Laura Montoya
1874-1949 20th century Feast day: October 21
Seeking God where he has no shrine: love knows how to find him wherever he gives himself.
Who was Laura Montoya?
A Colombian schoolteacher, orphaned by civil war at two, she carried from childhood an ache: that whole peoples lived without anyone telling them of God's love. In 1914 she rode by mule into the forest of Dabeiba with four companions to live among the Emberá, a mother more than a missionary, defending their dignity against the contempt of her age. Foundress of the Missionaries of Mary Immaculate and of Saint Catherine of Siena, confined nine years to a wheelchair, she became in 2013 Colombia's first saint.
In their own words
I saw myself in God, as though he wrapped me in his fatherhood, making me a mother, in the most intense way, of those who did not know him. They ached in me like true children.
I needed intrepid, valiant women, aflame with the love of God, able to shape their lives to those of the poor dwellers of the forest, in order to raise them up to God.
They have no tabernacle, but they have nature; God's presence there is different, yet he is in both, and love must know how to seek him and find him wherever he is.
I felt a strong desire to have three long lives: one to devote to adoration, another to spend in humiliations, and the third for the missions.