Sr. Mariana of Quito, Ecuador and the Bees

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.

How I love images using bees. They are such diligent workers, single minded in protecting the Queen, gathering nectar and pollen, and caring for the brood. When I read about Mother Mariana's personal attention to her sick sisters, how she cared so tenderly for them, it reminded me of the nurse bees who feed and raise the brood. A beehive with all its workers going about their duties with diligence is a lovely image of a monastery or convent. Each bee has her job and all together they create the ordered life of the hive.

Sr. Mariana of Jesus, I beg for you intercession for our little bee yard that when Spring arrives we will have two thriving hives to remind us of the fidelity of you and your sisters at the convent of the Immaculate Conception.