Josefa Menendez: Life, Visions, and Prayer

Josefa Menéndez is a Spanish Catholic religious sister and a great mystic. She received many messages from Christ, of great simplicity. All these messages were gathered into a work entitled An Appeal to Love, thanks to Mother de Lescure. It was published in 1938 and blessed by the future Pope Pius XII. It was published a second time in 1944, after being completed. The process for the beatification of Josefa Menéndez was opened in November 1947.

Biography of Josefa Menéndez

Josefa Menéndez was born on February 4, 1890 in Madrid into a family of four children (she had two younger sisters and a younger brother, who died in infancy), of modest means. She received her First Communion at eleven years old, in March 1901. That day, Josefa made the promise to be entirely God's, for her whole life.

She then began working at seventeen, as a seamstress, after taking sewing and dressmaking courses at the School of Arts and Crafts in Madrid, in order to support her entire family. With one of her sisters, she even opened her own sewing workshop, which quickly became known thanks to the young woman's talents. But, Josefa felt called to monastic life and decided to enter, in 1917, the Servants of the Divine Heart (she had already wanted to enter religious life in 1912 but successive illnesses in her family forced her to return home and go to the bedside of her dying father). She therefore began her novitiate but it lasted only six months because her sick mother called her back to her side. Two years later, she renewed her request but was refused by the mother superiors who looked unfavorably upon her hesitations between family and convent.

Three years later, on February 4, 1920, she finally entered the convent, with the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Les Feuillants, in Poitiers. She was quickly appreciated for her kindness, her generosity, and her intelligence. Josefa lived the novitiate with a very profound interior life. She then received her religious habit on July 16, 1920 and made her religious profession on the same day, two years later.

From her arrival at the convent, she began to have, almost daily, visions of Jesus Christ, which lasted for four years. The Lord shared with her His project to reaffirm, once again, His message of love and mercy. He wanted her to be His messenger in the world. Josefa accepted and wrote down all the received messages in files so as to forget nothing. She thus became "the apostle of His goodness and mercy". Josefa gave her soul to the Lord very quickly, on December 29, 1923.

Messages of Christ Received by Josefa Menéndez

"I want to use you to make known even more the mercy and love of my heart... Help me in this work of love"

"I will love you, and souls will discover my love in the love I have for you."

"The world does not know my mercy and I want to use you to make it known... I want you to be an apostle of my goodness and mercy."

"I address my appeal to all... My only desire is that the souls I love so much throw themselves and lose themselves in the bottomless abyss of my Heart"

"I want my love to be the sun that illuminates and warms souls... I want the whole world to know that I am a God of love, forgiveness, and mercy"

"May all know how much my love seeks them, desires them, waits for them to fill them with happiness..."

"I am God, but a God of love; I am a father, but a father who loves with tenderness, not with severity. My heart is infinitely holy but also infinitely wise. Knowing human misery and fragility, it turns towards sinners with infinite mercy... I love men after they have committed their first sin, if they come to ask my pardon... I love them still when they have wept for their second sin. And if this repeats, I do not say a billion times, but millions of billions, I always love and forgive them..."

"I can refuse nothing to one who expects everything from me..."

"The only thing I ask for is love: a docile love that lets itself be led by the action of the One it loves..."

"It is not the action that has value in itself, it is the intention and the union in which it is accomplished... I ask for nothing else but love in all actions..."

"Nothing is small that is done for love..."

"I come to show you life in a reality quite different from what you see: If you want happiness, I am it; If you seek wealth, I am infinite wealth; If you desire peace, I am peace; I am mercy and love..."

"If one knew, writes Josefa a few days before her death, one would seek nothing else on earth than to do the will of God. No one can imagine this happiness ... it is the only thing that gives peace"

Two Beautiful Prayers by Josefa Menéndez

Prayer by Josefa to Ask for and Receive Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament

"Write what my heart suffered at that hour when, unable to contain the fire that consumes me, I invented this marvel of love that is the Eucharist. Contemplating then all the souls who would nourish themselves with this divine bread, I saw at the same time the ingratitude of so many consecrated souls, of so many priests... and what suffering for my heart! I saw these souls grow cold, abandon themselves to routine and more than routine... to weariness, and to boredom and, little by little, to tepidity! Through the centuries, I have revealed, in different ways, my love for men. I have shown them how the desire for their salvation consumes me. I have made my heart known to them. This devotion has been like a light spread over the world. It is today the means used by most of those who work to extend my reign to touch hearts. I now want something more, for if I ask for love in response to that which consumes me, it is not the only return I desire from souls. I desire that they believe in my mercy, that they expect everything from my goodness, that they never doubt my pardon. Amen."

Prayer for Healing by Sister Josefa

"At the moment of instituting the Eucharist, I saw all the privileged souls who would nourish themselves with my Body and my Blood, and would find therein, some, a remedy for their weakness; others, the fire to consume their misery and inflame them with love. All united in one same end, they would be like a garden where each would give its flower and recreate me with its perfume. I would warm its flower and my sacred heart would be the sun that would revive them. I would go to some to console myself; to others, to hide myself; near others still, to rest. If you knew, dearly beloved souls, how easy it is to console, to hide, and to rest a God! This God who loves you infinitely, after having delivered you from the slavery of sin, has sown in you the incomparable grace of his call and has drawn you in a mysterious way into the garden of his delights: this God who is your Redeemer, has made himself your Spouse. Amen."

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