GOD'S ADVENTURESS

M. María de los Dolores – Teresa Cruz BURGUI GOIZUETA

1879 – 1947

Teresa Cruz Burgui Goizueta was born in Tolosa (Giupúzcoa) the 14th of September 1879, into a Christian family that educated her in spiritual values and gave her a human formation. Her father inculcated in the heart of his oldest daughterthe sense of honour and fulfilment of duty to the point of sacrifice, even heroism, as something natural. And at the age of 22, she gave an affirmative response to God's call, entering at Pamplonathe 8th of August 1901.

They were difficult times, of great poverty and scarcity of means. But none of this frightened the young postulant, who valiantly faced her formation inmissionary life. The following year, she had the good fortune to meet the Foundress, who arrived for the blessing of the novitiate that had been built…And she predicted to M. Dolores: "You will pay very dearly for your name: María de los Dolores (Mary of Sorrows)". The very intense missionary life she experienced gave her multiple occasions to make this prophecy a reality.

After her temporary profession the 4th of June 1904, she was sent to Lisbon. The provincial house was there and that was where the Provincial Superior, M. Marie de Ste. Cécile, sister of the future Superior General, resided. As the province was very poor, and neither in Portugal nor in Spain did they have sufficient means to improve the institutions and houses in which they worked, besides having a growing number of vocations, they had to look for means…So the Provincial asked the Superior General's permission to send two Sisters to Brazil, where we had no house, for the purpose of selling handiwork.

And we find that M. Dolores with a French sister, Sr. M. Martial, were chosen for this daring journey, and they had to stay outside of the convent for several months, alone in foreign lands. The young sister opened her heart to the Superior General and made the comment how much it cost her to be far from her Sisters in community, from her convent, and from all she loved. But her following reaction was:

"Nevertheless, I am content and ready to spend my life in this unenviable isolation, if such is the divine will…It's true I have been far away for four months, but God's goodness never ceases to show itself visibly to these two poor creatures exiled from their countries, as someone has said. To tell the truth, I don't believe myself exiled because wherever I find my Jesus, I find my homeland and my all."[1]

After seven months spent in Brazil, in October she was already back in Lisbon. In her correspondence she spoke of the joy of returning to community life as one of the best things she encountered on her return, and though she continued working at painting, she had the joy of beginning her apostolate, with catechism to poor children.

In January 1906, she returned to Brazil. She confessed that this cost her, but she already had experience of what to expect. She nevertheless felt that

"this time the missions escapefrom me. It is God wills, so fiat! I always asked our Lord for suffering, so will I then refuse it when he offers it to me? A thousandtimes no! Yes, I want the cross as Jesus gives it to me. There are so many who refuse it!" [2]

Petropolis, Porto Alegra, Pará to the north…were visited by this pair of commissioners until they sold everything. In November we find her again in Lisbon preparing to pronounce her final vows in June of the following year...Shortly before,she was sent to the house of Sanremo. There she made her final profession the 17th June 1907.

Destined for the Missions

From there she set out for the missions, the last days of July that same year, destined for Chile. Ten days later, she wrote a letter to the Superior General and began it "between the sky and water of the ocean", before God…. She exclaimed:

"Never did I find myself as small as today. I renewed my vows, asking the Queen of the seas to come to my aid so I may be a true 'ancilla' (handmaid)." [3]

A month later she wrote again:

"I don't believe, dear Mother, that I'm afraid to die; no, I am peaceful. I have made the sacrifice of my life and from this moment on I feel a peace and calm I never felt before. Truly I am in tranquillity and ready to do what God wishes…I am in a hurry to see those blocks found in the Straits (of Magellan), formed by snow and ice. Ah, it seems I am going to see the image of my heart!" [4]

This was going to be one of the most salient features of her path to God, already beginning to stand out. Throughout her missionary life, she would go on shaping and deepening until it became one of the characteristics of her spirituality.

The first years of her missionary journey were at the novitiate house of Curimón. To begin with, she had to prepare an exhibit of needlework from the Santiago and Curimón workrooms in the capital. Following that she was put in charge of the school. She felt happier than ever there, because her missionary ardour found a channel to reach out to young women and girls to speak to them about God. So much so that she could write: "I have all I desired."

