HER SURROUNDINGS

Like Avila, Loyola or Lisieux, Agreda is a geographical point, famous all over the world due to a person with an extraordinary destiny that made it immortal. That exceptional character is the Venerable Sister Mary of Jesus known, precisely in Agreda, for her birthplace. In this town, about which has been said to be the bastion of Castile facing Aragon, on the 2nd April 1602 Sister Mary of Jesus Coronel and Arana was born, in Agustinas street. Different origins are mixed in her family tree. Her mother, Mrs Catalina of Arana was of Basque descent, with nobility documents that are preserved so far in the convent of the Immaculate Conception archives in Agreda,

Her family tree

she came from a town called Izurza, in Vizcaya. Her father, Mr. Francis Coronel was from Agreda. Mary of Jesus had two brothers, Francis and Joseph. Both of them were Franciscan monks. Her sister, Jeronima, like herself, entered in the convent of the Immaculate Conception in Agreda. Gifted with exceptional virtues, in her childhood she showed herself more like a timid woman and full of complexes that nobody knew how to explain. The mystery of all that was that very early God started to work on her with interior illumination phenomena that revealed her nothingness, the vanity of all the created things and the sin that reigned in the world.

Translated into English from the book: Ven. María de Jesús de Ágreda, concepcionista. P.Antonio María Artola, C.P. Monasterio de la Concepción, Ágreda, 1996.