Every August 25 we remember the Blessed María del Traffic Cabanillas. She was born on August 15, 1821 in San Roque, Córdoba (Argentina). He joined the third order of San Francisco and later became the founder of the Franciscan tertiary sisters.
“The mother”
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His parents, Felipe Cabanillas and Francisca Antonia Sánchez, constituted a beautiful family with eleven children, whom they educated in faith. A very living and affable atmosphere was perceived at the house of the Cabanillas, with the blessings and difficulties of a large family. Proof of how present God was at home was that four of the eleven brothers, including Mother Mary of Transit, consecrated their lives to God as religious.
The name of Blessed Blessed was Maria del Transit Eugenia de los Dolores, to which she would “add” of Jesus sacramented “because of her great love for the Eucharist.
During his youth he had two great companions: his Josefa and Nicasia sisters. For the other brothers -the minors -given the age difference, she was “the mother.” And they felt that way, because he took care of them with the zeal of a real mother.
Maria’s father died when she was 29 years old, which left a deep wound in the heart of the Blessed because he was her great friend. Sometimes, mysteriously, God uses those losses so difficult to assimilate to forge the hearts of his children. Something like that seemed to be happening with Maria: a while after the disappearance of his father had to overcome the death of his mother and his brothers Eufemia, Isabel and Emiliano, all killed in the period of one year due to natural causes.
In the midst of pain, Mary touched that Christ invited her to share her redeeming suffering for men’s salvation. Thus it would come, in just a couple of years, the decision to be religious.
The first steps of total delivery to those in need
In 1878, the now mother Maria del Transit, accompanied by only two young people, founded the congregation of Franciscan Missionary Sisters. The residence where they lived were called College of Santa Margarita de Cortona. The main objectives of the new congregation were “to promote charity and mercy works, and give free education to the daughters of the poor and homeless.” Soon other women who shared the same spirit of service would be added.
Mother Maria liked to grow the garden and work in the orchard of the convent. He enjoyed domestic work and manual work, took care of order and cleanliness.
He used to visit the houses of the poor, sick and homeless, reaching material and spiritual help, a work that he did not stop performing or during the 1867 cholera epidemic that left more than four thousand victims in Argentina.
Congregation maturity
In 1879, Father Porreca was appointed as a spiritual director of the order and the Mother Maria del Traffic as Superior. After seven months both founded the Nuestra Señora del Carmen College in Concepción de Río Cuarto, the Mother Maria of the Superior Mayor Transit being designated. In 1882 the third house was founded in Villa (Córdoba), dedicated to the Immaculate Conception.
By 1883, the houses of Villa New and San Vicente already had more than a hundred students, and that of Río Cuarto, three hundred and twenty.
Mother Maria del Traffic, after an intense and fertile life in the apostolate, definitely delivered her soul to God on August 25, 1885. In recent years she had suffered a series of chronic discomforts that left her very weak and that she knew how to use as offering for her holiness and that of her spiritual daughters. Before leaving, he left these words that became spiritual inheritance:
“I don’t need them anymore, because I can’t do anything, but when I die, from heaven, I will do them a lot of good.”
María del Traffic Cabanillas was buried in the field for the church of Santa Margarita de Cortona in the city of Córdoba.
On April 14, 2002, it was beatified by Pope San Juan Paul II.
Central writing
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