St Mary Magdalen dei Pazzi

Mary Magdalen dei Pazzi is one of the great Carmelite mystics, but her life begins with very concrete decisions and losses. Born at Florence in 1566, she was deeply devout from childhood, loved life in a convent school, and had to resist family plans for marriage before she was allowed to enter the Carmel of St Mary of the Angels. When she received the habit, the sight of the crucifix filled her with an ardent desire to suffer for Christ, and that desire became the thread joining the whole life together. Early profession, because illness made death seem near, was followed by a short period of overwhelming consolations and then by years of terrible interior darkness, temptation, and dryness. The life does not present holiness as a smooth ascent. Mary Magdalen asked to live again as a novice, punished her body severely, clung to prayer, and passed through a long hidden purification before peace returned.

After that, the more extraordinary part of her life became visible. Ecstasies multiplied, her sisters wrote down her words, she seemed to read hearts, foretell events, pray ardently for the conversion of sinners and unbelievers, and speak of divine love with a kind of burning urgency. Even then, the life does not let her float away into mere marvel. In the final years she was bedridden, in pain, often dry again in spirit, and still asking not for ease but for more suffering if God willed it. She died in 1607 after urging her sisters to love Christ alone and to encourage one another in suffering for Him.