The miracles of Mary Help of Christians for Blessed Maria Romero

Rome (Italy). Blessed Sr. Maria Romero Meneses – Daughter of Mary Help of Christians from Central America (1902-1977), she had great faith in Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and in Mary Most Holy whom she called ‘my Queen’. She always felt her hand close to her and her powerful protection. “In all respects, she always sent Mary Help of Christians as the vanguard; she had also invented a prayer (she specialized in inventing prayers) which was, ‘Pon tu mano, Madre mia, ponla antes que la mia’. (Place your hand, My Mother, place it before mine). Nothing, absolutely nothing did she do or undertake without the pon tu mano…” (GRASSIANO M.D., All with Mary, all like Don Bosco, Rome FMA Institute 1986, 138).

Here are some episodes that document her faith in Mary:

“Some young missionaries even took the small savings to Sr. Maria. And she, always happy, used any situation to show how great the Lord was and how serious Providence was. One day, a girl came to bring her small savings, nine colones. Sr. Maria looked at her with her smiling face and then said to her, ‘What a wonderful thing you are doing! Look, a boy came in a little while ago with a bill of nine ‘colones’, neither a cent more nor a cent less. So, see how good Our Lady is, my Queen; with me, she does not give me only one favor, she gives me a deluge’”.

“Another time, in fact, Sr. Maria arrived alarmed at the ‘shelter’ where the girls, amid the usual noise, were making packages for the poor and for the children of the oratories. Sr. Maria had bought clothes and toys for them and the invoice had arrived. “This time they’ll put me in jail,” she said distraught, “If I don’t pay this big debt by tomorrow! But I will cling to the robe of my Queen, Our Lady, and… She will be forced to come to prison with me!” The girls didn’t know whether to laugh or be alarmed at the thought of Our Lady in prison!”

“In the meantime, I’m going to pray in the chapel, and you do too,” added the Sister, sad but sure of herself and of Providence. “If anyone is looking for me, say I’m there.” Sometime later the doorkeeper Sister came to look for Sr. Maria because a gentleman wanted to talk to her. “Could he be the creditor?” the girls asked themselves, and they said that Sr. Maria was in the chapel. A little more time passed and Sr. Maria finally came, so joyful that she was bursting with happiness from all pores.

Looking at the girls, she addressed them with joy, “It is evident that you have prayed well, my girls! The gentleman who was looking for me some time ago had asked me to pray so that he would be able to sell a farm of his, promising me a percentage for the poor, a tithe, in short, for the sale. And now he has come to bring me this envelope, the precise sum that I have to pay”.

One day a woman in tears came to the convent who did not know how to feed her children. Those tears pierced Sr. Maria’s heart. The Sister prepared a bag of biscuits for her and told her to come back the next day after four. She then ran to the Superior to ask for permission (Sr. Maria asked permission from her superiors for everything) to donate at least one bag of beans weekly to that poor woman and to those in the same sad condition.

“But where will you get the beans?” the Sister asked her, almost smiling at Sr. Maria’s naivety. “If Our Lady wants this, she will certainly give them to me!” Sr. Maria replied dry and crystalline. And then while she was standing in the church to ask Our Lady to make her first sack of beans rain from the sky, a Sister touched her shoulder to tell her she was wanted on the phone. It was a lady who wanted to give her a sack of beans for a promise made and for a grace received. At four o’clock the following day, Sr. Maria had two tons of beans. After a few years, the ‘margarites’ (Margarita was the woman who had given Sr. Maria the first impulse, the idea for her Social Works) with Our Lady’s beans daily served forty-four” (MARTIRANI G. Maria Romero, Ed. Paoline, Milan 2002, 28-29. 33-34).