It was 1826. Madrid was still a long way from being the bustling and big city we know today, but its people already had that chaste, welcoming and enterprising air that characterizes it so much.
On a cold morning on December 2nd, in calle de la Flor Baja, something very large had just happened: Antonia and Manuel’s home received its second bud. It was a girl who made her parents and the whole neighborhood burst with joy.
Two days after her birth, in the parish of San Martín, the little girl received the waters of baptism and, with them, the grace in droves and three names, Bibiana, by the saint of the day, Antonia for her mother and Manuela for her father. As a good Madrid she would use Manuela’s; “Manolita” would tell you.
His early years were involved in the warmth and affection of the family home, enriched with four more children: Major José, then Manolita and immediately Antonio, Inocencia and Manuel, the youngest.
Like any girl, Manolita made her trave-suras; his sister Innocence would later remember a fall from a confrontation for nothing. “In penance,” his mother tells him, “you will pray three Hail Marys to Our Lady.” Manolita did not plead with her to be allowed to lift or change the punishment; every day he would have his date with the Lady and there would be not three but seven Of the Hail Mary’s sorrows. Thus he learned to love Our Lady: by looking at her attentive gaze on the canvas that portrayed Our Lady.
Small-bodied but big-bodied, those treating Manolita admired her awake intelligence and a generous heart that at such a young age made her attentive about her surroundings required help.
He spent his childhood among gestures so delicate that everyone thought something big kept in his heart. The free times were devoted to children; I was teaching them catechism. There was no need for anyone to say that girl would end up a little girl. He knew how to combine games and prayers, he won the attention of the little ones while their mothers worked.
Teen and young reflective
Closest friends knew of her desire to be Dominican, but she would have to wait because there were many requests before hers.
Meanwhile, in Chamberí, Madrid, a priest had an almost impossible dream: to found a congregation that cared for the sick in their homes… A strange idea in the mid-19th century: a nun alone, at night, at the home of strangers? Excommunication was in force for novices and religious who spent the night outside the convent. In those days, in Madrid you didn’t see a soul at night and if someone was surprised you wouldn’t live to tell it. The right thing to do was for the nuns to lock themselves in their convents and dedicate themselves to their prayer.
But Chamberí’s priest, Don Miguel Martínez, saw that this was good and much needed; it was certainly God’s will. He therefore decided to carry out the idea and thought of seven founders, such as the Servitas. She set out to search among the “Ladies of Catholic Circles”.
Manuela appeared before Father Miguel. She turned out to be the youngest and the most modest. She learned of the priest’s desires and searches and, at twenty-five, was willing to do everything. The idea of caring for the sick at home or where the disease prostrates them pleased them.
Foundation of the Siervas de María
On August 15, 1851, with seven founders of which Manuela turned out to be the last, the Institute was born in Madrid. Candidates for the new order left their world costumes, took up habits and changed their names. Manuela would be María Soledad, a name that became a symbol of her life, because she only resisted the harshness of the rules and the poverty that accompanied the new foundation.
The work was born like any institute of religious, but breaking the ancient molds of nuns in terms of developing their mission in the heart of the world. Sister Soledad knew that she had God and that with Him she could face any difficulty.
Five years had the foundation when Father Michael’s fervor threw her into new companies for the glory of God. By that time, he prepared an expedition to missionary in Fernando Poo. Only a few volunteers participated. Sister Soledad offered to accompany him. The father said to him, “No, Soledad, you stay, for if you leave the foundation perishes.” She obeyed; had managed to embody in itself the foundational ideal.
Just a few years of dedication to the sick and it was already a living reference for those who were entering their ranks. He had the special gift of discovering Jesus’ face in all who were entrusted to him: “I was sick, naked, alone. And you took care of me.”
No one like her turned herself in. If the sick child didn’t want to take his medicine: no problem, Soledad fixed it. She possessed the charm of telling fascinating stories that made the children forget the bitter trance.
For young people, his watchful love always inspired his proper gesture; neither the warning nor the timely and well-said word was saved; they thanked him and kept those words as a norm and treasure in their lives.
He had no limit to his patience and listening ability when he attended the elderly. They felt her with the welcome and tenderness of the best daughter. She was small and fragile in appearance, but how she convinced them.
In early 1856 she was thirty years old and invited to take responsibility for the nascent Institute. She was thought of because she was the last and only of the seven initiator; She remained animosity, against wind and tide, ready to combine her deep humility with her steel mettle to carry forward and consolidate the work and mission that God confided in the Institute.
Economy below zero
Since the foundation began, the “haberes” of Mary’s Handervas were below zero, but according to the sisters, “Mother Soledad’s faith worked miracles.” He took refuge in the chapel many times with tears in his eyes, while Divine Providence made the answer come to the goal. Soledad did not forget that all of Spain was plunged into poverty and she suffered from everyone’s hunger.
“Mother of the poor”, that’s what they called her in Madrid, because while all the Institute had was to share, she offered it with such respect and affection that in addition to hunger, she satiated souls. When the sisters went out to care for their sick people, they found in the bag what was needed to care for a certain sick person: the medicine the family could not buy, the blanket for the one who lived in the attic and, landed with cold, could not sleep. Some claimed that the mother had taken her from her own bed. With charity he brought, every day, an egg to that other who needed it by prescription. The sister who cared for the chicken coop could see that “the twelve hens we had seemed to realize because they laid daily and daily the twelve eggs gathered.” Many came to the convent every day for help and Sister Soledad would not let them leave empty-handed.