Here already M. Dolores' style as an educator began to appear, a task to which she devoted her whole life. Following the path traced out by the Foundress, education of women was going to be her principal task. She had to look after the candidates, whom she hadto form for religious life in the country, give a religion class to the novices, and teach Spanish to several French-speaking religious…

"Soon it will be vacation…I think during this time I will write out grammar lessons myself that can be used next year, because those here are very inexact. I would like all the children of the town to be able to come to the house. We have those from the leading families, but the poor…that is another matter. Here children are employed from the age of five to process fruits for a canning factory." [5]

Little by little she continued to be given responsibilities in the mission, and it is interesting to note how acceptance of God's will, obedience to her superiors, whoever they were, and her complete gift of self to God and the mission were going to be the strong bases of her spirituality. The simplicity and loyalty with which she recounted everything to the superior general today draw our attention, but there were times when she did so almost daily.

"If I were holy! But alas! I'm not even at the beginning and I am very afraid my life will be spent only in desires to be so. And nonetheless, what a struggle to kill this self lovewith which I am filled!" [6]

In 1908, we find her in Argentina, in the E. Unzué Shelter at Mar del Plata, first in the Republic and model for all the educational facilities supported by the government. At her arrival there were 320 children, and for nine years she carried out an excellent educational task there. The children whom she formed as a teacher, and whom at the moment of her death she was still influencing, always kept an unforgettable memory of her.

In August 1919 she received another mission. She was destined for Perú, and although it cost her to leave the Shelter of Mar del Plata, she did not hesitate a second to accept the new call. She set out with another sister for Arequipa. Here she met the other two who were waiting. It was 1919.

Towards a new Mission

In 1904 two Franciscan friars had penetrated the rainforest and gone deeply into it by the UcayaliRiver… They decided to form a new village…which they would call Requena. After many efforts and struggles against ignorance and corrupt customs that the white people had instilled in different surrounding ethnic groups…, they realized that only through education of women, beginning with the girls, could they have some success. And they decided to ask for missionaries…

"Women can only be regenerated by women. For that we thought of religious…The missionaries as well as the people want to have the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary here." [7]

And they knew women could approach where it was impossible for a priest to do so. By their style, intuitions andcloseness to the people, they were used to being more persuasive and above all knew how to reach the heart better:

"The Sisters who come will need much love for Jesus Christ, as they will have to suffer much for him. It is essential that they be Sisters capable of facing everything, thirsty for the cross of Jesus Christ. They will lack neither moral nor physical sufferings…" [8]

M. Dolores would be in charge of the group of four FMM who would begin the dangerous adventure of beginning the first women's mission in the Peruvian Amazon. Their lively, serene and decisive spirit would helpthem in the task of being the "soul of the expedition." What that entailed was collected in the Diary she wrote, day by day, gathering important moments of their 45 days' walk towards "the green hell".

They finally arrived at Requena, where they found a little house of wood. There the Diary ended, with these simple words:

" What do you want of us, Lord?...We don't know! But my petition walking into this house is summarized in this: Give me what you ask of me, ask of me what you want." [9]

They rapidly began from poverty to build a simple school that gradually improved, and they ensured girls an education to graduation level. They sowed, sure that God would produce the increase. Then, one year later at the end of 1920, we find M. Dolores in Iquitos, capital of Loreto department on the banks of the Amazon. There she also tried to lay the foundations for a boarding school…Perhaps the mission cost M. Dolores more energy and sufferings…

Because of the conflict between Peru and Colombia, she organized Red Cross services that later, at the end of the confrontation, were converted to set up a hospital, Santa Rosa of Itaya, for many years the only hospital in Iquitos.

Later in 1934, she was sent as Superior to Yurimagas, on the banks of the Huallaga, where she still continued her educational work and promotion of women. She returned to Requena in February 1937 to create and organise a Rural Normal School, her most beautiful and desired work, because of such important apostolic repercussions it would have…This "adventuress of God" not only ploughed furrows and opened up roads, but also succeeded in making aUtopian desire of the beginnings a reality, "the regeneration of woman, by woman."

After celebrating the Silver Jubilee of Requena's foundation in 1944, a new call from God came through illness. She accepted it in her "usual way"...and later returned to her activities. But the 14th of September 1946, she had to leave Requena for good to travel to Iquitos. From there she was brought to Lima, where the progress of her illness, leading to paralysis of the tongue, left her unable to pronounce a word… She abandoned herself totally to God's will, and her union with the Passion of Jesus became more real and authentic. As she used to say,

"I welcome all he sends me. All for Him…so that all may be holy." [10]

She died 15th of May 1947, on the feast of the Ascension.

