Narcisa de Jesús

After the death of her father in January 1852, Narcisa, then 19 years old, moved to Guayaquil to provide for her younger siblings. There, she worked as a seamstress, a trade she mastered perfectly. In this large city, she led a double life: on one hand, she worked actively to support her family and devoted herself to the service of the poor, the sick, and abandoned children; on the other hand, she dedicated herself to a life of prayer and extremely rigorous penance. She joined the Association of the Daughters of Mary and became spiritually associated with the Dominicans by becoming a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic.

In order to live her union with Christ more deeply, she made several private vows: perpetual virginity, poverty, obedience to her spiritual director, enclosure, eremitism, fasting on bread and water, and daily communion. After a brief stay in Cuenca to seek more solitude, she left in June 1868 for Lima, Peru, on the advice of her Franciscan spiritual director. She was welcomed there as a lay boarder at the Dominican convent of the Patrocinio. Without taking public religious vows, she followed a schedule of impressive austerity: eight hours of daily silent prayer, four hours of nocturnal mortification (including flagellation and wearing a crown of thorns), and an almost absolute fast where the Eucharist constituted her main nourishment. She experienced frequent mystical ecstasies there.

Narcisa de Jesús died on December 8, 1869, at the Convent of El Patrocinio in Lima, at the age of 37, the very day Pope Pius IX opened the First Vatican Council in Rome. Immediately after her death, the nuns of the convent observed a resplendent light and a sweet, persistent fragrance emanating from her cell. Her reputation for holiness, already well-established during her lifetime, spread immediately among the people. In 1955, nearly a century after her death, her body was exhumed to be transferred from Lima to Guayaquil. Witnesses then discovered with astonishment that her remains were perfectly preserved and incorrupt: her flesh had remained supple and elastic, and she appeared to be merely sleeping. Her body now rests in the sanctuary dedicated to her in Nobol, her native village. The diocesan informative process for her canonization officially opened in Guayaquil on September 26, 1961, and closed on July 10, 1962. The decree on her writings was published on July 8, 1965. On October 23, 1987, Pope John Paul II promulgated the decree recognizing the heroic nature of her virtues, thereby granting her the title of Venerable.

The beatification of Narcisa de Jesús was made possible by the recognition of a first miracle that occurred in 1967. It involved the scientifically inexplicable healing of Juan Pesántez Peñaranda, a young man suffering from cancerous tumors following a frontal collision with a banana tree trunk. After praying to "Narcisita" in a dream, his tumors disappeared completely. The decree on the miracle was promulgated on March 7, 1992, and Pope John Paul II solemnly beatified her on October 25, 1992, in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican. The path to canonization opened thanks to a second miracle that occurred in 1992. Edelmira Victoria Arellano Plúas, a child born with a severe congenital anatomical malformation (absence of external genitalia), was healed in an instantaneous, complete, and lasting manner after her mother entrusted her to the intercession of Blessed Narcisa. The Vatican medical commission unanimously approved this miracle on January 18, 2006. Pope Benedict XVI proceeded with her solemn canonization on October 12, 2008, in Saint Peter's Square. She is the second saint in the history of Ecuador.

The spirituality of Saint Narcisa de Jesús is based on a deep identification with the suffering Christ through contemplative prayer and self-offering. Although she remained a layperson her entire life, she lived the demands of the consecrated life with the rigor of a hermit in the heart of the world. Her love for the Eucharist and her filial devotion to the Virgin Mary guided each of her actions. She was able to combine an extraordinary mystical life (marked by ecstasies and, according to some testimonies, by the stigmata) with humble, daily service to the most destitute.

Her legacy remains alive in Ecuador, particularly in Nobol, where her national sanctuary attracts thousands of pilgrims each year who come to venerate her incorrupt body. She is presented by the Church as a model of lay holiness, of a catechist, and of a worker, particularly for women forced to leave the countryside to seek work in the city.