The Lady in Blue

The Lady in Blue
Maria de Jesus de Agreda

The Lady in Blue has been one of the most important figures in southwest religious history. 

As the story goes, María Fernández Coronel was born on April 2, 1602 in the small village of Ágreda, Spain, located north of Madrid, Spain. She was a lovely child born to noble Catholic parents. When she was 10, she wanted to join a convent, so at the age of 12, her parents allowed her to join the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Tarazona. Maria’s mother had a vision, God told her to convert their mansion into a convent. She and her daughter would both become nuns. Her father would join a local monastery, following in the footsteps of his sons who were already friars. This all happened in 4 years.

At the age of 18, Maria took her vows. The habit of her order was a dark cobalt blue. As a nun, Maria’s religious devotions intensified. Her sisters worried about her frequent fasting, frail health and life of extreme deprivation. Yet for her it was a glorious time. She said God had given her a divine gift of bilocation. Through meditation, she could miraculously bilocation (she appeared in two places at one time, Spain and the American Southwest) 

In 1620 she appeared to the Jumanos who were a network of loosely affiliated native tribes, spread across New Mexico, West Texas and Northern Mexico. She appeared aproximately 500 times in about 10 years, from the time she was 18-29 between 1620 and 1631.

In 1629, a group of about 50 Jumano Native Americans arrived at the San Agustin de la Isleta Mission, 10 miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. They were carrying crosses and asking for a Catholic priest. They reported that they had been taught the Christian faith by a mysterious young  woman wearing a blue habit. The Jumanos said the Lady in Blue came to them “like light at sunset." She was a kind and gentle person who spoke ‘sweet’ words to them that they could understand. They asked the Franciscan priest Esteban de Perea, who had been called the "Father of New Mexican Church" to teach them about Jesus. The Lady in Blue had come to them and taught them had instructed them to go west to find holy men who could teach them more about the faith and baptize them. They pointed to a painting of a nun at the mission and said, “She is like her, but younger.” The priests were stunned because they had no missions or missionaries in that part of what is today West Texas. They certainly knew of no nuns who had attempted missionary work there. He asked two priests to go home with the Jumanos to verify these claims about the Lady in Blue. They traveled to the region that is today San Angelo, Texas and found that many of the Jumanos said she had indeed come to them many times over the years. The priests immediately baptized 2,000 Jumanos because of Maria de Ágredas.

According to Jumano legend, “when she last appeared, she blessed the Jumanos and slowly went away into the hills. The next morning the area was covered with a blanket of strange flowers that were a deep blue” Blue like her habit. These were, they said, the first bluebonnets. And perhaps the Jumanos found comfort when these flowers returned each year, adorned in their blue habits, assuring them that the Lady in Blue was always with them.

María de Jesús was not only a character on the stage of Texas history. She became well-known in Spain in her own time and, from 1643 until her death, she was a frequent correspondent with King Philip IV.

Her best-known work is The Mystical City of God (1670), "a life of the Virgin Mary ostensibly based on divine revelations granted to Maria."

The Spanish Inquisition approved the book after 14 years of study, but the work got her into trouble with the Roman Inquisition and was prohibited from circulation by the Vatican. The ban was lifted in 1747.

There have been at least two instances when she was considered for canonization as a saint.

Her body was exhumed in 1909 and found incorrupt. Her remain are on display in a glass-lidded coffin in Ágreda, in the convent where she served as abbess until her death in 1665.