Spain welcomed the Siervas of Mary which had already been established in many parts. Mother Soledad was asked to open a house in Valencia, an area that was in the midst of a revolution. The bishop approved of his arrival, not the revolutionarys. The nun wanted to see the chief maximum of them. “For what?” they asked him. She replied that she wanted to ask her to let her take care of the sick. The boss sent to answer that he could go to the barricades, there he would not be ill. And there were the Handervae of Mary, without looking at political or religious ideology, nor race or social status of those who needed their care. The sawings knew that God is in every person who suffers. Soledad said to them, “Remember that their names are already written in heaven.”
The mother house
The exemplaryness and dedication of Mother Soledad had its effect; the followers increased, they needed a bigger house, but… there was no money. The situation was difficult but the difficulties in fact reinforced the mother’s trust and abandonment in Divine Providence.
The Siervas of Mary, following the example of Soledad, went out to ask from door to door throughout Spain… front, Sister Soledad.
After countless experiences and very difficulties, finally, on December 18, 1880, the first stone of his first formal house was laid, although the works had to be interrupted several times for lack of means. Having seen Mother Soledad on the scaffolding or seeing all the sisters chaining up to unload the materials, faith worked miracles: the convent of Chamberí, a monument and response of faith.
The morbid cholera test
In the second half of the nineteenth century, around 1860 and until 1885, morbid cholera claimed its victims throughout Spain and sowed orphanage, desolation and death.
Entire families were attacked without anyone attending to them. For fear of contagion, the healthy fled away. Every afternoon a dantesca scene was repeated: the passage of wagons with corpses. It didn’t give time to dig the pits, and the dead were buried in mass graves. In the midst of the epidemic, Mother Soledad’s daughters wrote pages of heroism, even novices were sent to help and came with faith and courage. Soledad practically didn’t go to bed to sleep and rest.
The Government, for its part, also deployed its forces and sealed the doors: “No one will be able to leave an infected house, they must be isolated for forty days.” With these measures the hand-eaters became trapped in the care centers without food and with minimal water, but the mother managed to get them some help. It was where the governor asked for freedom of movement and medical equipment for the saws. The ruler replied that he did not want contagion to reach the convent. The mother gave her answer: “Lord governor, my life and that of my daughters are in God’s hands, and it will be an honor for all of you to give it up for your brothers and sisters. What a joy for a Servant of Mary to be a martyr of the most sublime charity.” The Governor surrendered and provided him with carriages. From all over the nation they weeped called to the religious, and Mother Soledad would have wanted to cover all of Spain. She, in person, settled in the goal of the convent in order to better organize the help she directed to Zaragoza, Alsasua, Mendigorría, Aranjuez, Valencia, Alcoy, Algeciras, Tarifa…
In this sublime mission died the young novice Piedad Urabáyen, infected after helping the patient she attended to die. Mary’s Saws will consider her “Protomártir of the Institute”.
Soledad’s prudent guidance
As the Institute grew, it was difficult for Mother Soledad to care for all the sisters, so she multiplied her letters full of wise advice and wise measures.
In Almeria the Siervas of Mary were offered a disused cemetery and there they settled humbly. Soon after Almería was cheerful before the new convent, whose spacious garden became a playground for the children of the neighborhood. The co-founder, who would be better off saying founder of Mary’s Handheads, did nothing but express her gratitude to God in many ways. One such form was to send to make an image of the Suffering Christ who has replaced the cross with his sick bed and whose face expresses not only physical pain but the loneliness, uncertainty and bitterness that sickness brings with it. For this Christ the mother dedicated in the infirmary a room as an oratory where she spent hours of contemplation and then resumed her tireless activity for the sick and the sisters who felt cared for and comforted by her.
For this religious the Virgin Mary was always her model of servant and mother. “She is the Nurse Major while always interceding for us before her Son,” she wrote in her letters to her daughters.
The fall of 1887
The exhausted Soledad was increasingly engrossed and collected inside. During the last profession he presided over, one of the new professes removed the crown of orange blossoms and devotedly placed it on the mother’s forehead. She said, “Soon you will place me another,” referring to the one placed on the day of their death.
On 28 September 1887 she was shown a high fever that forced her to go to bed; for three times he tried to get up, but he couldn’t. On October 4, he was given the a unation of the sick. The next day the nuns began to kiss their hand as a farewell sign. One of them asked her for the blessing and she, straightening herself with fatigue, said to them, “My daughters, I ask you to have peace and unity.”
At dawn on October 11, 1887 he entered agony; Nine o’clock in the morning they marked “their time.” I’d given it my all. The glass no longer kept anything, as a symbol of its total delivery. His time in this world was reduced to sixty-one years full of simplicity, love and courage in the face of pain and always abandoned in the hands of God.
Mother Maria Soledad Torres Acosta was beatified in 1950 and on 25 January 1970 was canonized by Pope Paul VI.
Today mary’s Handies, Ministers of the Sick, add up to 1,308 members spread across 127 communities of twenty-three nations in Europe, America and Africa. Ω
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