BLESSED MARY OF THE DIVINE HEART (MARIA DROSTE)

 

 

Maria Ana Joana Francisca Teresa Antónia Humberta Droste Zu Vischering, a descendant of one of the oldest families of German nobility, was born on September 8, 1863, the feast day of the Nativity of Our Lady, in Munster, together with her twin brother Max. Daughter of Count Clemente Droste Zu Vischering and Baroness Helena Von Galen, she was part of a large family. In all, the couple had 11 children, seven girls and four boys. However, two boys and a girl died very young. Maria soon revealed to have a very fragile health, she was born in danger of life, which led to her being baptized immediately. Regarding the birth of Mary and her twin brother, Helena, in an audience she had with the Pope, confided a secret to him:

 “When the two children were born, I experienced such an intimate joy that it didn't seem natural to me. I have never experienced anything similar. God certainly had particular designs on one of the two children; but which?”1

 

Years later Helena shared this secret with Maria and today, from the story of her life, we know that it was on her that the plans of God that her mother had foreseen fell on her.

 Maria lived most of her life in Darfeld Castle and received her education there with the help of her mother and a French tutor, M.Elle Demazeau, who described Maria as follows:

“I have never met a girl so lively and restless, but also with a magnanimous heart, simple, open, loyal and quite obedient.”two

 

Maria grew up in a family with a great devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and she soon felt touched and attracted by this Heart. Mary never separated this devotion from devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, as she wrote:

“I could never separate devotion to the Heart of Jesus from devotion to the Blessed Sacrament; and I will never be able to explain how and how much the Sacred Heart of Jesus deigned to favor me in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.”3

 

On April 25, 1875, Maria and her twin brother, both aged 11, made their first communion. Maria later reveals the following:

“Already on that occasion I sighed for religious life, to belong completely to Our Lord. And since I was told that some saints, on that occasion, felt their vocation for the first time, I was anxiously awaiting the same vocation. Our Lord, however, did not grant me on this day the grace I so desired. He was waiting, then, for the day of confirmation. And on the 8th of July of the same year, 1875, immediately after being confirmed, I felt the grace of the vocation born in me, and I never lost it.”4

 

On November 21, 1878, the feast of the Presentation of Our Lady, when Mary heard the words “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” in a sermon, she felt once again called to religious life, although she also tried to resist:

“I wanted to cover my soul's ears, saying: the sermon is not just for me, others hear it too and don't go to the Convent... But it was not possible for me to resist the voice of God...”5

 

  Mary, according to her, perhaps in 1884, has a strong experience after a communion, in which she hears, once again, in her heart, the same voice and which tells her:

“Thou shalt be a wife of my heart.”6

 

Faced with so many signs and the growing desire in her heart to belong completely to the Heart of Jesus, Mary began to look for the congregation to which she should join.

In 1888, when he visited a hospital with his mother, he found an unfortunate girl there who had caused a scandal. Faced with this scenario, and given that her mother had always protected her from these realities, she asks herself:

“If Our Lord were here now, which of the patients would he treat with more affection? Certainly about this poor sinner. I overcame my mother's repugnance and fear, and shook the poor woman's hand.”7

 

After this experience, while preparing and waiting for her turn for confession, in the Parish Church of Darfel, Maria has the following thought that comes to her like a ray from Heaven, which gives her clarity and leaves her without doubts:

     “Thou shalt enter the Good Shepherd”8

 

Maria thus entered the Congregation of the Good Shepherd, in Munster, on November 21, 1888. As was customary in congregations, she changed her name and became Sister Maria of the Divine Heart.

On the 24th of January 1894 Sister Maria was sent to Lisbon where she stayed for nearly three months. After this time it goes to Porto. She held the position of Superior and remained there until her death on June 8, 1899. This period in Portugal can be defined as the manifestation of her ascetic and mystical personality. As she herself says:

     “I have never seen anything with my bodily eyes, nor heard anything with my ears: it is all interior, as if a voice were speaking and heard in the heart and at the same time in the understanding; the faculties of the soul are united and collected in Our Lord...”9

 

It is through the inner voice that Sr. Mary receives the revelations of the Sacred Heart of Jesus who entrusts her with two missions: to ask the Pope for the Consecration of the entire human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which takes place on June 11, 1899, by Pope Leo XIII; build a Church so that it may be a place of reparation to His heart and of abundant graces. In order to fulfill the second mission entrusted to him, the Church of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Ermesinde was consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In it rest the mortal remains of Blessed Sr. Maria Droste. His beatification took place on November 1, 1975, the Solemnity of All Saints, by Pope Paul VI.
 

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1 RICCIARDI A., …More noble for CHARITY. Portuguese version by D. Gabriel de Sousa OSB Porto: Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, 1984

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3 Autobiography of Blessed Maria of the Divine Heart. Braga: Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, 1993

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