THE NUN

Mother Agreda´s life is unthinkable without the framework of the Franciscan enclosure. Saint Beatrice's order oriented her towards the central mystery of the Immaculate Conception, which would exert a fascination all her life humanly inexplicable. The inexorable reclusion of her enclosed life guided the powerful strength of her intelligence and will towards a growth in vertical direction. The tightness of her first monastery, reduced to the walls of their parents´ house, launched the adolescent Mary of Jesus to a life of superior expansion, to the mysticism. Very early, in the noviciate already, she had a blooming of this mystical call, with abundant phenomena of levitation

and ecstasy. She started that period at the age of 18. The way, in the mystic trances took shape, was the type of ecstasy. The young Franciscan remained motionless and insensible for a while of about two or three hours. The ecstasy came along with levitation. She was elevated from the floor and she acquired such an astonishing lightness that a slight blowing could move the weightless mass of her body to and fro. Her face was transformed to such extent that she looked like a seraphim. All those trances rose up to more than a thousand, in general, in the presence of indiscreet people.

The convent was small. The lay population from the town attended to mass in the small chapel, and there was no lack of indiscreet people, who in collusion with the religious, approached to watch the transformed face of the nun in ecstasy.

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.