Paperback: Mariam "The Little Arab" follows the mystical crescendo of Saint Mary of Jesus Crucified aka Mariam Baouardy's life. She founded the Carmelite monastery of Bethlehem and was beatified by John Paul II in 1983 continues to be an example for Christians of the Middle East and the entire world. She was a mystic who knew how to live in God and to give witness to his love.
Three major themes emerge:
1) Saint Mary affirms and reveals the reality of the supernatural world
2) the transcendence of the Love of God, and
3) the activity of the Holy Spirit in the Church.
Saint Mary forces us to reflect on the physical and spiritual condition of man. What is more astonishing than the trajectory of a saint? What greater message of hope could there be today in the troubled Near East, than to tell the Palestinians: here is a young girl of your race, your language, and of one of your most honoured rites. How can we fail to see that this child of Galilee and of the Eastern Church has a special message for those of her race and her rite.
Saint Mary referred to herself as the little nothing, and people ordinarily called her the little Arab, or the little one, or quite simply little one. What an abyss of humility indeed! Mysterious and fascinating, the phenomenon Mariam Baouardy does not lend itself easily to comprehension and analysis, with her alternations and frequent imbrications of the extraordinary and ordinary, of the supernatural and preternatural, of divine ecstasies and diabolical possessions. It must be added that since the death of the young Carmelite at Bethlehem, many cures, of body as well as of soul, have been obtained through her intercession.
Mariam "The Little Arab" (1981) is translated from the French by Jeanne Dumais, OCDS and Sister Miriam of Jesus, OCD, Carmel of Maria Regina in Eugene, Oregon.
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