Mama Antula
1730-1799 18th century Feast day: March 7
Boldness that perseveres: when the roads seem closed, walking on anyway and letting Providence smooth them.
Who was Mama Antula?
Born María Antonia de Paz y Figueroa in Santiago del Estero, she consecrated herself to God at fifteen without ever entering a convent. When the Jesuits were expelled from Spanish America in 1767, this laywoman took over: on foot, often shoeless, she walked thousands of kilometers to keep the Spiritual Exercises alive, eventually building in Buenos Aires the Santa Casa de Ejercicios, still standing today. Canonized in 2024, she is Argentina's first woman saint.
In their own words
I would like to walk to where God is not known, to make him known.
The providence of the Lord will smooth out the roads that at first sight seem impassable.
With patience much is obtained, and even more with perseverance.
My only consolation is to give him great thanks and to offer myself blindly to his holy will.