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| Our Lady of Good Success |
Since becoming a beekeeper, I take special note of bees mentioned in my spiritual reading. This morning, Ash Wednesday, I was reading a biography of Sr. Mariana of Jesus, the mystic who experienced the apparitions of Our Lady of Good Success in Quito, Ecuador in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The author, Msgr. Luis E. Cadena y Almeida, wrote this:
From early childhood, Mother Mariana of Jesus had exercised the secrets of prayer. She was an industrious little bee who daily built her honeycomb with the pollen of her virtues. She loved her relationship with God and found in Him strength for suffering, stimulation for perfection, skill and valor for confronting the forces of evil and, finally, repose and sweetness in the toils of her exile.
