St. Maria Josefa Sancho de Guerra
Feast day: March 20
St. Maria Josefa Sancho de Guerra was a Spanish sister who founded the Servants of Jesus of Charity, a religious order responsible for caring for the sick and the poor, especially the elderly and children. Born in 1842, she was the eldest daughter of a large Catholic family raised in Spain’s Basque country, and her father, a chairmaker, died when she was just seven years old. In childhood, she was cured from paralysis at the Shrine of St. Michael in the region’s Aralar mountain range. At 15, she was sent to live with relatives in Madrid to receive an education and a more complete formation.
It was at age 18, with her love of the Blessed Mother and inclination towards solitude, that Maria Josefa responded to the call to become a religious. Although she first considered joining the contemplative Conceptionists, a bout of typhus prevented her from doing so. Instead she joined an active order, the Institute of the Servants of Mary, and took the name Maria Josefa of the Heart of Jesus, exemplifying her special love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus and for the Eucharist.
However, with her strong sensibility toward the poor and the sick, St. Maria Josefa questioned whether she had chosen the right path. After much prayer and after speaking to her confessors, she left the Servants of Mary at age 29, and with the permission of the archbishop of Toledo, she founded the Servants of Jesus of Charity in 1871. The focus of this new order was to care for Christ in the sick, whether in hospitals or homes; the elderly; children; and the homeless.
St. Maria Josefa encouraged her sisters to foster a contemplative spirit as they worked, remembering always the significance of saving an individual soul for eternal life. “Don’t believe, sisters, that assistance consists only in giving medicines and food to the sick,” she would tell them. “There is another type of assistance that must never be forgotten, and it is the assistance of the heart that adjusts and enters into sympathy with the person who suffers and goes to meet his necessities.”
St. Maria Josefa passed away March 20, 1912. She was canonized in the Jubilee Year of 2000, the first Basque to be declared a saint. “St. Maria Josefa lived her vocation as an authentic apostle in the field of health, since her style of care sought to combine motherly and spiritual attention, using every means to achieve the salvation of souls,” Pope St. John Paul II said at her canonization. “Although she was ill for the last 12 years of her life, she spared no effort or suffering and was unstinting in her charitable service to the sick in a contemplative atmosphere.”
By the time of her death, her religious order had 43 houses. Today the Servants of Jesus of Charity have more than 100 homes across the world dedicated to helping those in need.
Reflection
O God, may I always see you in the disadvantaged and all those in need of love. May I follow your call to the specific place where you want me to shine your light of hope.
Prayer
Grant, O Lord our God,
that the Virgin blessed Maria Josefa Sancho de Guerra, your faithful spouse,
may stir up in our hearts the flame of divine love,
which she inspired in other virgins
to the enduring glory of your Church.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
