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Redeeming Grace is one of the poems that had a surprise in store for me. When I presented the book to then Mnsg.Mike Sis, and he told me about the temple in Capernaum, he continued flipping through pages and scanning verses.

He stopped at this poem and said, “Mary of Agreda; she’s from Texas, isn’t she?”

 I thought I knew her to be from Spain, and so told him no.

He went to a book shelf and got out a book on the Church in Texas, and, sure enough, there was Mary of Agreda, just as he said; but, we were both right. It appears that when Mary learned that priests from her order were going to Texas she was understandably very worried about their safety in approaching the Indians, and so she did what anyone else would have done and bilocated to Texas to begin teaching before the priests arrived!  When the priests did arrive, they were surprised that the Indians were familiar with their language and had been expecting their arrival. But that wasn’t all that raised goose bumps.

Included in the book on Church history in Texas, was a beautiful piece of art depicting Mary of Agreda with the Indians. “Let’s see,” he said while reading the caption under the picture. “The painting is located in St. Anne’s Catholic Church in Beaumont.”

That is the church where my husband and I married, and where we went to Catholic school more than forty years earlier! Neither of us remembers seeing the painting tucked away in the back of the church.