Escobar, Marina de, Venerable

ESCOBAR, Marina de, Venerable. - Brigittine
mystic, among the most significant figures of Catholic
Spain in the early 17th century; b. at Valladolid on 8 February
1554, d. there on 9 July 1633. Of high intelligence,
she received a noble education. Her life is a
succession of mystical events, revelations and divine
illuminations that were for her an effective means of perfection.
She was directed for over thirty years by Fr. Luigi La Puente
S.J., who esteemed her as a saint and compared her to Catherine
of Siena and Teresa of Avila.

On his advice she wrote down the revelations that are read
in full in the biography. Architect of the reform of the Brigittine
Order in Spain, she established in her native city a monastery
of the reformation, to which she gave particular constitutions,
drawn in part from St. Bridget, recast by La Puente and
approved by Urban VIII. She exercised great influence on her
contemporaries through example, writings (letters) and the
spoken word, urging them to the love of God. She spent the last
30 years in infirmity. She was buried in the church of the College of the
Jesuits at Valladolid.

The revelations of the ven. E. have not received any
seal of approval from the Church. Her confessor La
Puente in the single volume of the life in 6 books (published
by Fr. Fr. Cachupin, provincial of the Society of
Jesus) written on the basis of the writings that the
ven. E. passed to him, faithfully reported the revelations on the mysteries
of the Trinity and the way of ascending to it by the path of the
Cross, on the Madonna, the Angels and St. Joseph (there is a
formula of a short rosary that the ven. E. recited on days
of greater suffering, limited to the consideration of the
mysteries of the Nativity, Presentation and Assumption), on
the souls in purgatory and on the salvation of one's neighbor.