V.J.E.
Praised be Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament!
This reflection was written by Sr. Joseph Marie Allensworth, HMSS on November 24, 2025,
Happy Thanksgiving! Thank God for this life and ability to follow Him! God is so good and I rejoice this thanksgiving with gratitude for my community, family, friends, all those who support and pray for me.
As Mercedarian Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, we strive to live as Jesus and be conformed to Christ the Redeemer in His Eucharistic Mystery. Our desire is to become Eucharist, which is why our habits are an off-white color. It is to remind us of our call to become what we receive each day in the Eucharist and the sign to which our life is to point towards. It has really struck me recently how the meaning of the word ‘Eucharist’ in Greek is thanksgiving. So, as we strive to become Eucharist, we are truly striving to live a life of thanksgiving and gratitude to God.
Our Mother Foundress, Venerable Maria del Refugio Aguilar y Torres modeled this for us and instilled in us, her spiritual daughters, this important virtue. She lived her life in a spirit of thanksgiving and gratitude for all God had given to her and entrusted to her. She understood deeply that in the Eucharist, we find our model and source of all thanksgiving. She dedicated her life to incarnating, or making present, this great act of love to her sisters and the young girls whom she strived to bring Jesus to each day. This quote, from the book on the Life of Maria del Refugio by Xavier Pikaza, I think shows how she teaches each of us to live our lives as thanksgiving:
“This is the gift which becomes sacrifice: giving one’s life to others in a gesture of gratitude, without asking for anything, without imposing anything, as a gift of grace. The gift of life transformed into sacrifice on behalf of others; sacrifice offered as a gesture both powerful and very close, like a gift being bestowed without imposition or humiliation: this was the meaning and the secret of human life for Mother Refugio. It was in this way that she lived and practiced to the utmost degree the meaning of redeeming dedication, that is to say, Mercedarian redemption. A Mercedarian is someone who freely gives his or her life so that others may live in freedom. Mother Refugio put all her life’s gifts in the service of others’ freedom. She had a noble heart, she was a woman of great gifts, psychological insight and an enormous capacity for leadership…Well, she placed all this in the service of the educational work of her sisters of the Mercedarian Apostolate, or the Eucharistic Apostolate. She thus converted the Eucharist into Mercy, that is to say, into the principle and basis of dedication to others.”
As I continue to grow as a Mercedarian Sister of the Blessed Sacrament and learn more about our Mother Foundress, I am struck by the example she gives in living our religious life. She understood that God had done so much for her, that on her own she could not earn or deserve it, and that religious life requires an entire gift of herself to Him in thanksgiving. As I lay down my life in thanksgiving to God, and give all that I have to Him each day, there are times I feel the weight of what that call means. In the Eucharist, by receiving Jesus each day and being with Him in Adoration, I am able to find that in sacrifice and hardship I have gratitude because I know God is with me and giving me His Heart to serve those in most need of His love and mercy. I pray and trust that through the intercession of our Mother Foundress, and the help of Our Lady of Mercy, I am able to strive each day to be receptive to the transforming fire of Eucharistic love and that my life may be an offering of praise and thanksgiving to God the Father.
I pray that the spirit of our Institute and example of our Mother Foundress, Ven. Maria del Refugio, might inspire you in your own way to live a life of thanksgiving and gratitude. This Thanksgiving, may Jesus fill your heart with love and many blessings from His Eucharistic Heart which loves you always.