The secret of her total surrender

To what can we attribute the undeniable influence of the work of M. Dolores (as all know her by) within the harsh Amazonian reality? There is no room to doubt she left indelible footprints behind. Why? If Bishop Uriarte defined her as "the best missionary we've known in the Peruvian jungle", she must have had a secret.

And indeed, she did have: her spirituality: a spirituality that, following that of her Institute, was a Franciscan spirituality, with nuancesproper to its charism. I would like to outline some of its characteristics. M. Dolores was a woman who centred her life on the Absoluteness of God and was an adorer. That was where she found strength to carry out her work. She lived this spirituality like Mary, in the simplicity of daily life, in total disponibility and with the disposition of Francis of Assisi. I would like to describe these five characteristics proper to her Institute, as they shaped her spirituality and were based on her own very personal experience.

1. Total surrender of her life to God,

Offering her own life in total disponibility.

In this sense, M. Dolores was a missionary upright and faithful to her religious duties, with a naturalness characteristic of saintly people. She did good, without calling attention to it, as the most normal thing in the world. Weighed down by the tropical and torrid climate, worn out by so many years in the same region, she never neglected any of her duties to God. What she had promised one day, she tried to live out with strength and enthusiasm on a daily basis. From the beginning and until her last days, though already elderly, she was the first to attend all community events. She was the first to get up, so she could also be first to arrive in the chapel for prayer.

As superior of the community, she began domestic tasks with everyone, deeply recollected in spirit. And after taking care of internal matters, she participated in the task of education, with the girls like one of them,forming every facet of these girls' minds. In the afternoon, when school ended, she prostrated herself before the Blessed Sacrament in Adoration that ended with the prayer of Vespers and Eucharistic Benediction. Then she prayed the Rosary.

All this might appear normal in other latitudes, but had added difficulties in the Amazon zone. Vespers time was "mosquitoes' time". And it was normal to see religious prostrated in adoration with a halo of hundreds of the aforementioned insects around them…

Yet M. Dolores surrendered herself to God unconditionally, with decisiveness and audacity, without fear of the unknown or unexpected, knowing she had offered her life to God as a victim for the Church and every person who conformed toit, as well as all whom God put in her path or to whom he called her. For in advance she had accepted any sacrifice, poverty, opposition, or annoyances, as many as this kind of life provided, for the purpose of gaining as many as she could for the Reign of God. With this sentiment, she repeated many times the prayer with which she ended her diary: "Give me, Lord, what you ask of me and ask of me what you want."

2. To be a missionary, sent to the poorest…

"It is not an easy nor simple task to enumerate her activities…from when she arrived in the Peruvian Amazon, full of life and with all her faculties, to establish bases there for her worthy and apostolic Institute of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. What can be said is that she lost no opportunity to extend and develop the institutions of her Institute whenever and wherever there was an occasion to do so…." [11]

"The first Mission-House for a number of years was a poor house of wooden planks with a corrugated roof made of asbestos and cement. In a tropical climate it heated up to such a degree that she and the Sisters chose to have class outside under an umbrella, to be free from sunstroke and suffocating heat from the roof that stifled themduring study hours. Nevertheless, she never complained on her own behalf and only if she was concerned about her Sisters. Sofor her, one could say that she always had this kind of life. She was already spending a great part of the day not in the large three-storied school of cement and tile (constructed some years later), but in the old part where,because ofan excess of students, many Mission outbuildings continued in use." [12]

They put up with all this and much more, given the fact that their interest lay in persons: these indigenous people…above all women, and those girlsand youth with unwary and indiscreet expression who were amazed by the world of letters and culture they discovered. Their education and formation were a priority task. But this did not mean the Sisters stoppedbeing concerned about children with swollen bellies, who were malnourished, thin and afflicted by parasites. Also subject to their efforts were the women withan unresponsive, sad expression, always tired.

They learned a difficult lesson for Europeans: that in the Amazon, everything flowed slowly, like its great rivers. Thedebilitating tropical climate and deficient food did not supply sufficient energy to react. But they did not back down before difficulties. If they had to begin from zero, they would do it. What drove them was the salvation of these persons, and a holistic salvation for which they had to plough the field, sow, irrigate…and others would be responsible forreaping the harvest of so much labour watered by sacrifice, generosity and love. As she herself wrote: "Could anything more beautiful be desired?"