declared her a national heroine.